![Sample our Social Sciences journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/110822/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Social-Sciences.jpg"})
Abstract
This article investigates the way that transgender women of color are represented in media. Using textual analysis and close reading, I delineate the ways in which Cox and Mock produce a definition of transnormativity through their appeal to respectability politics and how the perpetuation of such politics factor into the media’s focus on them at the exclusion of other transgender women of color whose narratives are significantly different. Further, I use porn star, entrepreneur, and musician TS Madison to illustrate how transgender women of color use social media to create space to present alternative representations and narratives of womanhood that do no rely on the compulsory appeal to transnormative respectability politics.
Notes
Rob Markman, “Hot 97 DJ Mister Cee Takes to Airwaves After Arrest: ‘I Am Not Gay,‘” MTV News, May 6, 2013, http://www.mtv.com/news/1706828/hot-97-mister-cee-arrest-male-prostitute-not-gay/ (accessed March 10, 2016).
Zach Baron, “The Secret Double Life of Hot 97 DJ Mister Cee,” GQ, January 21, 2014, http://www.gq.com/entertainment/music/201402/mister-cee-calvin-lebrun-hot-97-dj?currentPage=2.
Nancy Dillon, “Hot 97 DJ Mister Cee: I’m ‘Absolutely Not’ Gay,” New York Daily News, January 22, 2014, http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/gossip/hot-97-dj-mister-cee-absolutely-gay-article-1.1587347 (accessed November 24, 2014).
Marc Lamont Hill, “Remixing the Trans & Hip Hop Conversation,” HuffPost Live, September 12, 2013, http://live.huffingtonpost.com/r/segment/what-dj-mister-cees-scandal-means-for-hip-hop/5230e99778c90a121000039d (accessed March 10, 2016).
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Katy Steinmetz, “Laverne Cox Talks to TIME About the Transgender Movement,” Time, May 29, 2014, http://time.com/132769/transgender-orange-is-the-new-black-laverne-cox-interview/ (accessed November 24, 2014).
Laverne Cox, “Black, LGBT, American: Laverne Cox | Advocate.com,” July 15, 2013, http://www.advocate.com/print-issue/current-issue/2013/07/15/black-gay-american-laverne-cox (accessed March 10, 2016).
Joshua Gamson, Freaks Talk Back: Tabloid Talk Shows and Sexual Nonconformity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998).
Emily Skidmore, “Constructing the ‘Good Transsexual’: Christine Jorgensen, Whiteness, and Heteronormativity in the Mid-Twentieth-Century Press,” Feminist Studies 37, no. 2 (2011): 270–300.
William Simon and John Gagnon, “Sexual Scripts: Permanence and Change,” Archives of Sexual Behavior 15, no. 2 (1986): 97–120.
Diane Richardson, “Constructing Sexual Citizenship: Theorizing Sexual Rights,” Critical Social Policy 20, no. 1 (2000): 105–35.
Representation & the Media, Directed by Sut Jhally, Produced by Sut Jhally, Performed by Stuart Hall. Media Education Foundation, 1997, http://www.mediaed.org/assets/products/409/transcript_409.pdf (accessed November 24, 2014).
Stuart Hall, “Cultural Identity and Diaspora,” Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media 36 (1989): 222–37.
Ibid., 228.
Tierney Sneed, “What Transgender Looks Like in Pop Culture,” Us News & World Report, June 6, 2014, http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/06/06/laverne-cox-and-the-state-of-trans-representation-in-pop-culture (accessed November 24, 2014).
Representation & the Media, Directed by Sut Jhally, Produced by Sut Jhally, Performed by Stuart Hall. Media Education Foundation, 1997, http://www.mediaed.org/assets/products/409/transcript_409.pdf (accessed November 24, 2014). Italics in original.
Emily Skidmore, “Constructing the ‘Good Transsexual’: Christine Jorgensen, Whiteness, and Heteronormativity in the Mid-Twentieth-Century Press,” Feminist Studies 37, no. 2 (2011): 270–300.
Ibid., 274.
Ibid., 275.
Ibid., 275, 276, 277.
Ibid., 279, 280.
Ibid., 280.
Ibid., 282.
Ibid., 284.
I rely heavily on Skidmore in this section as it is the only article that I found which presents and substantively analyzes the representation of transwomen other than—and in addition to—Jorgensen during the time period.
Ibid.
Ibid., 291.
Ibid., 292.
Ibid., 292, 293.
Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880–1920 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993).
Ibid., 189–90.
Emily Skidmore, “Constructing the ‘Good Transsexual’: Christine Jorgensen, Whiteness, and Heteronormativity in the Mid-Twentieth-Century Press,” Feminist Studies 37, no. 2 (2011): 270–300.
Tina Vasquez, “Mock & Awe: Janet Mock on Truth-telling, Community Building, and Writing the Story She Had Been Waiting for Her Whole Life,” Bitch Media, February 4, 2014, https://bitchmedia.org/article/janet-mock-interview (accessed November 23, 2014).
Marc Lamont Hill, “Remixing the Trans & Hip Hop Conversation,” HuffPost Live, September 12, 2013, http://live.huffingtonpost.com/r/segment/what-dj-mister-cees-scandal-means-for-hip-hop/5230e99778c90a121000039d (accessed March 10, 2016).
Ibid.
Gayle Rubin, “Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality,” The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader (New York: Routledge, 1993).
Emma Rowley, “‘My Womanhood Is Valid’: Transgender Activist Janet Mock Calls for Change,” The Telegraph, November 20, 2012, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/9679052/My-womanhood-is-valid-transgender-activist-Janet-Mock-calls-for-change.html (accessed November 24, 2014).
Simone DeBeauvoir, The Second Sex/Simone De Beauvoir; Translated and Edited by H. M. Parshley, 1st American ed. (New York: Knopf, 1952).
Ibid.
Rich Juzwiak, “‘I’m Good with Myself’: A Conversation with Laverne Cox,” Gawker, July 29, 2013, http://gawker.com/im-good-with-myself-a-conversation-with-laverne-cox-954203487 (accessed March 10, 2016).
bell hooks, “bell hooks: Transgression (ft. Laverne Cox) A Public Dialogue Between Bell Hooks and Laverne Cox,” YouTube video, 1:36:08, Posted by “The New School,” October 13, 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oMmZIJijgY&feature=youtu.be (accessed November 21, 2014).
Ibid.
Charles Pulliam-Moore, “A Leading Trans Activist Destroys This Critique of ‘Lemonade’, In 6 Tweets,” Fusion, May 10, 2016, http://fusion.net/story/300560/janet-mock-bell-hooks-lemonade/ (accessed July 26, 2016).
Ibid.
William Simon and John Gagnon, “Sexual Scripts: Permanence and Change,” Archives of Sexual Behavior 15, no. 2 (1986): 97–120.
Adam Isaiah Green, “The Social Organization of Desire: The Sexual Fields Approach,” Sociological Theory 26, no. 1 (2008): 25–50.
Ibid.
William Simon and John Gagnon, “Sexual Scripts: Permanence and Change,” Archives of Sexual Behavior 15, no. 2 (1986): 97–120.
Dan Irving, “Normalized Transgressions: Legitimizing the Transsexual Body as Productive,” Radical History Review 2008, no. 100 (2008): 38–59.
Ibid., 42, 43.
Ibid.
TS Madison, “TS Madison Addressing Carmen Carrera,” Filmed [April 2014], YouTube video, 10:39, Posted [April 2014], https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlVi7FGymRE (accessed September 24, 2014).
Mireille Miller-Young, A Taste for Brown Sugar: Black Women in Pornography (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014).
Ibid.
J’aime M. Grant, Lisa A. Mottet, Justin R. Tanis, Jack Harrison-Quintana, Jody L. Herman, and Mara Keisling, Injustice at Every Turn: A Report of the National Transgender Discrimination Survey, Report (Washington, DC: National LGBTQ Task Force, 2011).
Abel, Cleis, “How Internet Star TS Madison Turned Hard Knocks Into Comedic Gold,” The Advocate, February 8, 2016, http://www.advocate.com/think-trans/2016/2/08/how-internet-star-ts-madison-turned-hard-knocks-comedic-gold (accessed June 10, 2016).
Janet Mock, “My Experiences as a Young Trans Woman Engaged in Survival Sex Work,” Janet Mock.com (blog), January 30, 2014, http://janetmock.com/2014/01/30/janet-mock-sex-work-experiences/ (accessed July 28, 2016).
So Popular with Janet Mock, “TS Madison on Her Brand New Memoir,” MSNBC video, 9:26, June 12, 2015, http://www.msnbc.com/so-popular/watch/ts-madison-on-her-brand-new-memoir-463151171924 (accessed January 4, 2016).
Marlon M. Bailey, Butch Queens Up in Pumps. Gender, Performance, and Ballroom Culture in Detroit (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 2013), 56.
Ibid., 58.
TS Madison, “TS Madison in Wait a Minute-Air Travel,” YouTube video, 3:33, Posted by “WOWPresents,” August 6, 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xsko32tpYxM (accessed November 25, 2014).
TS Madison, “Big Dick Bitch Says.... ‘22 inches or Better,‘” YouTube video, 7:30, Posted by “tsmadisonatl,” November 18, 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLwZbGIvHj8&list=UUPndEc6UVrKV9cDSAujMWlA (accessed November 24, 2014).
Ibid.
Ibid.
Osman Ahmed Chai Jindasurat, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and HIV-Affected Hate Violence in 2013, Report (New York: National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, 2014).
Carolyn Marshall, “Two Guilty of Murder in Death of a Transgender Teenager,” The New York Times, September 13, 2005, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/13/us/two-guilty-of-murder-in-death-of-a-transgender-teenager.html?_r=0 (accessed July 26, 2016).
Christopher Shelley, Transpeople: Repudiation, Trauma, Healing (Toronto; Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 2008).
Gilbert H. Herdt, Moral Panics, Sex Panics: Fear and the Fight Over Sexual Rights (New York: New York UP, 2009), 10.
Veronica Wells, “Trans Woman Murdered Because Friend Was Embarrassed By Her,” MadameNoire RSS, October 22, 2015, http://madamenoire.com/594233/trans-woman-murdered-because-friend-was-reportedly-too-embarrassed-to-be-associated-with-her/ (accessed March 10, 2016).
Ibid.
”Transgender Woman’s Family Believes Murder Was Hate Crime,” WUSA, October 17, 2015, http://www.wusa9.com/news/48875404 (accessed March 10, 2016).
Vinny Vella, “Inside a World of Danger: Life as a Transgender Sex Worker,” Philadelphia Daily News, October 23, 2015, http://articles.philly.com/2015-10-23/news/67679997_1_transgender-woman-transgender-women-transgender-prostitutes (accessed November 25, 2015).
Ibid.
Dominic Holden, “Why Are So Many Black Transgender Women Getting Killed In Detroit?,” BuzzFeed, November 19, 2015, http://www.buzzfeed.com/dominicholden/why-are-black-transgender-women-getting-killed-in-detroit#.su602ODMBG (accessed March 10, 2016).
Cleis Abel, “Meagan Taylor Sues Iowa Hotel That Profiled Her as Trans Sex Worker,” The Advocate, November 12, 2015, http://www.advocate.com/transgender/2015/11/12/black-trans-woman-meagan-taylor-sues-iowa-hotel-profiled-her-sex-worker (accessed November 25, 2015).
J’aime M. Grant, Lisa A. Mottet, Justin R. Tanis, Jack Harrison-Quintana, Jody L. Herman, and Mara Keisling. Injustice at Every Turn: A Report of the National Transgender Discrimination Survey, Report (Washington, DC: National LGBTQ Task Force, 2011).
Ibid.
William Simon and John Gagnon, “Sexual Scripts: Permanence and Change,” Archives of Sexual Behavior 15, no. 2 (1986): 97–120.
Adam Isaiah Green, “The Social Organization of Desire: The Sexual Fields Approach,” Sociological Theory 26, no.1 (2008): 25–50.
Ibid.
Adam Isaiah Green, “The Social Organization of Desire: The Sexual Fields Approach,” Sociological Theory 26, no. 1 (2008): 25–50.
Mireille Miller-Young, A Taste for Brown Sugar: Black Women in Pornography (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014).
Ibid.
Adam Isaiah Green, “The Social Organization of Desire: The Sexual Fields Approach,” Sociological Theory 26, no. 1 (2008): 25–50.
Diane Richardson, “Constructing Sexual Citizenship: Theorizing Sexual Rights,” Critical Social Policy 20, no. 1 (2000): 105–35.
Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: The Will to Knowledge, vol. 1 (Camberwell, VIC: Penguin, 2008).
Stuart Hall, “Cultural Identity and Diaspora,” Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media 36 (1989): 222–37.
Vinny Vella, “Inside a World of Danger: Life as a Transgender Sex Worker,” Philadelphia Daily News, October 23, 2015, http://articles.philly.com/2015-10-23/news/67679997_1_transgender-woman-transgender-women-transgender-prostitutes (accessed November 25, 2015).
The Combahee River Collective, “A Black Feminist Statement,” in The Second Wave: A Reader in Feminist Theory, edited by Linda Nicholson (New York: Routledge, 1997).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Julian Kevon Glover
Julian Kevon Glover is an academic, activist, and performer who holds an M.P.A. from Indiana University and a bachelor’s degree in Speech Communication from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. at Northwestern University in the Department of African American Studies. Glover has also worked for several national progressive organizations including the National LGBTQ Task Force, the National Center for Transgender Equality, and the Center for American Progress in Washington DC.