Thursday, September 01, 2011

ABC Primetime Nightline-My (Extra) Ordinary Family

Like most of the trans community I watched the Primetime Nightline show entitled 'My (Extra) Ordinary Family: Inside The Transgender World' that focused on transkids.  I had mixed reviews leaning toward hating it after it concluded. .   

The first question I have to ask is what genius thought it was a good idea to have Charles Kane as part of this show?  He was not a child when he transitioned and his story is not only not relevant to the announced theme of it, he shouldn't have even been a part of this program.  .    

The second question I asked myself was why wasn't TYFA's Kim Pearson invited to discuss the issue of trans children since trans youth is the primary focus of her advocacy work?    It would have been a far more intelligent and caring discussion if she had been a part of it.

And piggybacking on that last question I asked, since they were talking about trans kids, why didn't they interview Nick Teich of Camp Aranu'Tiq, the summer camp for transkids  to talk about what they do?


I also didn't like the pushing of the person of color transgender escort meme in the segment focusing on Latina transteen Vanessa..  The "Why don't you go work at McDonald's?"  comment' aimed at her by Cynthia McFadden shows whoever put this segment together didn't do their research.  It was insensitive and classist in light of the transphobic drama, violence, discrimination and far too frequently repeated transphobic incidents that have happened to transpeople in their restaurants over the last several years.  

ABC has the video up for it, and here's the show for those of you who didn't see it last night.











No comments: