8:38am July 12, 2013

“

The laughter at transgender people’s expense didn’t end there, either. One month after Ace Ventura premiered I saw Naked Gun 33 1/3, the hit comedy in which Anna Nicole Smith’s character does a sexy silhouette striptease that ends up revealing a penis. Once again, her former suitors are appalled. Then there’s the famous Tone Loc frat anthem “Funky Cold Medina,” the second verse of which finds Loc talking about a girl he meets named Sheena. After the two flirt, Loc takes Sheena home, where it’s revealed that she’s transgender. The rapper, who you might remember also co-starred in Ace Ventura, throws Sheena out of his house, saying, “I don’t fool around with no Oscar Mayer wiener.” Even in supposedly queer-friendly movies like 1991’s Soapdish you’ll find characters disgusted by transgender people, like when Robert Downey Jr. gags after having a romantic interlude with a trans woman.

Repugnance is a common theme in the trans-people-as-jokes canon. But more prevalent is the element of deceit. Time and again in both comedic and dramatic films, transgender people are cast as deviant tricksters out to fool innocent victims into sleeping with them. This narrative plays upon two of America’s deepest fears: sexual vulnerability and humiliation. Not only is your sex partner “lying” about their gender, victims who “fall for it” are then forced to grapple with the embarrassment of being had, of being seen as gay. Men “tricked” into sleeping with another man are embarrassed by the threat to their masculinity. So much culture has taught us that transgender people aren’t just sexual aliens, they’re also predatory liars.

”

— Cord Jefferson, “How I Learned to Hate Transgender People”

Can I force interns to read articles until they stop making shitty jokes? More importantly, would it work?

Also, I miss Cord Jefferson writing for GOOD.

(via interalia)

I’ve been encountering lots of stupid transphobic jokes (stupid because all transphobic jokes are stupid) lately, so I thought I’d put this into the universe.

(via welladjustedqueerkids)

All of these characters are trans women, too.

(via dickensian-werewolf)

^exactly. very important. 

(via fauxmosexualtranstrender)

This kind of humor is all around me and it makes me ill.

(via sexgenderbody)

4,844 notes