reading justin bond's blog response to v's new york mag feature i felt a piercing burst of anger followed by a more familiar wave of resignation. mainstream media have always expressed EXTREME hostile attitudes towards trans communities (if they acknowledge we exist at all- which to this day is mostly- only? white trans folks) and in the back of my mind i wonder if that may always be true. if you wanna follow this drama in detail, bond breaks it down in the most thoughtful and emotionally honest way. v's observation that "it was like reading some sort of pulp gay exploitation fiction from another era" struck me as SO FAMILIAR. because, somehow journalism about trans people always feels like it's a crazy time warp other zone past century burning place.... where it's all like WHAAAAAT? would you EVER talk so exploitatively about a body or what it fucks before you EVEN get to the point of who someone is maybe what their amazing contribution to the world might be? oh well. here comes that sigh of WHATEVER again.
but seriously forreal. maybe it's better this way. if fighting for visibility means fighting to be somehow DESCRIBABLE in this sad media vocabulary then skip it! but not in a reactionary way. in like a double-timing bless us for the infinite interweb platform lets just hear each other in our own dialects etc etc
ps if you wanna GASPP big time here's another one from nytimes weekly spew: Chaz Bono the reluctant transgender role model.
i once heard dean spade say that he was terrified of mainstream media for these very reasons- which was one of the original things that motivated me to want to make WILDNESS- i wanted to create a not terrifying option. so WORK continues ;)
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