Despite the recent makeup of political headlines, transgender and gender nonconforming people lack an in-depth baseline of research (Jacobs, L., & Meeusen, C., 2021).  Literature on the subject usually covers their current rate of social acceptance or lack thereof (Hetzel, C. J., & Mann, K., 2021).  The process one must undertake to accept transgender people, however, is less documented.

To address this, I posit that media portrayals of transgender people lack educational value.  Stereotypes of minority groups in the media has already been shown to paint negative perceptions among audiences (Markina, V. M., 2021).  Therefore, it follows that cliched media representation can lead to harm through oversimplified audience perceptions.  Transgender people are represented with a very narrow framework in the media, and this can lead to a worsening perception of transgender people among general viewing audiences (Billard, T.J., & Zhang, E., 2022).  As such, through qualitative semi structured interviews, 21 transgender and gender nonconforming people shall give their input regarding what they feel should be addressed in media representation, as well as their degree of satisfaction with the representation currently available.

Hypothesis

Transgender representation in the media is too narrow to properly educate general audiences on transgender issues.

 Flowchart

The Limited State of Transgender Representation

Transgender and gender nonconforming (GNC) people experience a number of limiting stereotypes in traditional media (Flores, A. R., Haider, M. D. P., et. al., 2018).  Consequently, many transgender people inform themselves about gender dysphoria exclusively through online resources Cavalcante, A., 2016).  This can lead to the ageist suppositions that transgender people only fit a particular mold (Ivan, L., Cutler, S., 2021).  Substantially more attention is given to the transgender experience among young people than any other demographic (McCabe, P. C., & Anhalt, K., 2022).  Transgender people are also expected to behave in stereotypically binary ways.  For example, trans women are expected to act hyperfeminine (Flores, A. R., Haider, M. D. P., et. al., 2018).  This is in light of an already ageist and heteronormative media industry (Loos, E., Ivan, L., 2018).

What’s resulted is a self-fulfilling cycle of narrow transgender representation (McLaren, J. T., Bryant, S., et. al., 2021).  This trend serves to limit perceptions of transgender people in society at-large.  This is especially true of people who have little experience with transgender people beyond a news setting (Fink, K., & Palmer, R., 2020).

Methodology

The goal of this proposal is to establish a correlation between diverse transgender representation and deeper knowledge of transgender experiences among general audiences.  For this purpose, a stratified sample of American transgender people shall be surveyed for their thoughts on how representation can improve.  Selections shall be quota-based according to several blocking variables.  Participants shall be roughly proportional to the population at-large.  In other words, it will hopefully be 49% men, 49% women, and 2% GNC, with a mean age of 35.

In essence, I am seeking to measure the dependent variable (reactions among transgender and GNC people) to the independent variable (the media depicted in-question.  To stratify this, recruitment shall be done via online forums specifically regarding transgender people.  Transgender subreddits would be particularly useful given that those communities are already compartmentalized (e.g. r/MtF, r/FtM, r/NonBinary, and r/TransLater).

Questions to be asked will mostly involve if/how they perceive media depictions of their blocking variables.  Answers will mostly be measured on a categorical scale with occasional interludes for further comment.  For example,

• “Have you seen any media depicting a transgender character of your exact gender identity and age range?”
  • yes or no
  • “If yes, how many?”
    • 1-30+
  • “If yes, how would you personally rate the accuracy of that character relative to your day-to-day life?”
    • 1 (not accurate)-10 (very accurate)
• “Do you believe that your exact gender identity and age range is underrepresented in TV and film?”
  • yes or no
• “If yes, what would you like to see represented more about your exact gender identity and age range?”
  • ________

Discussion

I believe that my methodology is as competent as possible in light of how subjective this analysis is.  The fact that it’s strictly online research could bias the results.  However, without a proper transgender census in America, there are few alternatives.  As far as that goes, the supposition with all respondents is that they’re technologically adept with finding films and TV shows which represent them.

Otherwise, the largest source of bias is that I can’t control what media is being watched and therefore considered.  Some respondents might’ve only watched 1-2 obscure programs, while others might’ve watched 10 mainstream productions.  Without a large enough sample, certain shows would be unnaturally weighted.

Given that these are all inherently subjective answers, quantifying them is not inherently a risk to validity.  Otherwise, the only significant threat to validity would be a matter of defining “traditional media”.  In the post-COVID age, this definition can be tricky to operationalize.  In this case, “traditional media” could be defined as “any narrative work which conventionally requires a payment to watch and/or was distributed by any of the major Hollywood studios.”

Otherwise, my biggest hope in the results of this survey would not only affirm the hypothesis; it would also create a throughline on how to create a well-rounded transgender character.  I certainly have my own thoughts on what constitutes good representation, so it’d be nice to aggregate the ideas of several dozen other transgender people.  With that information, Hollywood would have less of a reason to represent within the same narrow framework.  To that end, a few follow-up studies would only be natural to note improvements (or lack thereof).

Ultimately, this study is a practice both in what not to do, as well as where representation can improve.  Transgender characters made by transgender people for transgender people remains an unrealistic standard for mainstream cisgender audiences.  Therefore, as cisgender writers continue to create transgender characters, there’s tremendous value in understanding what transgender are like in real-life, as well as what people want to see.

Works cited

Billard, T.J., & Zhang, E. (2022). Toward a Transgender Critique of Media Representation. JCMS: Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, 194-199. doi:10.1353/cj.2022.0005.

Cavalcante, A. (2016). ” “I Did It All Online:” Transgender Identity and the Management of everyday Life.” Critical Studies in Media Communication, 109 – 122. https://doi.org/10.1080/15295036.2015.1129065

Fink, K., & Palmer, R. (2020). “We have to Stand out to blend in”: Ordinary Transgender People speak about being Subjects of News Stories. Journalism Studies, 1109–1126. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2019.1699851

Flores, A. R., Haider, M. D. P., Lewis, D. C., Miller, P. R., Tadlock, B. L., & Taylor, J. K. (2018). Challenged Expectations: Mere Exposure effects on Attitudes about Transgender People and Rights. Political Psychology, 197–216. https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12402

Hetzel, C. J., & Mann, K. (2021). The social psychological Dynamics of Transgender and Gender nonconforming Identity formation, negotiation, and affirmation. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 2566–2586. https://doi.org/10.1177/02654075211015308.

Ivan, L., & Cutler, S. (2021) Ageism and Technology: The Role of Internalized Stereotypes. University of Toronto Quarterly, 127–139. https://doi.org/10.3138/utq.90.2.05

Jacobs, L., & Meeusen, C. (2021). Coming Out of the Closet, Also on the News? A Longitudinal Content Analysis of Patterns in Visibility, Tone and Framing of LGBTs on Television News (1986-2017). Journal of Homosexuality, 2144–2168. https://doi.org/10.1080/00918369.2020.1733352

Loos, E., Ivan, L. (2018). Visual Ageism in the Media. In: Ayalon, L., Tesch-Römer, C. (eds) Contemporary Perspectives on Ageism. International Perspectives on Aging, vol 19. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73820-8_11.

Markina, V. M. (2021). The Representation of Others in the Media: The (Re) production of Stereotypes and Counter-Strategies for the Depiction of Otherness. Russian Social Science Review, 163–174. https://doi.org/10.1080/10611428.2021.1911538.

McCabe, P. C., & Anhalt, K. (2022). Changing the narrative in schools: Addressing systemic barriers and stereotypes that prevent gender and sexual diverse youth from thriving. Psychology in the Schools, 5–13. https://doi.org/10.1002/pits.22630

McLaren, J. T., Bryant, S., & Brown, B. (2021). “See me! Recognize me!” An Analysis of Transgender Media Representation. Communication Quarterly, 172–191. https://doi-org.ezproxy.fhsu.edu/10.1080/01463373.2021.1901759