Though I don't look at it much, in my experience The Advocate is pretty much exclusively a gay magazine, and barely seems to care about lesbians (which is why I don't look at it much!), so in my opinion, it isn't too surprising that they don't care much about trans* people.

Having never seen the show, I'm not qualified to speak to Beau Bridges' comments. However, as a male-to-female transsexual, I definitely feel qualified to weigh in on the media guidelines referring to my body. Frankly, I feel that "gender reassignment surgery" is both blatantly misleading and medically inaccurate. Gender is an amalgam of social presentation and self-identity resulting from expected social roles and behaviors, and has nothing to do with surgery or surgical proceedings. Gender is not "assigned" so much as it is "established." To speak of "reassignment" of something that wasn't assigned is linguistic folly. To claim that surgery can reassign a social role compounds the insult.

Sex, while still an oversimplified term, at least has the specific referent to primary sex organs, which is what the surgical procedures altered. To be sure, a more accurate description would eliminate both sex and gender from the descriptor and speak of reconstructive genital surgery: vaginoplasty, phalloplasty, and other individual surgical procedures aimed at building appropriate physical characteristics. If we must continue to make hay of our genital arrangements in public, the least we can do is start to draw a distinction between "sex" (genital arrangement) and "sex" (physical acts of intimacy which may or may not have anything to do with genitals).

Optimally, mentions to surgery would be eliminated entirely from media guidelines; what I have between my legs is my business, and the business of those people I invite to partake. By encouraging guidelines that not only focus on surgery but describe it in misleading language, we perpetuate the toxic notion that "you aren't really done until you've had surgery." It establishes genital configuration as the determinant of social identity. It reinforces the misleading idea that it's everyone else's business what you've got tucked under your skirt.

I was born a woman with XY chromosomes and a male body. I came out as transsexual in 2000. I started gender adjustment four months later as part of my real-life experience. I had reconstructive genital surgery--a sex-change operation--on March 15, 2002. Other people may choose never to have such surgery; they find the configurations with which they were born to be adequate, or are contraindicated for surgical procedures. These people are still quite capable of going through gender adjustment, and we would do well to remind each other and the rest of the world that some boys have vaginas, some girls have penises, and That's Okay.

I watched the episode last night not knowing in advance about “Georgette!” It didn’t take long for “my skin to begin to crawl” either. The jokes and gags stopped just short of mean spirited high school humor. My first thought was that the producers and writers had done no research whatsoever!

My mind wandered back to the stereotypical portrayals of African Americans in feature film and television for most of the previous century. Then I thought of the great roles played by Morgan Freeman, including President of United States.

By the end of the show I kept thinking that I hope no one I’m out to saw this episode of “The Closer” because I’d be stuck with the “damage control.” It’s difficult enough getting family and friends to comprehend the truth about TG/TS people with all the wonderful info available on the Internet… “Georgette” will no doubt force me to once again calmly answer a barrage of ridiculous questions that I’ve already dealt with. Guess I’ll just keep smiling and politely answer them again!

No one, of course, should be surprised by this representation of a transsexual person on television, or, for that matter, in an exclusively gay publication.

This is the very structural issue we have been discussing, not in the majority of posts to this sites--as one gay man has recently complained--but simply in one or two interesting and helpful posts that still do happen on this site.

No one can make people read either this site or any particular contribution of comment--and if the suggestion of reducing in size and importance comments to almost nothing is accepted, then there will be no interesting comments.

But mass media is a different story.

Your previous proposal for communication, Jillian, seems not to obtain in this case.

Rather, mass media, and GLAAD guidelines are themselves rather high level institutions and if there is restriction of contributions to this site, there is little hope for something positive happening higher up.

Sigh, my parents love this show and got me to go out and watch some of it. The first episode I watched, the first episode of the show, decided to go with the whole plot twist of "the victim is trans" as a way to explain the mysterious disappearance of a man and the sudden discovery of an unknown woman's body.

They ignored the discrepancy that his body most likely would have been noticeably different from the average cis woman, and they also portrayed his gender as a deceit which he used to hide as a fugitive from a former radical bombing case. They managed to include the cliche of the trans murder victim, the trans murderer, and the deceitful trans person who's deceit leads to their death -- All within the very first episode.

I watched some more and found some redeeming content, but overall I wouldn't expect anything positive to come from their trans portrayals. As for the advocate, I'll just add this to my ever growing list of all cis led LGBTQ groups honoring transphobic media, which I was discussing just last night in the comments of my last post.

I am transgender, somewhere between a crossdresser and genderqueer. I also fell into being the President of an LGBT employee resource group at work. So I read a lot from Pam's HB and Bilerico and other sources to get a feel, since I will probably never truly understand, how gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transgenders, transexuals, intersexual, etc. really think. I do this so that I can be a better representative of the community I represent at work.

For me, specifically, as I watched it with my wife, the actors were really overacting at the first part of the episode. It made me wonder if this was being done (you have to remember that many people watching the episode are repeat watchers and have gotten some idea how the characters normally act) to show that the actions being portrayed were making fun of the teams actions. The audience would see these actions and know they were wrong.

You would probably say that the writers and audience was not that smart, except at work, I saw this same sort of insight from the audience for Diversity Training we had at work a few months ago. I saw a nuance that I thought most people would miss and was suprised at how many people actually picked up on that nuance.

The episode also had one redeeming aspect for me. When the discussion between the characters about Georgette being a lesbian, it caused my wife to ask me if that was a true assertion, and I replied in the affirmative. My wife has known about my crossdressing for 5 years or so and we have gone on a cruise together with be being enfemme for the entire trip. So this episode was able to dispel some myths for her, and I think helped her understand that I truly am still attracted to her, even when presenting as a woman.

Deanna

Yes, it happens all the time unfortunately: When casting actors for a trans part directors rarely look for trans actors. They cast either cis males or cis females, depending on the impression they want them to make on the audience.

As a matter of fact, trans actors are not often casted in cis parts either. After 20 years of experience on stage, my chances of getting casted have rapidly approached zero as soon as I started my transition...

The advocate is a magazine for white, middle class, gay cismen and has a long history of being Transphobic and TNT is another mainstream media outlet. Clearly its a problem, but this should not surprise anyone.

Since when should anyone expect television to correctly portray anyone (more over a trans woman)? If we want change, then we need to stand up and be counted. All of us.

As for the advocate, frankly, I could care less how they refer to "the operation". As long as they use the right bloody pronouns and don't say "Jane/John Doe, who used to be a man/woman....". One thing that frustrates me continuously with the media (ANY media) is the portrayal of all trans individuals as wanting an operation. A lot of us don't.

Guess it's time for more education.

As of yesterday this episode is available on the TNT website.

I watched it yesterday and have some comments. I have met this character (as portrayed by Bridges) over and over and over during my 15 or so exposure to transland. I've met her both pre and post op versions. Bridges did do his homework and that is the real issue here. Trans people need to start living in the real world. Every single reaction to the character is one I have witnessed. Every one.

This show dealt with those reactions, the central character of the series, Brenda, never once slipped on pronouns and a running gag on the show since it's beginning is her own sometimes discomfort and often over the top femininity to compensate.

The trans character was, in the end, treated with respect, accepted even by his former partner who has real macho attitudes. What the hell do you expect from mainline tv? It really isn't ever gonna be better than this was especially when you have transwomen saying "at least they had a man doing the part, I hate GGs doing this"....as a woman with a classic intersexed/transexed background who blends in just fine with other women, I never cease to be amazed by this sort of attitude.