Daily Archives: 22 September, 2010

Tell The Discovery Network that their transphobia is unacceptable

activism, bodies, gender, intersectionality, make the world a better place, othering, representations, signal boost

Late last week, PinkyIsTheBrain on tumblr began a campaign to bring attention to the new Investigation Discovery show “Who the Bleep Did I Marry?”, which equates someone being trans* with being a serial killer, a con artist, or a bank robber.

[Note: If you’re unfamiliar with Tumblr, it can be a bit hard to navigate. “Conversations” or comments or follow-up tend to be nested.]

Transcript:

Music plays in background: “Love and marriage, love and marriage”

The video opens on a scene of a wedding in an idyllic location surrounded by trees with an arbor of flowers. The camera zooms in on the bride, who turns and says:

(Marriage officiant in the background): Join this man and this woman in holy matrimony.

First Bride: Five years from now, I’ll find out that he’s a bank robber.

The camera cuts to a different couple, walking under a portico with their backs to the camera. The bride turns to the camera and says “Serial murderer.”

A zoom in on another couple, standing like they are being photographed with their families.
Third Bride (loud whisper): Russian spy!

Another couple, cutting a cake.
Fourth Bride: Cheater. With three other wives.

Another couple, surrounded by a crowd, the bride sitting on a chair while her husband kneels to pull off her garter.
Fifth Bride: And he’s a… a she.

(Gasps)

(Kissing noise.)

We cut back to the original couple, kissing at the altar.

The closing shot is of a fancy black car driving away, trailing ribbons, tin cans, and toilet paper. ‘Who the (bleep) did I marry’ is chalked on the back window.

Marriage Officiant (sounding disgusted): Who the bleed did you marry?

Voiceover: Who the bleep did I marry? All new [episodes?], only on Investigation Discovery.

This is not just a ridiculous comparison, it’s a pretty damned offensive one that equates being trans* with being a serial killer – and once again equates being trans* with lying, which is the same argument that murderers make with they murder trans* people.

FuckYeahFTM looked up the contact information for the Discovery Network, encouraging people to get in touch and point out how bloody offensive and shitty this is:

Here’s more info about the show:

Who The Bleep? [Opens with sound & Video]

The other episodes they have include: Married to An Embezzler, The Biggest Con, Married to a Spy, Married to A Bank Robber

And they are including marrying a transman, or in their words “He is actually a She” on that level, with criminals and murderers.

Discovery doesn’t actually make it easy to contact them with concerns (I had to use a search engine to find the Contact page because it wasn’t anywhere on the Who The Bleep? page), so here’s how I did it:

32. How can I contact you with programming comments or questions?
We welcome your e-mail comments and questions, which you can send to us by clicking here.

This is the most efficient way to contact us. Comments or questions directed to anyone else at Discovery Communications will be forwarded to Viewer Relations, which means it will take us longer to follow up.

You can also write to us at:

Discovery Communications
Viewer Relations
One Discovery Place
5th Floor
Silver Spring, MD 20910

There is actually a lot of “required information” before Discovery will let you contact them. They want your age, your name, what network you’re writing about (Investigation Discovery in this case), post code, Cable provider, program time, and “information needed” (along with several other pieces of non-required information) before you can fill in your comment. I believe it’s five steps before you can tell them what your concern is, the site is very slow (at least for me), and I have no idea how accessible it is. (It does not like my computer at all)

However, reaching out and making it clear to Discovery that this stuff is not okay, that being trans* is not a crime, is not lying, and is not the equivalent of being a “Russian Spy” or a “Bank Robber”, is important, and I hope as many of you as possible will contact them and make that clear.

This is what I wrote, if you are looking for a template:

Hello Discovery Network,

I am disgusted and appalled at your decision to equate being a trans man with being a criminal, a spy, or a murderer. A trans man is not “really a she”. He is a man who married a woman. The decision of your network to “out” someone like this is especially dangerous, as many trans people are murdered for allegedly “faking” or “lying” or otherwise “cheating” their sexual partners.

I hope you will reconsider your decision to air such an exploitive, dangerous, and abusive program.

Again, here is Discovery’s Contact Form. I emailed them last week and have so far received only a form letter, but if we overwhelm them with numbers, surely they have to pay attention, right?

Recommended Reading for the Wednesday of My Discontent

recommended reading

I’m clearing out my backlog of awesome posts that I meant to link oh-so-long ago, but really: This stuff is always timely, and always worth reading. Also, today is the Wednesday of our discontent because I’m sick and miserable.

Disability & Protests:

Laura Hershey: Last Word on the MDA Protests (At Least For This Year):

Yes, the Telethon was bad again this year, at least the bits I watched. One thing that continues to amaze me is how big a role Jerry Lewis’ big ego plays, all the way throughout the Telethon. Here’s one late-night quotation that I bothered to write down:

“This child in the [Boston] Hospital had muscular dystrophy, and I went to see him, and he smiled when I walked into the room, and he grabbed my hand, and he said, quote, ‘I’m glad I got muscular dystrophy, because that’s why I met you.’ I rest my case. If there are naysayers out there, and if they’re uncertain as to the validity of my soul, trust me – it was a moment in time that takes me through the program in 2001 all the way through 2010.”

John R. Polito: Charleston’s 20th MDA Telethon Protest

Forget for a moment the worthiness of the MDA’s cause. Instead, reflect on the consequences of pity based fund-raising that gets viewers to dig deeper and give more by making them feel superior and different, by using differing muscular abilities and muscle disease to foster sorrow, pity and tears.

Imagine painting life with muscular dystrophy as hopeless and dark unless the MDA can raise enough money to “find a cure.” Imagine the indignity of someone handing you money on Labor Day simply because your means of mobility is a wheelchair. As Harriet often asked, what is the cure for stigma?

Bad Cripple: New Ways To Create Social Change

Perhaps it is because I teach college students but I think the only way to make effective social and political change today is through online, multimedia, and creative civil disobedience. Here I am thinking along the lines as groups such as Improv Everywhere to far more obscure though no less interesting approaches taken by cripzthecomic. I suggest those unfamiliar with Improv Everywhere take a look at their “actions”. Some are very funny, others stupid, but the mass appeal cannot be denied. As for cripthecomic he recently posted about something he called “stair bombing”. This London Ontario based person went to a local school, spread about one dollars worth of caution tape across the entrance and posted a sign “Sorry, no access Stairs out of Order”. When I saw this I laughed myself silly! All I could think of was all the “No access elevator broken” signs I have come across in my life time. I also could not help but wonder did people circle the building looking for stairs that were not out of order. I cannot help but think this caused a stir–and made people think. And this, making people think and laugh, is exactly what disability rights has failed to do lately. If we can do this, make people think and protest in a way that appeals to young people who do not separate political change from humor we might be onto something big–we might be able to make disability rights cool.

Disability & Etiquette

PatientC: The SmartAss Guide to Wheelchair Etiquette

Do not touch the damn chair! I do not know what kind of swoon overcomes the temporarily able-bodied, but they seem to forget everything they have learned about behaving in public when they come in contact with a person in a wheelchair. Do not touch the chair. Is it normally okay to mess with other people’s things without asking? No? Well, that is settled then. It is not your prop, leaning spot, or fucking toy. It is a tool, and part of a person’s personal space.

Do not touch the wheelchair user! For pete’s sake, if you would not normally casually touch a person, you do not get the right to do so when they sit down. It is okay to shake hands, the user of the chair will let you know if they do not want to or not able to do so. And I swear, if you pat me on the head, you may pull back a stump.

Static Nonsense has two Bingo cards up about Plurality. (They have provided a description of the cards as well): Dear World: BINGO! Plurality Edition #1 and Dear World: BINGO! Plurality Edition #2.

This particular one is very important to me because it shows a lot of the arguments used to invalidate the existence and identity of plural systems. They’re arguments that I have been fighting against for a long time and have forced me out of areas I had been a part of for even longer. These are the “skeptic” positions, the ones taken when people do just enough research to further justify their own prejudices. And if they’re not doing that, they’re spouting pseudo-science (fun fun).

In The News

Canada: Universal Pharacare Touted as a way to save billions [The last time I checked the comments they were pretty bad.] “But, above all, it says Canada pays too much for drugs – between 16 and 40 per cent more than other industrialized countries – in a bid to attract pharmaceutical investment.”

US: Haunted House Exploits Real Horror “While the number of people confined to institutions has dramatically declined since then, a plan to turn Pennhurst into a Halloween attraction suggests the stigma of disability has not been erased.” (Also ‘Pennhurst Asylum’ project is an abomination)