Welcome to #TransTuesday! This is the second part of TILLY’S 2023 TRANS REP IN MEDIA! This week we’re discussing the first part of trans rep in television! Good, bad, and in between! Let’s see where things are at.
If you missed last week’s talk about TRANS REP IN MEDIA 2023 PART 1 (movies), you may want to start there.
Let’s dive in to TV and see if the rep will get any better. I’m only including things we saw an entire season of. Shows that are still only part way through their seasons are not included, because until the season’s over I obvs can’t know how many trans people appeared.
CAUTION: Once again, to discuss trans rep in these shows it necessitates talking about them, so there will be some spoilers!
Abbot Elementary s2 – 0
In one episode, a kid goes through his sales pitch for selling chocolate for a fundraiser and says, “hello sir or ma’am or otherwise identifying human.” Which is basically a reworded pronoun joke, and guess what I am also just so tired of?
Ashoka s1 – 0
Bad Batch s2 – 0
The Bear s1 – 0
The Bear s2 – 2*
Trans woman April Lichtman plays a culinary school student who has a couple background lines, but the character doesn’t have a name and isn’t mentioned as trans. How many of YOU knew she was there? I wasn’t even sure until I looked her up afterward.
Non-binary actor CG plays a chef, but the character’s gender is never mentioned.
However, there’s also a scene where Tina and Ebrahim misgender each other for fun when they meet up again after being mad at each other. I don’t really understand this or why it’s meant to be funny, but the characters think it is. Misgendering: not funny actually.
Blue Eye Samurai – 0*
So the show is about Mizu, a half-Japanese, half-white woman with blue eyes who’s hated for who she is, in a very xenophobic society. It’s very much about being physically different and being treated as a monster for it. And it’s a pretty stunning trans allegory.
Poster for Blue Eye Samurai on Netflix, showing Mizu holding a katana that is dripping blood
And her mission is to kill the four white men in all of Japan that might have fathered her, because she blames them for “making her a monster.” As part of hiding, she disguises herself as a man, which includes chest binding that you see in multiple episodes.
We learn that her mother forced her to pretend to be a boy “for her own safety,” since people were looking for a blue-eyed girl. She had to pretend to be a boy to escape the violence she’d experience as herself, which is basically what BOYMODING is.
This includes a scene of her cutting all Mizu’s hair off. We also see a flashback of her as a kid binding her chest when a bully said she looked “soft”. This is her mother and society forcing her to play the role of a boy and man, rather than be her true self.
Ringo, her apprentice and the show’s comic relief, at one point vows to not “tell anyone you’re a gir-” and Mizo stops him with her sword to his neck before he can finish saying “girl.” Mizu also always wears a scarf around her neck, as a trans woman might, to hide an Adam’s apple.
Her mission of hunting down the people who “made her a monster” reads a lot like a self-hating trans person, who hates who they are and wants to cut their transness out of their lives.
There’s a portion where she found happiness living as a woman, with a husband, but for story reasons that are immaterial here, they weren’t intimate for a very long time. But once they were, he realized something was different about her and says, “I want to see all of you.”
Now in the show this is about her remarkable prowess with a sword, but he also literally says to her, “Show me your blade.” Which, I mean, as euphemisms for a pre-op or no-op trans woman go… is pretty dang specific.
Because once she DOES show him her prowess with the blade, he becomes afraid. He turns on her. She shows her true self, a WOMAN, who is good with a sword, and she is instantly cast out and hated by those who claimed to love her.
There’s a scene in the finale where Mizu rises in front of flames, and there’s a picture of a phoenix on the wall behind the fire. And the entire concept of the phoenix is incredibly transy – one version of you dies so that another may rise from the ashes.
At the end of the finale, Mizu and Akemi, another woman on the show who has had her father and other men controlling her entire life, are both free of those men and have captured and controlled the men who tormented them.
And that very much reads, to me, like a trans woman overcoming the shell of the man she was forced to pretend to be, locking him down so that SHE was finally in control.
The show is really important in the ways it deals with racism and multi-racial people, and gender and sexism. But to me, the entire season story and Mizu herself ALSO read REALLY strongly as a transfeminine allegory, in a whole lot of different ways.
As far as I know there weren’t any trans people working on the show, but what’s the standard refrain I’ve said so many times? People may be trans and not know it yet, but ALSO it could just be coincidence because TRANS STORIES ARE HUMAN STORIES.
Fall of the House of Usher – 1*
Episode 2 features non-binary actor JayR Tinaco as Faraj. Faraj’s gender never comes up, and they meet a grisly fate (as do like 17627917 cis people). Just want you to understand their death wasn’t a case of burying your queers so much as being on a show where everyone dies.
Flash s9 – 1*
Nicole Maines’ Dreamer from Supergirl guested on an episode, but she’s not mentioned as trans. And so if you never watched Supergirl, when the character showed up here you’d have no idea she was a trans woman.
For All Mankind s4 – 0
Foundation s2 – 1
Nonbinary actor Leah Harvey plays Salvor Hardin, who is a cis woman. Actor rep, but not character rep.
Poster for Foundation, showing various shots of the main cast in the center, with spaceships and a planet in the sky behind them, with explosions and military conflict happening on the ground
There’s a group of people called Mentalics who all have various telepathic powers, and have banded together because they were treated as monsters and experienced violence in their communities.
And they placed beacons to call out to others like them, so more of them wouldn’t be afraid to come out. They read very very queer, but then it was revealed they were nefarious and evil and my heart fell, right?
Because this kind of thing happens to us all the time. But THEN in the finale you find out they were all being mind-controlled by one evil person and that really saved it for me, undid the harm I thought had been done.
And I think this just illustrates the importance of not judging a story on its representation, even allegorical representation, until you’ve seen the whole thing.
Heartstopper s1 – 1
This show got an honorable mention last year when we were only part way through the season, but now we get to talk about it in full.
Promo poster for Heartstopper season 2, showing the cast in Paris with the Eiffer Tower in the background, the two lead boys center and holding hands, and cartoon leaves blowing by. Text reads “show the world what love is made of”
Elle is a trans girl, played by trans actress Yasmin Finney. It’s mentioned by boys that she used to sit with them at an all boys school and now goes to a girls school. And that’s a pretty GREAT way to mention a character’s trans organically.
In one episode Elle mentions one of the teachers always deadnamed her and was a transphobe. BUT. The show also deals with homophobia experienced at the boy’s school so given that, I think it’s okay. It tonally fits right in with what the cis characters are going through.
Heartstopper s2 – 4!
Elle is a main character again, and they even reminded the audience she’s trans when ANOTHER trans girl (there can be TWO?!?!) tells her it would be so nice to go to this very queer art school they’re checking out.
Because then instead of being “the trans girl” they could just be themselves. That trans girl was played by trans actress Bel Priestley. The episode also features trans man Ash Self as Felix. They both appear again a few times throughout the season.
Also at an art show that Elle has a piece at, the art school’s principal is played by trans woman Rebecca Root. There’s also a teen cis boy, Isaac, who is coming to terms with being either asexual or aromantic (or both).
While neither of those is part of transness, it’s still part of the queer community and I think this is the only character in anything we watched this year that was either of those things.
Justified: City Primeval s1 – 0
The Last of Us s1 – 1*
Bella Ramsey plays Ellie. Bella is nonbinary but Ellie is a cis girl.
Leverage: Redemption s2 – 0
Loki s2 – 0
Sylvie was a great trans allegory in s1 but I didn’t get that vibe from her as much in s2. Doesn’t mean it wasn’t there, but nothing jumped out at me right away.
Mandolorian s3 – 0
Monster High s1 – 1
Frankie is one of the three lead characters and they are non-binary and introduce themselves with they/them pronouns. Caveat: Susan and I are writing for Monster High in season 2. That doesn’t make me biased in reporting on Frankie, but I wanted to be transparent.
Poster for Monster High, showing CGI animated teenage versions of famous monsters in a high school setting
Frankie is played by nonbinary actor Iris Menas, and they’re wonderful and I adore Frankie so, so much. They’re my favorite character, both to write and to watch.
Mrs. Davis s1 – 0
There’s one joke in the finale about the algorithm that runs everyone’s lives, which is explicitly woman-coded through the entire show, using her power to “swing her big dick around” that just seemed… weird and out of place.
See it’s funny because it’s a woman’s voice and a penis, but they’re together! Ha ha can you imagine? Y’know what, many people can.
My Adventures with Superman s1 – 0
In the episode with fifth dimensional imp Mxyzptlk (yes I can pronounce that, let me remind you I’m a huge Superman nerd), there is a league of Lois Lanes from across the multiverse. One is “Lewis Lane” and appears male but still wears earrings.
It’s not mentioned if Lewis is a butch cis woman, or a trans man or nonbinary, and I don’t think the character had any lines, so I don’t think I can count this one. It was still nice to see, though.
Never Have I Ever s4 – 2
Alexandra Billings returns as the school counselor, who’s still not mentioned as trans. But it’s at least a bigger role than the previous season she was in.
Promo poster for Never Have I ever, showing a very racially diverse cast of teenagers on a pink background. Text reads “still nerds, still virgins”
The character of Fabiola’s has a theyfriend named Addison who appears, and they/them pronouns are used to refer to them and they’re played by a nonbinary actor.
But then in the same episode someone calls the country of America a “she” and a teacher says it’s “nice to be reminded of America’s pronouns.” Another pronoun joke, how novel.
Oh, and in another episode a drunk student calls a cis woman “sir.” Misgendering: still not funny.
Only Murders in the Building s3 – 0
Going to cap it there for this week, but there’s a lot more to talk about! So please come back next week for the rest of the trans rep in tv discussion, as well as a look at movies and tv overall!
Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com