Not Apparent

So the Emmys happened this weekend.  As a Canadian geek, I mostly only cared that Tatiana Mislay won best actress for Orphan Black. But I also saw that Jeffrey Tambor won best actor in a Comedy for Transparent, for the second straight year. That's going to be a bit controversial, since that program, despite being about a trans woman, is not popular with all transgender people.

See, they're kind of ticked that their story is being told by a cismale actor and a cisfemale show runner, rather than hire actual transgender people.  That dislike of the program went into overdrive after Tambor's Emmy win, because he used his acceptance speech to call on Hollywood to hire more trans people.  On the one hand, good on him for calling for that, but on the other hand, he is taking one of those potential jobs, so it comes off as hypocritical.

So I can understand why people would be angry with the show.  But I've been bugged by the complete dismissal that I've seen in online discussion. That is, there's an attitude that because this show is not coming directly from transfolk themselves, that renders the show useless.  Or worse, it's condemned as worse than nothing, because it's seen as the mainstream assimilating a culture.

But I don't buy the idea that it's not doing anything positive.  The fact is that there is a positive effect of helping people get inured to a group of people who are different.  A lot of prejudice comes from fear and uncertainty, and as I've mentioned before, that lack of experience is going to be a problem for transgender people seeking acceptance.  Though Transparent may have problems for other reasons, getting cis people to see a trans character on a popular TV program will go a long way to making them less mysterious and thus less scary. That positive effect doesn't go away just because it's not the oppressed group themselves doing the storytelling.