Help Us Help You, Pretty Little Liars
During the Pretty Little Liars summer finale, I was chatting with Autostraddle CEO/Editor-In-Chief, Riese Bernard, about how in the world we were going to handle the show’s decision to make a transgender woman Big A. We were both discouraged and worried because trans women are the most persecuted members of the LGBT community — 17 DMAB trans people have been murdered so far this year — and research conclusively proves that media representation of minorities directly affects public perception of minorities, and public perception of minorities is the catalyst for negative and positive actions taken toward minorities. I rather optimistically said to her at the time that all eyes would be on our site to react to the big reveal, and we could use that opportunity to have a really nuanced, important conversation about trans representation on television.
To the great credit of many of the PLL writers, directors and actors, they shared my review — which was quoted extensively on other websites, including Vox, Flavorwire, and The Huffington Post — with their social media followers because they wanted to contribute to an open dialogue about what the show got right and what it got wrong, and the very real dangers facing transgender women. I was really proud and encouraged by those responses.
Today, Pretty Little Liars’ official Twitter tweeted this.
The graphic features a quote from Alison from an episode earlier in the season, and the dialogue of the text features a quote from Hanna from earlier in the season.
As I wrote in my recap at the time:
After the show already knew Charlotte was transgender and would be revealed as A, it kept having characters refer to her as — it makes me want to throw up, typing this — “he/she/it/bitch.” And of course when I woke up this morning, I had dozens and dozens of messages on Twitter and Tumblr referring to Charlotte that way. The writers gave these transphobic people that language, just handed it right to them, and now it’s everywhere. Just like Hanna Marin saying she was a-okay with Emily being gay made a generation of young teenage girls okay with themselves/their friends being gay, Hanna Marin saying “he/she/it/bitch” about a trans woman makes it okay for young teenage girls to say that about trans women. Even inside the show, they were misnaming and misgendering Charlotte after she made it clear who she was.
And here my worry has come to fruition because the show’s official Twitter is using a line of dialogue directly from an episode to perpetuate the horrifically transphobic idea that transgender women are not women, and that it’s okay to refer to them as “he/she/it.” How does that kind of thing play out in the real world? Well, just this morning, an NBC News story revealed that a U.S. Marine violently choked a transgender woman during oral sex when he discovered that she was transgender. NBC News repeatedly refers to the transgender woman as “a transgender” and “a Filipino transgender,” despite the fact that GLAAD has released dozens of free media resources to help news organizations understand how using the word “transgender” as a noun instead of an adjective is reductive and dehumanizing, and thus contributes to violence against trans people. The same thing is true when referring to a transgender person by the wrong pronoun, or worse, as “it.”
The outcry against the tweet was swift and ABC Family took it down within an hour, but replaced it with the same graphic and different text, despite the fact that the graphic misgenders Charlotte DiLaurentis. Once a trans person comes out, it is harmful and hurtful to refer to them with the wrong pronoun, even if you are referring to them before they came out as trans.
They also put the graphic up on Facebook. Many commenters who spoke out against the graphic due to misgendering — including myself — saw our responses deleted.
Screenshots courtesy of Catherine, who was also banned from commenting on PLL’s official Facebook page.
While comments complaining about the reveal for reasons other than transphobia, or comments that stripped Charlotte of her humanity were left untouched.
I have no interest in participating in callout culture. I have no interest in scoring points or raging for catharsis or having my ego stroked. My interest is in educating Pretty Little Liars’ viewers, writers, social media team, etc. about the transgender community to combat some of the more problematic elements of the finale. For example:
Our trans editor, Mey Rude, talked through this episode with me last night for a long time. I’m going to amplify all her thoughts and feelings here. (And as we continue to discuss this episode, I encourage us all to remember that when trans women speak to trans issues, it it the job of non-trans folks to be quiet and listen.) The hands down most damaging trope about trans women is that they are deceitful. That they get into romantic relationships by lying about who they are, by withholding information, and tricking people into loving them. Many, many people truly believe this lie and use it to justify murdering, and sexually and physically abusing trans women. That’s a real life one-to-one correlation. The media portrays trans women as deceptive monsters; real life people kill and beat real life trans women.
That Charlotte DiLaurentis seduced her own brother under false pretenses is an egregious storytelling offense. The “deceitful trans person” and “depraved transgender” trope are used more often than not when trans people are represented on television and in film, as we’ve seen in shows and movies including but certainly not limited to Glee, The Crying Game, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, Family Guy, and Lost Girl. This is how the media teaches us to hate and fear transgender people. The result is deadly.
You can see the scariness of this trope manifesting itself in the U.S. Marine story I shared above, and in the majority of the other attacks on trans people recorded in the U.S. over the last several years.
What I said to Riese during the finale is still my goal. The question I am asking is: How can we turn this into a teaching moment? How can we help people understand and embrace the transgender community so they don’t contribute to a culture that condones perpetual and horrific violence against trans people? I work for the most popular queer/feminist website on the internet. We won a GLAAD Award this year. But our voice is so small compared to the voice of Pretty Little Liars. 35,000 people read my Pretty Little Liars recap. Three million people watched the finale. How can Pretty Little Liars’ writers/producers and ABC Family executives amplify our voice – one of truth and compassion – to educate the hearts and minds of the people we’ll never, ever reach?
I think we start by reaching out to the show’s creative team – all of whom want to do good in this world and spread love in this world and tell stories that change things for the better, I believe that truly – and ask them to make sure they’re educated on the struggles facing the transgender community, the storytelling tropes that damage the transgender community, guidelines for speaking about trans people. I think we ask them to avoid those mistakes in the future and to be honest about those mistakes in the past. I think we ask them to address these things on the air, either in the show or a special episode about the show, where they can reach the masses who probably internalized some negative, damaging stereotypes during the finale. I think we ask them to consult with actual trans people. I think we ask ABC Family and its official social media accounts to learn how to speak about trans issues and to apologize when they make mistakes and to not silence trans people and trans allies when they’re pointing out harmful content.
I think we teach people how to do good and then insist that they join us in doing good. Help me, won’t you? Spread this word, have this conversation, plead for change.
You can read my full recap here and watch the HuffPo Live segment I participated in after the finale here.
UPDATE: Another murdered trans woman has been discovered. That’s 18 this year.
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