Welcome to Trans Tuesday! Over the course of 2024 I tracked every movie and tv show I watched as it’s time for TILLY’S 2024 TRANS REP IN MEDIA, part 1: MOVIES! Let’s talk the good, the bad, and the oh god not again!
Okay, this is going to be a three-part report, because there’s so much to talk about. In order to see how things are progressing with time, at the end of part 3 I’ll compare to my 2022 TRANS REP IN MEDIA and 2023 TRANS REP IN MEDIA reports, so you may want to familiarize yourself with those first.
Especially as this isn’t necessarily movies and television released in 2024 (though most of it was), but all the movies and tv from the last few years that I watched this year. Too much is released for me to see all of it right as it premieres, and the goal is to give you an idea of what one trans woman screenwriter (who watches A LOT) sees in terms of representation in a given year.
Also please realize this means I TAKE NOTES on EVERY movie and tv show I watch, all year. And I’ve done this every year for three years running. It’s a huge undertaking, but I think it’s an important one. Trans rep in our media has been getting better but is still in a dire state, and we need to know where it’s at if we want to see where and how to make it better.
I’m going to be reporting on every time I saw a trans/nonbinary person appear (both in terms of characters and actors, because the two don’t always match up), as well as any time there were jokes about us, or other things about us or related to us that appeared.
I want to note a lot of the jokes are implicit. Our society worms implicit transphobia into all of us, see the Trans Tuesday on IMPLICIT QUEERPHOBIA for more on how that works. So very often these jokes are implicitly transphobic, meaning that the people working on those shows may not have intended to target trans people, but when you examine the joke it all comes down to “trans people are different and isn’t that hilarious.”
That doesn’t mean the people working on that show are bad people, or bad at their jobs, or that the shows are bad (some shows with implicitly transphobic jokes are shows I LOVE). It just means the people working on it have some implicit biases they may not even be aware of and thus haven’t worked to change.
NONE of this report is intended as commentary on the quality of the movie or show mentioned. Art is all subjective, you (and even I) will have loved or disliked some of these, regardless of their trans representation. That’s FINE AND HOW IT WORKS.
This is just a report on how trans people are appearing and being talked about in the two most popular mass media formats of our society. Okay? We good? Good.
In this age of rampant transphobia, trans rep in our media is more important than ever. The good legit helps fight back against the hate we’re experiencing, the bad… sadly feeds right into it. So it’s really, really vital that our art gets trans issues right.
If you want to see what happens when it goes wrong, you can see the Trans Tuesdays on BAD REPRESENTATION (Lovecraft Country) and BAD REPRESENTATION (Emilia Pérez).
Also this year I had a few folks helping out to submit their own reports on things, which I’ll get into way at the end after discussing everything I personally watched.
Also also I might miss things! I do my best but I don’t have time to look up every cast and crew member of the mountains of stuff I watch. If them being trans or nonbinary isn’t called out in the story, I might miss it. But that’s part of the point I’m making, because if a trans woman screenwriter looking for that rep misses it, what kind of rep are you actually giving us? Is it even really representation if nobody knows it’s there? I’d argue no.
I’m also going to call out every time words that explicitly describe words for me men… “guys,” and “dude” being the two biggest offenders… as applying to people of all genders. It’s not transphobic, but it sure is sexist and it happens so much more that you probably realize.
Okay so let’s get into it! And of course, there will be spoilers. It’s the only way to talk about some of this stuff.
I only really talk about scripted media in these, because “unscripted” movies and tv shows are entirely different things (unscripted is in quotes because even documentaries and, yes, “reality” tv have writers).
But I want to give an honorable mention to the documentary WILL & HARPER on Netflix, where cishet white man comedian Will Ferrell goes on a road trip across the US with his white trans woman friend Harper Steele.
It’s by turns hilarious and heartfelt, horrible and heart wrenching. It’s something vitally needed to wake a lot of cis people up, even (or especially) those who want to call themselves allies, to what trans folks go through in this country. Highest possible recommendation.
But as this is a documentary, it won’t be counted toward the totals at the end as I’m chiefly examining our depiction in fiction.
I will also note when there are no trans people (or there’s no discussion of us or topics related to us), as that is so often the norm. And that’s fine, not everything is or should be about us. But it’s important to note just how rare it is that we do pop up.
Okay, onward we go.
Aquaman 2 – 0
Blue Beetle – 0
Canary Black – 0
This movie regularly uses gendered insults on its lady lead, including the C word, and calling her a bitch waaaay too many times.
At one point it has her say something to the effect of “you’re not supposed to call women that anymore, especially in the workplace”… and then just keeps calling her that for the rest of the movie. It’s like they wanted to note it just so they could go hee hee hee we’re not supposed to do this, but we’re gonna and since we know it’s bad it’s okay.
That’s not transphobic, but it is sexist as hell. It was written and directed by cis men and I’m already very tired. When will women get to make these movies more than hardly ever?
Damsel – 0
Emilia Pérez – 1
Emilia Pérez suuuure is a movie about a Mexican trans woman written and directed by a cis white French man. This one counts as rep (in both character and the actor that portrays her), but not all rep is good rep and this one sure isn’t. See the Trans Tuesday on BAD REPRESENTATION (Emilia Pérez) for all the info on the damage this movie did.
But can we just stop doing this PLEASE? Will you just let trans people make movies about trans people? We actually DO know ourselves better than cis white men do.
I’m also kinda mad because it’s gonna win awards because it’s ~important~ and ~so brave~ and it’s gonna actually make things worse for trans women. JUST HELP US TELL OUR STORIES.
Goodness.
The Fall Guy – 0
Fly Me to the Moon – 0
In a phone call between two men, one of whom works at NASA and is complaining about having to do things like interviews and allow astronauts to appear in advertisements, he’s told by a government official, “She made you the belle of the ball, so put on a tutu and do a little dance.” It’s a joke, and it’s meant to take him down a peg… because a perceived man associated with femininity is always bad, right? Ugh.
Furiosa – 0
One cis man uses the phrase “that’ll put our tits in the wringer,” which I guess is a joke because cis men generally do not have tits. This is one of those implicit jokes I mentioned, “ha ha wouldn’t it be funny for men to have boobs” and like, hey, some trans men do and this is laughing at their existence. Stop that.
For a while Furiosa impersonates a boy to hide her identity, but there’s no gender stuff going on and it’s definitely not played for laughs, so that was a nothingburger.
Ghostbusters Afterlife – 0
At one point someone says “Gozer isn’t a he or a she,” which means Gozer the Gozerian is nonbinary. Gozer was played by three people… all cis women! Gozer’s movements were dancer Emma Portner, their face was Olivia Wilde, and their voice was (the stone cold amazing) Shohreh Aghdashloo.
Now listen, there’s a debate to be had about whether the only nonbinary character in the entire movie being a demonic spirit that wants to destroy the world is a good thing (it isn’t), but if you’re going to make the character nonbinary why did you hire three CIS WOMEN to play them?!
There are nonbinary actors that would’ve killed for that role! This robs them of a part in a big movie, AND perpetuates the harmful idea that nonbinary people are just “women light”.
Someone also says that Gozer being nonbinary is “pretty woke for 3000 BC”. So that’s a joke about Gozer being nonbinary, meanwhile apparently zero nonbinary or trans people were involved with it. This is technically character rep, zero actor rep, and one joke.
Ghostbusters Frozen Empire – 0
Godzilla Minus One – 0
I Saw the TV Glow – 2*
Bridgette Lundy Paine is trans and plays a trans character, and it was written and directed by Jane Schoenbrun, who is trans. It’s chiefly about Owen, who is trans. But is played by cis man Justice Smith. You can see my seven-part series of Trans Tuesdays all about THE INTENTIONAL TRANS ALLEGORY OF I SAW THE TV GLOW. It’s magnificent and sacred to me, and some of the good representation we really need.
Inside Out 2 – 0
At one point, Riley calls her two best friends, who are girls, “guys.”
Jackpot – 1
Trans man Murray Hill (who comes up later in our talk on TV) has a small role. He’s only in two scenes, has only a handful of lines, and is never mentioned as trans. But honestly that’s probably for the best because his character runs a lottery where it’s legal for anyone to murder the winner within 24 hours of them winning to get their money. And it’d be real weird and say some bad stuff to lay the blame for that at the feet of trans people.
At one point, the lead cis woman character calls a room full of women doing yoga “guys.” It’s so pervasive.
Harry Potter gets referenced twice in the same discussion (ugh). Also there’s this really complicated moment that seems transphobic but I think it might not be?
So the lead cis woman character, who’s won the aforementioned lottery, gets a disguise to hide from all the people trying to kill her for her winnings. And she puts on a mask of an old man. And then says something to the effect of “let’s go pee standing up and make more money than our female counterparts.”
On the one hand, a woman making a joke about peeing standing up feels like the “women with penises are hilarious” implicit transphobic joke that you’re gonna see pop up way too often in this report, but as it’s immediately followed up with a joke about how women are underpaid due to sexism… I don’t know. I really can’t parse this one, so I’m not gonna count it as a joke at our expense. But it was weird.
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes – 0
Lisa Frankenstein – 0
At a couple points the Frankenstein monster, who is a man, wears women’s nightgowns and you’re not gonna believe this… it’s NOT played for laughs. There’s a lot going on here that makes it a pretty fabulous trans allegory. I’ll be doing a deep dive on it before too long, I think, especially as it’s one of the few trans masc allegories I’ve seen. But I’m not sure yet if it was intentional, and I don’t think there were any out trans people working on it or making it, so it doesn’t count in any categories.
Love Lies Bleeding – 0
The Marvels – 0
Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning part 1 – 0
Monkey Man – 1*
This entire movie is a trans allegory, and will also probably be getting a deep dive at some point. The character Alpha is important and a Hijra. That’s the term the movie uses, and I understand there’s some who believe the term to be derogatory and others who are reclaiming it. Even though some of them identify as trans women and some might not, I’m going to stick to calling them trans women when talking about this film so as to avoid offending someone with a term I do not have the full cultural context to be using.
But Alpha is played by cis man Vipin Sharma. Sharma said, after meeting the director, that “he saw me as somebody just completely the opposite of me. I am a male; he saw me as a female character, which was quite amazing actually, that he saw something about me that he thought I will be good to play this role.”
And yeah, that’s amazing for you man, but what about all the actual trans women who should have been playing that role? And even here, in a movie with great representation and a really strong trans allegory, it perpetuates the idea that trans women are really just men. C’mon! Argh.
The movie does feature a squad of trans women beating the crap out of a room full of bigoted goons, which is a big point in its favor.
I should also mention the movie actually wasn’t released in India, even though it has an all-Indian cast and is set there. Thanks to Pragnya for that info, and the cultural context around the term the movie uses.
Next Goal Wins – 1
Jaiyah is fa’afafine (something akin to trans women, in Samoa), played by Kaimana, who’s a trans woman. She’s forced to play on the men’s soccer team because she hasn’t had bottom surgery. She’s intentionally misgendered and deadnamed by their new cis white man coach until he learns to respect her and comes to see her as kinda like a daughter.
At first he says to her “you’re a woman,” when he’s surprised she’s on the men’s team. And she says “not yet” because she hasn’t had gender confirmation surgery yet (oof, talk about perpetuating more TRANSMEDICALISM). As this was based on a real story it could have gone into how horrible it was that that was probably required at the time and thus the way of thinking that was beat into every trans woman by society, but it doesn’t (probably because this story wasn’t told by trans people).
At one point she goes off her hormones because she thinks it will help the team, and has a scene where she breaks down because without them she doesn’t feel like herself anymore. And that’s great, but… they don’t do anything with it beyond that. And it’s also kind of used to teach the cishet white man about humanity and caring and opening his heart back up, rather than being about how it affects Jaiyah who never mentions it again.
It’s based on a real trans woman and her story, but written and directed by cis men.
This is rep in character, actor, and story, but it’s mixed representation at best.
Orion and the Dark – 0
The People’s Joker – 2*
Written and directed by trans woman Vera Drew, and also stars Kane Distler, who is also trans, and both play trans characters! There’s also a nonbinary character in the movie, and I believe there are other trans and nonbinary actors in the cast. But as this was an indie movie it was tough to find information on some of them, and I don’t want to speculate on people’s gender, so I’m gonna count the rep as two actors and characters.
The entire story is about being trans as told through a parody lens of the Batman mythos (with a helping of Superman mythos tossed in). It’s bananas, it’s kinda subversive, it’s funny, it’s wildly creative and original. And at several points kicked me right in the heart when talking about things trans people go through.
It tells its trans story right on the surface, but also I think it kind of brilliantly uses the world of stand up comedy as an only half-hidden allegory for gender, and uses that to say even more about what it’s like to be trans in this world.
Also, I’m not really a fan of the Joker as a character, but this movie had me all the way through. The People’s Joker is the only Joker for me, thank you.
It’s really great and unforgettable.
Red One – 0
There’s a “christmas witch” who possesses a man to speak through him, and she and her sons are all shapeshifters, and one of them impersonates two different women. Nothing trans is done with it, BUT zero jokes are made about it either, which feels like dodging a bullet. I’ll take it.
Robot Dreams – 0
The Substance – 0
Soooo I think you can definitely read some trans themes into this but I’m not even gonna try right now, because it would take me an awful long time to figure out and I’d have to watch it multiple more times and I don’t think I could handle that. Phew.
Transformers One – 0
So this is wild but the whole movie is about autonomy and people who have choice removed from them at birth without consent, and so it’s super trans conceptually. And I’ve always felt that Transformers: The Movie, the only other animated Transformers movie, from 1984, was also a huge trans allegory. And I guess maybe that just happens when TRANSFORM is literally in the title. But this one seemed even MORE intentionally trans to me. Still no actual rep that I’m aware of, though.
That wraps up the recently releases movies I saw in 2024. Come back next week as we begin our deep-dive into trans rep in tv!
Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com