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""Media has a history of telling the world a story that transgender people are always victims or villains, instead of true depictions that show the transgender community as citizens worthy of equality and respect. "(GLAAD, 2012)
Statistics on Trans Representation in the Media
40% of trans characters on TV were in victim roles (GLAAD, 2012)
21% of trans characters on TV were villains (GLAAD, 2012)
61% of the 102 episodes GLAAD studied used anti-trans slurs and language (GLAAD, 2012)
Only 12% of the shows examined were deemed “groundbreaking, fair and accurate” in their portrayals of trans people (GLAAD, 2012)
54% of the shows had “negative representations” of trans people (GLAAD, 2012)
The most common profession that trans characters had was sex work, which made up 20% of all characters examined (GLAAD, 2012)
From 2016-2019, there were 0 openly trans or non-binary characters in major motion pictures (GLAAD, 2020)
In 2019, there were 38 regular and recurring trans characters on TV; of these 12 were trans men, 21 were trans women, and 5 were non-binary people (CNN, 2019)
Of the 38 trans characters that appeared on TV in 2019, 31 were played by trans actors (CNN, 2019)
Pose and The L Word: Generation Q contained over 25% of all the trans characters from 2019 (CNN, 2019)
Figure 1: Attitudes towards watching television shows featuring a transgender lead cast member in the United States as of 2017 (YouGov, 2017)
Figure 2: Data showing the number of LGBT characters in some popular TV shows (Cook, 2018)
But what do these numbers really mean in the grand scheme of things? What are their implications? Read on to learn!
Works Cited
Cook, Carson. “A Content Analysis of LGBT Representation on Broadcast and Streaming Television.” University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, 2018.
“GLAAD’S 2020 Studio Responsibility Index: Highest Recorded Percentage of LGBTQ-Inclusive Films but Racial Diversity Drops and Zero Transgender Characters Appear.” GLAAD, 16 July 2020, www.glaad.org/releases/glaad’s-2020-studio-responsibility-index-highest-recorded-percentage-lgbtq-inclusive-films.
“Victims or Villains: Examining Ten Years of Transgender Images on Television.” GLAAD, 2012, www.glaad.org/publications/victims-or-villains-examining-ten-years-transgender-images-television.
YouGov. "Attitudes towards Watching Television Shows Featuring a Transgender Lead Cast Member in The United States as of August 2017." Statista, Statista Inc., 10 Aug 2017, https://www.statista.com/statistics/741638/-tv-shows-with-a-transgender-lead-cast-member/
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