I came home tonight and my mother, who is a huge House fan, asked me to tune the television so she could watch her show. It was a marathon so there were a lot of reruns and they were airing the episode where House is treating an intersex boy and there's the whole debacle where the parents are hiding it from him but then it comes out somehow and we have a big expose and generally have a Very Special Lesson to take home from the experience.
I've never actually seen the episode, to tell you the truth. I have no desire to watch this episode. The fact of the matter is I only know about this episode because I read about it through commentary by other people who did watch the episode. The truth is that I feel deeply uncomfortable when shows like House feature people who are like myself in terms of minority status.
Actually, I should be more accurate: I feel deeply uncomfortable when shows like House feature the minority status of people like myself. Fundamentally, when a character comes on one of these shows who is a minority the character itself is never truly the focus nor the point. The character is simply a vessel to showcase whatever makes them "exotic."
This is a form of tokenization and it is inherently dehumanizing not only for the character but for all the people who share the character's master status.
I don't much like that. I don't like something that is part of who I am exposed and put on display for the entertainment and benefit of people who are not like myself. It's just wrong. Even when the shows generally get things right and treat the issue with appropriate deference it feels violating. Fundamentally, placing difference on a pedestal for the benefit of the normative is nothing more than a glorified, modern day freak show.
... and it makes me feel like a freak.
... and the surreptitious glances in my direction to see how I'm responding don't help.
This is not, of course, to suggest that popular media should refrain from portrayals of minority characters. Certainly there are portrayals of minorities where the character is developed and a person in and of themselves. The difference is that they are characters who are minorities rather than just vehicles for 'exotic' characteristics.
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I actually feel that this is a large part of why I feel uncomfortable with regards to trans panels and other educational events where people of minority status get together to educate the majority. Too often I feel that these events are ultimately serving the privileged with regards to satiating their curiosity. I honestly do not feel that people are as ignorant as we assume they are and certainly if they had a mind to they could easily do the research to come away with at least the level of education they could ever hope to receive from a half-hour panel. Instead, I feel that the people on display are too often treated as objects of curiosity and, as such, not as individuals.
I've been thinking maybe how we could do better with regards to educational panels and I've been thinking that the best way to do it would be to focus the education not on the people's minority status and their life experience, which seems to be what invariably happens, but on the way that the people of the majority interact with minority persons. I feel that doing this takes away the voyeuristic factor which is so problematic while at the same time centering the discussion on the audience and what they need to do to address our problems.
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Anyway, this whole thing is still something that I'm working over in my head so, of course, thoughts if you have them!
Hello world!
1 year ago
4 comments:
The problem with trying to focus on the majority reaction to the minority is simply that the minority is always and without question the Other. When not fearing and persecuting the Other, the majority will always treat it as a curiosity.
This is especially true of transfolk. We are generally treated as a sideshow attraction. Look at the lady who was born a man! When there are TV shows about us, they are always more interested in the before than the after. Julia Serrano talks about this in
Whipping Girl and how she never provides "before" pictures of herself for interviews because she does not want to play that game.
The people who write a show like House are not necessarily looking to take advantage of the Otherness of our condition but rather just looking for anything to write about given that the show has long since gone past most available medical conditions that might be considered "mysterious". I don't give it much thought.
xoxo
@Gin, you're absolutely right about the privileged treating the oppressed as a curiosity. I feel that trans 101 workshops just feed this curiosity and reinforce this troublesome behavior. Well spoken.
I feel that we have to break this cycle and deconstruct the way which the cissexual controls the way the transsexual presents our reality -- and I do believe this is what is happening with regards to trans 101. The cissexual majority will not tolerate being challenged in their behavior so they demand a confessional -- they demand a curious sideshow, instead.
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Anyway, the following was a comment which I posted over at Binary Subverter, I feel it's pretty much what I was talking about here only framed specifically in respect to transsexual oppression:
You know, I was just thinking about this very thing with regards to trans 101 issues being very, very uncomfortable to me.
I think that one of the major issues that I have with trans 101 deal type things, or in fact any trans media/awareness/education that is directed toward cissexual people is how it is almost invariably structured to pander towards the cissexual. In other words, the transsexual becomes the object which the cissexual observes and analyzes.
I feel this is objectifying.
Further what I feel is objectifying is how the transsexual becomes a vessel for transsexuality. The cissexual is not interested in the transsexual but rather is interested solely in that person’s transsexuality. The individual becomes depersoned — dehumanized. The person becomes an object and trans people as a group become less than people — we become a concept bereft of body for the cissexual to ponder.
So yeah, I understand where you’re coming from with regards to language as language is certainly something that I am very passionate and persnickety with regards to, but at the same time I feel that the language might just be a symptom of a larger problem: the problem that trans 101 is inherently centered around the cissexual for the cissexual’s consumption.
http://binarysubverter.wordpress.com/2010/11/14/trans-101-for-realz/#comment-44
Do you read Cedar's blog? You should. http://takesupspace.wordpress.com/2010/02/06/combatting-combatting-ignorance-part-2-how-could-you-have-known-%E2%80%93you-already-did/
*sighs* House.
There was an episode with a cAIS woman who was chromosomally XY. He actually said to a man who had slept with her, a *woman* who definitely identifed as such, "Guess that makes you gay, huh?". Oh, House...
@Z: I love Cedar's blog and that series in particular. It's a shame that she doesn't seem to update anymore, though, her writing is brilliant.
I read about that episode, too, in fact one of my friends brought it up after reading this piece and how she thought I misgendered the character in the episode as she had mistook this ep for the one with the CAIS woman. I followed the cues of the ways the characters were talking about him. The fact that I thought I was in the wrong and that she was right speaks a lot to the quality of the show and the quality of popular discourse in general.
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