Cheap tabloids and the politics of civilization

The New York Post is a conservative tabloid owned by Rupert Murdoch. It's the oldest daily newspaper in the United States and at various points in it's history has actually been a publication containing serious journalism and advocacy for progressive issues. A little over a week ago it managed to publish an article on international politics titled "AXIS OF SHE-VIL: DEATH TO GAYS BUT FREE OPS FOR IRANI TRANNIES".

1) The title of the piece contains the epithet "tranny" which is neck-in-neck with "shemale" in terms of being an offensive term for referring to male-to-female transsexuals. This is roughly comparable to words like "fag" and "kike". Upon publication of the article there was no storm of outrage denouncing the use of the epithet by the oldest daily newspaper in the United States.

2) The article puts sentence fragments in quotes (in a way that could function as delegitimizing scare quotes) around sympathetic characterizations of transsexuality and government support for what is generally recognized by the medical community as appropriate care. Specifically:

The fanatical religious government authorized the operations in 1984 when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a decree deeming transsexuals to be people who are "trapped" in the wrong body.

Some experts call the approach "enlightened thinking."

3) The article contrasts the support of medical treatment for trans women with Iran's executioner-enforced homophobia and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's September 2007 pronouncement that Iran does not have the phenomenon of a publicly tolerated community of gays and lesbians as in the west. The two policies are implied to be related. A quote from an Iranian trans woman is included to drive home the comparison:

"I prefer going out with the chador [full length robe] in the heat of the summer than being considered a homosexual," she told Bloomberg News.

4) The article has a picture of the President of Iran and if you hit the button for the next picture there is a picture of a Iranian trans woman (who is quoted in the article) putting on lipstick. The lipstick shot is a classic way to use a specific image to highlight the artifice of feminine gender presentation in general and a feminine presentation by trans women in particular - it's so common as to be a cliché worth writing about.

5) The broader political context of the article is a discussion about claims to enlightenment or civilization by various cultures. The treatment of women, gays and lesbians, and trans women serve in this debate as propaganda elements showing which culture is more or less enlightened. The issues are not offered as tragic situations worth addressing on their own terms in order to right injustices and help the troubled. The issue raised is, "Which nation treats it's subjects better?" The issue is not "Who is in trouble and how can we help them?" The chess game is the real topic and the people are offered to the reader as chess pieces.

This blog is an experiment

This blog is an experiment.  In the nebulous set of systems called "the media" something coherent and weird goes on with respect to trans women.  Trans women are statistical rarities - we're no more common than those born with a cleft palate - and due to the uqbiquity of the media and the rarity of trans women, media depictions are the primary exposure that most people have to us.

If someone is going to know that we exist (and if they're going to believe that there are certain tendencies or traits that we have) it will be because someone in the media thought we'd be worth depicting. That depiction will of course focus on "what is worth depicting" about trans women in the opinion of someone. And something about this process appears to create a very systematic bias that results in a very very skewed impression. Words like "lurid" and "tragic" spring to mind.

It would be silly to think this happened on purpose.  It would be paranoid to ascribe the process to the coherent plans of any group of people.  And yet something that amounts to defamation seems to happen regularly enough in the media that it hurts the reputations of actual trans women with consequent damage to our actual lives.

One response might be to rush out to spread the truth about who we really are. "Look at me and look how normal I am... maybe I should put myself out there to help make a difference." This is a fairly common thought that sometimes leads to books or blogs. That's is not the approach that this blog will take. Nor will this blog be dissecting the autobiographies or blogs of trans women.

This blog is an attempt to document how and when cis people choose to depict trans women and what it looks like when they do.  If the blog succeeds, then a year or five from now it will have accumulated an archive full of evidence on the media machine and what it is doing to the reputation of trans women.