Bil,
Thanks for posting these shows. With all due respect, they hit a little to close to home for me, so while I think they were well done, I also feel like I'm experiencing a little PTSD after watching them.

Due to being Transgender myself and since expressing it for the first time at 4 years old, and now at 63 years old, seeing this type of frank and honest presentation of Transgender people is like a rerun of many support group meetings I have attended over those many years.

For "old timers" like myself, it really hurts to know that you can't go back and act as bravely as these people in both episodes, even though you wish you had been that brave. But back then, there weren't any nice supportive and understanding people like those who helped in these shows. It was a sure thing that you would be sent to the psych hospital by your own parents and treated to the best drugs available at that time and a heavy dose of EST to help you mend your ways. Taking estogen and testosterone was unheard of and the only source was directly from animals and not synthesized in a lab, so even if prescibed, it was remarkably espensive.

I imagine that there are older gays and lesbians who might watch these shows and might compare the present situation with Trans youth of today, to the earlier days of the GLB community and the abuse that happened to them back then. Perhaps the fact that it is the way it is right now for Trans youth, is another reason why many who have the perspective to know the history, still say that the Transgender community is 20 years behind the Gay and Lesbian communities in having people understand their situation.

And the only reason why we stand together and fight for our rights now, is because we understand what we have had to go through and still have to go through to be able to live our lives as we need to and were meant to.

In both of these shows, the message is very clear for those who might question what we have in common as GLBT people and why we cannot leave anyone behind when it comes to social changes, legislation and human rights issues. The basic social feeling and destructive tendency in dealing with all GLBT people has been to submit us all to homophobia. It is the common enemy and the fears and prejudices it applies to our lives is very clear in these shows, the attitude of the parents and all to often in society in general.

But as these shows also show, things are changing and many people are beginning to understand the terror and fear felt by many Trans people and they are responding to it as human beings and in humanitarian ways.

These shows also help to educate many people to the fact that things like hate crimes and ENDA are most definitely matters of life and death for many Transgender people.

Some Transgender people can pound away at the moral implications of these shows and how they do not agree with the storyline because it is actually based on the David Reimer case and varies from the original story in some signifigant ways. But for me, getting people to think along any sympathetic and/or humanitatian lines regarding the validity of Trans people and expecially youth, is a positive step forward.

Certainly those who may complain the most about valid story lines, I would assume, are doing more than their fair share to change the minds of people and help to educate them about the right for all of us to express who we are. But all to often, it seems those people are the ones who prefer to reamin anonymous regarding their being transgender or gender diverse and hardly lift a finger to change others and the way they think.

I wish that things would change overnight and that the respect and the rights that we have as Transgender people had occurred with a snap of the fingers, but it just hasn't happened that way. When I compare the sensationalistic TV shows of the past, hosted by Phil Donohue and Maury Povich, with these presentations, I see a lot of progress in helping to educate others about what our lives are really like, the difficulties that we have to overcome and the forces that drive many of us to self destruction due to prejudices and discrimination.

I have always felt that the progress we have made over the years has been due to the basic fact that the vast majority of people, deep down, can change and that they would rather be accepting and understanding if educated about problems, rather than bitter and hateful.

But holding shows like this to a storyline that limits them to the exact truth of what happened between David Riemer and Dr. John Money almost 30 years ago, has little relevancy on the truth of what is still happening today.

Our story as a minority may be told in many of the same ways over the years, with many of the actual facts being slightly distorted. But I still feel that the creative license applied to these shows helps people today to closer associate with the realities of today and I would rather see that than some kind of history lesson that may be more accurate, but that people have a harder time relating to.

"As a trans girl, I don't need a man with a license to validate my identity,".

Get over it! While I applaud your sense of self worth and independence, I saw the two people, one female and one male, working together in the first show to help come up with solutions. Both made signifigant input and both showed compassion and integrity in dealing with the problem, compared to what would have happened 15 years ago. What I did not appreciate was the sideline story with the doctor's girlfriend, since I thought it had little to do with the plot and stole time away from going into more details about the main character's life. What I also did not see was gasps coming from people's mouths, except from the boyfriend, which I fully expected anyway. In the second show, I also saw in the Mother's role, the apparent loss that she felt of her daughter. This is still being played out daily in many families having Transgender youth in them.

Overall, not perfect, but acceptable and understandable presentations that progress the understanding of Transgender people's lives and challenges to simply be themselves.

That was an incredible episode. I would like to see more, especially a XXY and someone who has been through reparative therapy.

The show is very diversity friendly. I would not call it a psychatric version of House, however, The doctor has a few issues but House needs serious help. This one seems more like some of the folks on ER.

Wow...I'm trans myself, and will never understand why the other trans people on Bilerico are so angry. Don't get me wrong...I KNOW it's a hard life. But isn't it just making it harder by being angry all of the time. Sheeeesh.

Thanks for the post. I thought both of the tv shows were cool. Still not perfect, but tv never is.
Peace!

Just a reminder, hulu doesn't work for people outside the US.