In the years after the first transgender actress appeared on television in a transgender role in 2005, the presence of transsexuals on TV remained minimal. Confined to surgical documentaries or painfully mocked, constantly being either the butt of a joke or in hospital beds, perverting a public understanding of the transgender community. Thankfully, following the success of prison-based comedy-dramaOrange is the New Black and the nomination of transwoman Harmony Santana for an Independent Spirit Award, attitudes, understanding and representation have finally started to change.
For a community that has been grossly underrepresented on screen, the last four or five years have been a welcome change for trans people. Laverne Cox has been the driving force behind much of this, with her role as Sophia in Orange is the New Black paving the way for more transgender roles to be played by people with first hand experience. The wide-reaching impact that Laverne and other openly transgender figures, such as Carmen Carrera, Candis Cayne and Isis King, have had has been gradually forcing US television to move away from outdated, offensive stereotypes.
Slowly, things are starting to change in Britain too. 2015 will see the BBC launch the UK’s first transgender sitcom, Boy Meets Girl, a romcom about a transgender woman, played by the transgender actress Rebecca Root. This is a huge breakthrough for the British transgender community, adding to the success of Bethany Black, who was the first transgender actress to have a recurring transgender role in Channel 4’s comedies Banana and Cucumber. These recent advances mean that bit by bit the transgender community are gaining a positive voice and a visual presence in UK television.
Unfortunately, this progress has not come without opposition. Transgender actors and actresses still face horrendous prejudice and abuse from audiences and social media around the world, often being subjected to probing questions about surgery and hormones rather than being judged on the basis of their talents. Pronoun misuse and confusion over the difference between drag acts and transgender people means that there is rife misrepresentation of trans communities in the media, with the stigma that this generates running the risk of transgender people only ever playing transgender roles. Care is needed to ensure that misunderstanding and ignorance does not create a glass ceiling for these actors and actresses in the future.
Transgender people aspiring to work in television are not without hope. Audiences are now more than ever embracing transgender roles and supporting the programmes that give transgender people a voice. What’s more, we as the audience have much more power than we believe – ultimately it is us as consumers who decide which endeavours succeed and which do not. It is only when writers and directors see that their audiences support transgender communities that the role of transgender people in television will change and start sending out the message that transgender people are simply people; no different from everybody else.
Natalie Cherry