Media portrayals of transgender people
Portrayals of transgender people in mass media reflect societal attitudes about transgender identity, and have varied and evolved with public perception and understanding. Media representation, culture industry, and social marginalization all hint at popular culture standards and the applicability and significance to mass culture, even though media depictions represent only a minuscule spectrum of the transgender group, which essentially conveys that those that are shown are the only interpretations and ideas society has of them. However, in 2014, the United States reached a "transgender tipping point", according to Time. At this time, the media visibility of transgender people reached a level higher than seen before. Since then, the number of transgender portrayals across TV platforms has stayed elevated. Research has found that viewing multiple transgender TV characters and stories improves viewers' attitudes toward transgender people and related policies.
Historically
Transgender identity was discussed in the mass media as long ago as the 1930s. Time magazine in 1936 devoted an article to what it called "hermaphrodites", treating the subject with sensitivity and not sensationalism. It described the call by Avery Brundage, who led the American team to the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, that a system be established to examine female athletes for "sex ambiguities"; two athletes changed sex after the Games.Christine Jorgensen was a transgender woman who received considerable attention in American mass media in the 1950s. Jorgensen was a former G.I. that went to Denmark to receive sex reassignment surgery. Her story appeared in publications including Time and Newsweek. Other representations of transgender women appeared in mainstream media in the 1950s and 1960s, such as Delisa Newton, Charlotte Frances McLeod, Tamara Rees, and Marta Olmos Ramiro, but Jorgensen received the most attention. Her story was sensationalized, but received positively. In comparison, news articles about Newton, McLeod, Rees, and Ramiro had negative implications.
Literature
In February 2016, John Hansen of The Guardian noted that for the past few years, "YA and middle grade books with trans main characters remain sorely lacking", and as such Hansen pointed to ten transgender authors who have trans characters in their novels. Even so, Dahlia Adler of Barnes & Noble noted that literature with transgender protagonists is quickly evolving with more "trans authors in the spotlight". Christina Orlando of Book Riot wrote that one of the biggest caps in the publishing industry is "transgender fiction about the trans experience", further stating that "trans stories always seem to be a second thought", pushed aside so that other "palatable narratives" can take its place. Additionally, Hannah Weiss of Insider wrote, in 2020, that readers can find a "find a vast variety of fantasy and sci-fi stories" which star non-binary and trans characters, most of which are written by trans people.Reviewers for The Guardian, Barnes & Noble, Insider, and Book Riot highlight some of the same books with transgender characters. These include Everett Maroon's The Unintentional Time Traveler, Pat Schmatz's Lizard Radio, Meredith Russo's If I Was Your Girl, April Daniels' Dreadnought, Anna-Marie McLemore's When the Moon Was Ours, C. B. Lee's Not Your Villain. Barnes & Noble further points to Matthew J. Metzger's Spy Stuff while Insider highlights Akwaeke Emezi's Pet, Rich Larson's Annex, Amy Rose Capetta's The Brilliant Death, and a collection of stories titled All Out: The No-Longer-Secret Stories of Queer Teens throughout the Ages which are edited by Saundra Mitchell. Book Riot and The Guardian listed 12 other books with transgender characters and themes.
Painting
The portrayal of transgender people in painting is difficult to identify because painting is a visual art in which the viewer is only able know what the eye can see, especially in earlier times due to the lack of openness and terminology in society. It is hard to determine a transgender individual in a painting because the genitals, the fundamental feature that doctors use to assign biological sex, are oftentimes not depicted. Before the 20th century, visual representations of cross-dressing were extremely rare and scarce information is known about individuals who broke gender norms in earlier eras; the LGBTQ movement had not happened and LGBTQ+ individuals were not as widely accepted in Western culture. Portrayals of non-conforming in visual art forms have been around forever, and these art forms are increasingly becoming more accepted and visible in society.According to David Getsy, an art history professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, "The historical record has so little in it around evidence of transgender lives – or what we would now call transgender lives – and the evidence we do have is couched in oppression and negativity". He also considers the one story narrative of history that erases evidence of oppressed identities and how the limited evidence that we do have of such works is just a piece of a greater archival records that have been lost.
The oil on canvas "Alonso Díaz de Guzmán" c. 1626, attributed to Juan van der Hamen could be considered one of the first "trans" portraits in the history of Baroque art. The painting was a depiction of Alonso Díaz de Guzmán, born as a girl with the name Catalina de Erauso. Erauso wrote an autobiography, telling the story of his lived experience as a young girl, dressed as a man, who ran away from his convent, ultimately how Erauso was given the nickname "Lieutenant Nun". Art collective Cabello/Carceller has attempted to accumulate different visual media with the goal of challenging the heteronormative representations in visual culture since 1992 and created a "new" portrait of Erauso. The exhibition, an analogue-digital portrait gallery, featuring the painting by Cabello/Carceller as well as the historical portraits dating back to 1625, was on view in Akuna Zentro in 2022.
Displayed in the Portland Art Museum and seen as one of the earliest paintings of gender fluidity painted sometime between 1740–1760, Giuseppe Bonito's "II Femminiello" is a medium oil on canvas measuring 77.1 by 63.2 centimeters. "Femminielli" was directly translated to "little female-men" to refer to cross-dressers in 18th century Italian society. The term was associated with the "third sex" and was accepted by society, even used with endearment toward these cross-dressers, mostly coming from poverty stricken neighborhoods that were seen to bring good luck, combining the strength of both males and females. The term "femminiello" is not to be directly compared to the term transgender but as a separate somewhat parallel term used in Italian culture. Known to work in the genre "pittora ridicula", Bonito's intentions of his depiction of the "femminiello" is unclear. According to Sotheby, "in these pictures, artists chose subjects from the lower classes and depicted them in mildly amusing ways or situation, and often with moralizing overtones".
Early portrayals of non-conforming in paintings not only appeared in Western paintings but also from all other places. Hosoda Eisui's "Wakashu with a Shoulder-Drum" is a notable piece that has only recently received recognition. "Wakashu" were recognized as their own gender, determined by sex, age, physical appearance, and the role they played in the sexual hierarchy that was present in the Edo Period. In art, they were portrayed as indeterminable gendered people, but in real life, they were seen as desirable to both men and women. The term described males who had not completed the "genpuku", the Japanese coming-of-age traditional ritual who were oftentimes identified by their hairstyle, "a slightly shaven crown flanked by side locks", which differed from a man who would have no crown, only featuring side locks. During the Edo period, gender was not binary in Japan, and gender dynamics were also influenced by age and appearance, not just sex. However, since the making of this painting and the 1700s, gender relationships have changed in Japan due to Western colonization during the late 19th century. At the Royal Ontario Museum, "Wakashu with a Shoulder-Drum" was displayed from May 27 to November 27, 2016 in "A Third Gender: Beautiful Youths in Japanese Edo-Period Prints and Paintings", the first exhibition in North America to highlight gender dynamics, featuring the Wakashu, in the Edo Period of Japan.
"Chevalier d'Eon" originally painted by French artist Jean-Laurent Mosnier and presented at the Royal Academy in 1791, was recreated by Thomas Stuart. The painting portrayed Chevalier d'Eon, born as Charles Geneviève Louis Auguste André Timothée d'Éon de Beaumont. Despite conservative gender norms in the 18th century, she was accepted as a woman into society, serving the King and playing a key role in negotiating peace that ended the Seven Years War. Not only was she accepted into society, a rare celebration for the LGBTQ+ community at the time, she was also praised and celebrated, featured in other paintings such as "The Fencing Match between Chevalier de Saint-George and the Chevalier d'Eon" by Alexandre-Auguste Robineaue c. 1787–1789.
Ria Brodell's 2016 piece "Captain Wright" c. 1834, gouache on paper at 11 by 17 inches is featured in the collection at the Davis Museum at Wellesley College. Mr. Wright and his wife lived at Kennington Lane with a respectable reputation, known for his jovial personality, love for rabbits, and frequent presence at the nearby pubs. On Sunday, December 14, 1834, an extraordinary discovery was published in the London newspaper, The Bell's New Weekly Messenger; Mr. Wright's body, examined after his death, had possessed woman genitalia, marking his biological sex as female. Mr. Wright was referred to as a "creature" in the article, and people speculated the motivation behind his identity. Ria Brodell created a series of paintings called "Butch Heroes", attempting to reveal names in our history "who were assigned female at birth but whose gender presentation was more masculine than feminine". Brodell highlights, "hough some could be identified today with the terms 'lesbian,' 'transgender,' 'nonbinary,' 'genderqueer,' etc., these myriad LGBTQIA terms were not available to them during their lifetimes. Since it is impossible to know exactly how each person would self-identify using today's terminology, I view this project as an ongoing effort to document a shared history within the LGBTQIA community".