In this special Pride essay, award-winning journalist, social curator, and author Tre’vell Anderson argues that transgender representation and visibility in TV and film — while immensely and positively impactful for the trans community — is only a starting point for liberation; this essay expands on Anderson's book We See Each Other: A Black, Trans Journey Through TV and Film.
There’s a common refrain heard in Hollywood and beyond about the importance of representation — that one can’t be what they can’t see. Such a mantra is intended to galvanize an industry to embrace diversity and inclusion so that folks of varied backgrounds might see ourselves on screens large and small and feel part of society in a meaningful way. But the idea that we can’t be that which we can’t see just isn’t true.
The reality is that for many — especially those of us Black and trans or otherwise gender expansive — we exist and are in spite of not having seen many examples of who and how we could be. From the depths of our imaginations, we have crafted lives and existences we didn’t know possible, and often without a blueprint from film and TV (or community, for that matter).
But the need for representation on screen is no less important, because we’ve found a way or made one, as our transcestors did before us; in fact, it’s perhaps more vital because of the possibilities unrealized for Black trans and nonbinary people as a result.
Last month, I published my first book, titled We See Each Other: A Black, Trans Journey Through TV and Film. The culmination of almost a decade of reporting on diversity in Hollywood, the book is part history of trans images on screen, part memoir. I write about my own gender journey to nonbinary bad bitchery alongside the people and characters that paved the way for Time magazine’s assertion of a “transgender tipping point” in 2014 — and the ones who have come since.
In writing it — and producing and hosting a limited series podcast based on my book called We See Each Other: The Podcast with fellow journalist Shar Jossell — I’ve thought a lot about my younger self. About that Black child in Charleston, South Carolina, who knew they were “different” as early as four years old but wouldn’t have the language to best articulate themselves until decades later. About that kid who paid a little too much attention to how their granny rolled on her stockings or how she gingerly applied eyeliner and lipstick, not knowing the lessons they were learning. I’ve thought about that budding gender transgressor who was struck with awe and possibility in bearing witness to Isis King on America’s Next Top Model or Leiomy Maldonado on America’s Best Dance Crew. And in doing so, I’ve realized how I am proof of the importance of representation and the ways it can impact one’s life for the better.
But visibility for trans people, especially those Black and brown and femme, is a paradox. While seeing trans and nonbinary folks in media and culture allows us to see parts of ourselves — from Pose and The L Word: Generation Q and Tangerine, to red carpets and magazine covers and fashion campaigns — our glorious presence has also made us targets. We are the most visible we’ve ever been as a community, and also the most vulnerable. According to the Trans Legislation Tracker, a site that documents the state of legal rights for trans people in the U.S., 2023 is already the fourth consecutive record-breaking year for anti-trans legislation. There have been more than 550 anti-trans bills introduced in 49 of 50 state legislatures this year alone. More than 80 of those bills have passed, banning or restricting gender-affirming (and life-saving, according to every major medical association) healthcare, sports team participation, bathroom usage and more.
Then there’s also the pressure and limitations that visibility thrusts on folks with which we must contend. I’m reminded of an interview I did with actor Chaz Bono, the child of Sonny and Cher, back in 2015. This was four years after his transition was chronicled in the Emmy-nominated documentary Becoming Chaz and after he competed on the 13th season of Dancing With The Stars, which made him the first openly trans man on a major network television show for something unrelated to being trans. As I write in my book, I was struck by how unfazed Bono was by his trailblazing for trans and transmasculine people — not to mention the rest of the LGBTQ+ community, too.
“I’m a guy just trying to make a living as an actor just like thousands of others,” he said to me before adding, “People have a very fixed idea of me and who I am.”
Bono then described how that fixed idea, invariably the result of being an out, visible trans man years earlier — and the child of an icon — made it difficult for him to have the career he desired. It made it hard to get seen for roles and forced him, like so many other trans creatives, into producing just so he could work. Blazing a trail had created a limiting reality for him and those following in his footsteps.
Such a byproduct of visibility is especially limiting for trans folks Black and Brown, femme and not, famous and less so, who don’t come from the type of life that Bono did.
In the introduction to Trap Door: Trans Cultural Production and the Politics of Visibility, editors Tourmaline, Eric A. Stanley, and Johanna Burton write about “the trap of the visual: it offers — or, more accurately, it is frequently offered to us as — the primary path through which trans people might have access to livable lives.” But said representation doesn’t often translate into better material realities for the trans folks not on our screens, but in our neighborhoods.
Visibility alone does not keep and has not kept the girls safe. It has not gotten nor does it get the boys trans-competent, affirming healthcare. It, alone, has not put nor does it put a roof over the heads of the enbys — even as it helps some of us hold on a little longer, dream the impossible, and live out loud. Like the young, Black trans girl in Mobile, Alabama who is affirmed by seeing Yasmin Finney in Netflix’s Heartstopper, or the nonbinary femme in Cleveland, Ohio learning that they can have love, too, as does Nico Annan’s Uncle Clifford in the Peabody Award-winning drama P-Valley.
That representation is important, but our possibilities have never been limited by how Hollywood depicts us. Ultimately we have to dream beyond what exists — in legislation, in TV, in our material reality — and take care of each other along the way.
