It is important that consumers of media are conscious of the harmful and overwhelmingly violent portrayals of the lives and deaths of marginalized people that they see on screen, as these depictions are likely to impact the lives of those they are meant to represent. This project analyzes the ways in which American television and film have depicted violence against transgender people, paying close attention to the attitudes of cisgender characters towards the trans identity of the subject of violence. This project, distributed in the format of an online magazine, finds that media portrayals of transgender characters often objectify and victimize transgender people by allowing on-screen cisgender characters to scrutinize their appearance, their genitals, and their trans identities. These negative attitudes persist, before, during, and after the acts of violence against transgender characters, even continuing after the death of the character. This project argues that consumers must be more critical of on-screen depictions of gender-based violence, because although transgender people experience gender-based violence at alarming rates, the violence against them on screen is often depicted in a way that normalizes this real-life violence, implying that violence is the correct way to react when a person discloses that they are trans. These exceedingly negative attitudes towards transgender people on screen and the normalization of violence against them on a basis of their gender identity is not only harmful to transgender viewers, but to the general population, as these depictions encourage the dehumanization of transgender people and promote violence against them.

Katie would like to thank her faculty sponsor Gretchen Arnold for their support of this project.