“The T Word”
The documentary I chose is called ‘The T Word’. It was produced as part of MTV's Look Different campaign, a multi-year initiative to identify and fight biases, whether they be based in gender, sexual and romantic orientation or race. The documentary follows the lives of a number of transgender people such as Kye, a Brooklyn man who was the first transgender Division I basketball player ever. College freshman Ari, an 18-year-old man taking his first steps into campus life. Zoey, a 12-year-old trying to figure out life at her new school in California after school administrators refused to acknowledge her as a girl. The hour-long documentary follows the lives of seven transgender youths in totality. They hail from New York, New Orleans …show more content…
Being transgender myself, I think that transgender issues are something that doesn’t get near enough representation in the media. This documentary did a very good job of showing a bunch of different experiences of trans people, showing that while we all may have things in common, every trans person’s experience is different. While gay and lesbian representation in the media as gotten better in recent years, representation of trans people is still something that has a long way to go. I am all too aware of this because I never actually even knew I was transgender myself until I was around 18. With there being so little representation in the media, I never even learned what being transgender meant until I started question my gender a few years ago and started to do research for myself. I think this is a massive problem. If I had been exposed to transgender people in the media at an earlier age, would I have realised that it applied to me earlier? Instead of suffering with not knowing who I was for years? I know many other people who were in the same position as me and would have loved to hear that they weren’t the only people who didn’t feeling like the gender they were assigned at …show more content…
This lack of representation means that the issue isn’t being normalized like it should be. If someone were to tell you that they were trans, you should really have a basic understanding of what that is. But the fact is that there is a huge lack of understanding as it’s something that’s still not talked about. Because it’s not talked about and many people are misinformed, it causes a harmful stigma towards transgender people. I’ve experienced this myself many times. Most people fear what they don’t understand so this massive lack of understanding causes real problems for the trans community. I think that if people were to just understand a little more and realize that we are people not any different from anyone else, that much of the stigma and discrimination issues would go away. It’s something I would love to see come to pass in my life time. As a person, I don’t want anything more than to be able to live comfortably as the person I am, just like anyone else wants. This documentary puts this forth throughout it. At the end of the day, transgender people just want to be allowed to be who they are in all facets of life. The exposure of trans issues and just a little understanding from the general public is enough to solve many of these issues and that’s what this documentary goes to
The documentary I chose is called ‘The T Word’. It was produced as part of MTV's Look Different campaign, a multi-year initiative to identify and fight biases, whether they be based in gender, sexual and romantic orientation or race. The documentary follows the lives of a number of transgender people such as Kye, a Brooklyn man who was the first transgender Division I basketball player ever. College freshman Ari, an 18-year-old man taking his first steps into campus life. Zoey, a 12-year-old trying to figure out life at her new school in California after school administrators refused to acknowledge her as a girl. The hour-long documentary follows the lives of seven transgender youths in totality. They hail from New York, New Orleans …show more content…
Being transgender myself, I think that transgender issues are something that doesn’t get near enough representation in the media. This documentary did a very good job of showing a bunch of different experiences of trans people, showing that while we all may have things in common, every trans person’s experience is different. While gay and lesbian representation in the media as gotten better in recent years, representation of trans people is still something that has a long way to go. I am all too aware of this because I never actually even knew I was transgender myself until I was around 18. With there being so little representation in the media, I never even learned what being transgender meant until I started question my gender a few years ago and started to do research for myself. I think this is a massive problem. If I had been exposed to transgender people in the media at an earlier age, would I have realised that it applied to me earlier? Instead of suffering with not knowing who I was for years? I know many other people who were in the same position as me and would have loved to hear that they weren’t the only people who didn’t feeling like the gender they were assigned at …show more content…
This lack of representation means that the issue isn’t being normalized like it should be. If someone were to tell you that they were trans, you should really have a basic understanding of what that is. But the fact is that there is a huge lack of understanding as it’s something that’s still not talked about. Because it’s not talked about and many people are misinformed, it causes a harmful stigma towards transgender people. I’ve experienced this myself many times. Most people fear what they don’t understand so this massive lack of understanding causes real problems for the trans community. I think that if people were to just understand a little more and realize that we are people not any different from anyone else, that much of the stigma and discrimination issues would go away. It’s something I would love to see come to pass in my life time. As a person, I don’t want anything more than to be able to live comfortably as the person I am, just like anyone else wants. This documentary puts this forth throughout it. At the end of the day, transgender people just want to be allowed to be who they are in all facets of life. The exposure of trans issues and just a little understanding from the general public is enough to solve many of these issues and that’s what this documentary goes to