Laverne Cox will be starring as Frank-N-Furter in a new television remake of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. I’m not entirely sure what to make of this, but I have a great deal of faith in Laverne so I suspect it will be awesome. Anyway, how can you go wrong with a show like that?

The show has clearly been building up to a grand finale of Caitlyn and Kris facing off, and indeed has trailed this whenever they could. Thankfully, while it did take up a substantial part of the show, it was not all of it.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say this again. When it comes to family, there’s no point in arguing. Unless they have treated you really badly, people will always side with them rather than you. So do what they want. If that means no further contact, or putting up with them going on about what a selfish bastard you are, you just have to put up with it. Any attempt to do otherwise will just prove them right in most people’s eyes. Also, if you really do care about them, give them space to come to terms with what is going on. You have the benefit of finally being free, they don’t.

Anyway, the first half of the show was cringe-worthy. The second half was thought-provoking. Cait decided that she needed a re-naming ceremony, and so Jenny brought in Allyson Robinson, a trans woman who is also a Baptist Minister, to perform it. Candis managed to drag along Boy George to sing, and a great deal of sisterhood was on view.

One way of looking at this is that it was a cynical attempt to get Christian America onside, but Cait does seem sincere in her beliefs so despite my deep distrust of reality TV I’m happy to go along with it. There’s no reason why trans women shouldn’t be spiritual. We have, after all, been deeply involved in religion for millennia.

It was the fact of the re-naming ceremony that got to me. As Cait said, most trans women don’t have one. One of the reasons for that is that we mostly go through the process with little or no support, and often in secret. When I did my official name change I had no one nearby I could celebrate with. When I got my new birth certificate I was in the UK and Kevin was in California, and anyway I didn’t want to be public about it.

I think it would have been nice to have had some sort of celebration, but it would have been even better to have been able to go through the transition process with a bunch of friends. Even Caitlyn didn’t manage that. Perhaps, with all of this new visibility, it will happen more often.

Anyway, I was really happy to see Chandi play a major part in the ceremony, and to see Geena Rocero among the guests at the re-naming. Hopefully that will make trans women of color think that whatever benefits flow from Cait’s show will help them too.

I see from the social media gossip today that the show has been renewed for a second season, despite disappointing ratings. Apparently the audience for the final episode was 1.3 million. I’m guessing that a substantial proportion of that was trans people. There are probably more than 1.3 million of us in the USA. I know that’s cynical of me, but I don’t think most cis people care enough to want to listen to our stories.

From my point of view the highlight of this episode was where Cait and Candis visit a support group for trans kids in LA that is run by Chandi. That’s partly because Chandi is fast becoming my favorite part of the show. She’s so sensible and grounded, and so amazingly herself. But it was also the real bit of the show. It featured actual trans kids talking about the problems they have getting their ID changed, and the hassle that they get in the meantime. This is the sort of thing that someone with Cait’s level of privilege is able to avoid.

When Cait says that what she is trying to do with the show is make the world a better place for those kids, and for others who come after them, it makes the whole of the rest of it worthwhile.

The rest, in this episode, is mostly about Kris. The show’s producers, understandably, are determined to play up the family drama for all it is worth. There is no way that Cait, or indeed any trans person, can come out of such a situation looking good. Cis viewers, especially female cis viewers, are always going to end up sympathizing with the trans person’s wife. Mostly, I suspect, they’d be right to do so.

The show has tried to make the best of a bad job by bringing in Jenny Boylan’s wife, Deedie. It is good to be able to show that couples can stay together through transition (Jenny says that about a third do), and in the long term come to love and accept each other again. But even Deedie admits that during the transition process she was caught between the terror of the future with Jenny, and the terror of the future without her.

Caitlyn, of course, is too caught up in the desperate need to be herself, and the giddy excitement of having made it happen. I remember that all too well. But she too is worried about facing the rest of her life alone. Having had her family life define her for the past decade or so of living it in the public eye, she’s not prepared to face the black pit of abandonment that so many of us have walked into because there was nowhere else to go.

Of course when I got to the bottom of mine I found Kevin there waiting for me, and things got mostly better from then on. Other people are not so ridiculously lucky.

One of the big problems for trans activists is that we are not in control of the way we are presented in the media. We are, after all, a fairly small percentage of the population. In addition, until very recently we have been excluded from most forms of employment. So journalists, writers, directors, actors, all tend to be cis people. The result of this has often been inaccurate portrayals of trans folk in the media, and sometimes downright hostile ones.

Slowly things are changing. The Sense8 series benefited enormously from the involvement of Lana Wachowski and Jamie Clayton. Recent reality TV shows, and the sitcom on the BBC, have given trans people more prominence, and some say in how we are portrayed. But what if a group of trans people could make their own TV show, about people like them? That would be something special.

We are almost there. Her Story has completed principal photography and is crowdfunding $35,000 to fund post-production. They are 93% of their way to the target, and today is the final day of the campaign. The show involves Jen Richards and Angelica Ross, both of whom I have mentioned frequently here before. Most of the people involved in it are queer women of some sort. (There is one cis guy, because part of the story involves Angelica’s character struggling with the issue of disclosure.) I’ve backed it, obviously. I hope that some of you will be able to as well.

To learn lots more about the show check out the campaign page, or check out this interview on Autostraddle.

Update: They made it. Thank you everyone who backed the project.

Well that was a lot better. The latest episode of I Am Cait to be screened in the UK spent most of its time allowing trans people (almost all trans women) to talk about their problems, and let Caitlyn sit back, listen and learn.

The main focus of the episode was dating, and the very real dangers that trans women face trying to find love. A side issue is the fact that Caitlyn is deeply reluctant to discuss anything personal, and the implication that this is because she is primarily attracted to women and fears this will make people see her as less of a woman. Jenny Boylan is doing her best, but I’m not sure this is something Caitlyn can do in the public glare.

There were two key things that stood out to me from the show. The first is that Candis, despite being drop-dead gorgeous, incredibly sexy and a famous actress, can’t get a boyfriend. The other was where a bunch of trans women were having dinner together and they all agreed that there was no point in even trying to date cis men, they should just stick to trans men.

Obviously it isn’t the case that no trans woman can find love with a cis man. Janet Mock is an obvious counter-example. So am I. But dating is really hard, and incredibly dangerous. The best you can hope for is to be continually rejected and insulted; violence and even murder are always a risk. However, I find the idea that we should stick to only dating trans men (or trans women if you prefer) very troubling. Not because there aren’t some lovely trans guys out there, there most definitely are, but because it is a tacit admission that we are not women, we are only trans women.

As ever, the stars of the show are the support cast. Jenny Boylan and Canis Cayne were great as always, and I am becoming very fond of Chandi who is an amazing person.

My friend Lynn Gold recommended the I Am Jazz TV show as a better representation of trans life than I Am Cait. It turns out it was available on my Sky subscription, and in the On Demand section, so I have binged on the first five episodes. Here’s my initial impressions.

By far the best thing about the show is Jazz herself. She’s a delightful kid, and I’m sure viewers will warm to her. Because she’s only mid-teens, there’s far less trans theory stuff in the show than in Jenner’s. However, Jazz’s life is real in a way like Caitlyn’s never can be. Her family seem well off but are not stupidly rich. She goes to school. And most importantly she’s been living as Jazz for around 10 years. She’s totally comfortable with her identity, and so are her family. Whereas Caitlyn’s story is one of someone coming to terms with transition while a celebrity, Jazz’s story is one of an ordinary teenage girl with something slightly different about her that can at times make her life a misery.

In some ways the show is simply one about a middle class American couple raising four teenage kids. Having twin boys is sometimes just as challenging as having a trans daughter. It is about the very normal fears that any teenage girl will have when she’s about to enter high school. But for Jazz every kid in the class will know that she’s a soft target for bullying, and dating is going to be an absolute minefield. As she’s so normal in every other way, the tragedy of that is really brought home. Anyone who has ever been the “only X kid” in a class can probably relate to what she’s going through.

Of course the show, just like Cait’s, is manufactured. There are things that don’t ring true. For the first four episodes Jazz is presented as this normal teenage girl, but in episode 5 we discover that she’s co-written a kids’ book that has sold over 10,000 copies and has an international fan base. Overall, however, I really liked it, and I think it is probably doing a lot of good.

The more I watch of the Caitlyn Jenner reality show, the more I become convinced that focusing on people going through transition is a really bad thing. There were some good parts to the last two episodes — the introduction of Kate Bornstein, Chas Bono working with trans kids in Los Angeles, Candis giving a shout out to Holly Woodlawn, the crowds at New York Pride — but the was also a lot of what I had feared from the show: relationship drama. Episode 4 contained various confrontations with members of Jenner’s family; and episode 5 some awkward moments with a guy who used to be a close friend of Cait’s while she was still pretending to be male.

Very similar things can be found in just about every book, comic, film and TV program made about trans people. What the authors or scriptwriters want is drama. The easiest way to get drama is to focus in on the hardest part of a trans person’s life — the point at which they are just coming out and they, their friends and family, are all getting used to the new arrangements.

The other thing about focusing on transition is that it almost inevitably shows trans people as half-and-half. They are moving from the social role that they used to inhabit to a new one; they are waiting for hormones to work their magic. Even avowedly non-binary people often don’t look their best when they are just starting transition. For binary-focused trans people, they are pretty much guaranteed to look their worst.

I’m not just dumping on Caitlyn here. You see it everywhere. It was in the recent Transsexual Stories program on BBC Scotland. From the reactions I’m seeing to the trailer it is going to be in The Danish Girl, the new Eddie Redmayne film about Lili Elbe. Transition is what fascinates cis people — writers and audiences alike.

Caitlyn’s show is at least trying. It makes a point of featuring a large supporting cast of trans women who are long past transition: Jenny Boylan, Candis Cayne, Jen Richards and the amazing Chandi who I am becoming very fond of. All of these women give a glimpse of the sort of person that Caitlyn will become in a few years time. The Scottish show managed a bit of it, with the delightful Jan and the amazing transformation of Carla. However, successful trans women are not the focus of these shows, because there is no drama in their lives.

I have no in principle objection to cis people writing trans characters. In fact I’m pleased that so many of them are trying to do so. But I do wish that they would learn to see us as people, and not just as people going through transition. If you need drama, find it in some other way, not in the fact that we are trans.

The latest episode of the trans sisterhood reality show continues the road trip started in episode 2. I seem to be getting the habit of reviewing each show, so here goes.

The material from the meeting at the HRC offices in San Francisco was used again at the start of this episode, and was much better edited. Some of it is still a bit weird. I don’t understand why the camera has to spend so much time on Angelica Ross but not when she is speaking. I dearly love Chandi, and Blossom is clearly an inspiring person, but there seems to be some sort of unspoken subtext that it is OK for the white girls to be both classically beautiful and articulate, but not for the black girls.

Much of the show was devoted to Caitlyn taking her new friends on some adventures. There was rollerskating, dirt biking, and wine tasting. I loved the fact that they did something that was not stereotypically feminine.

Jenny Boylan continues to shine through as a saintly elder. Judging from Twitter, she’s getting a lot of great response from fans of the show. Jen Richards didn’t get so many opportunities to be smart this time, but she was brilliant on the subject of being able to tell if someone is trans.

There needs to be a party game in which you give a bunch of pictures of pretty cis women to a group of men and ask if they would have known that these women were trans. Then you have a good laugh at all of the random explanations they come up with to justify the fact that of course they would have known. And finally you watch their faces when you tell them that the women are actually all cis.

The dating discussion was much less prominent than it had been trailed to be, and was fairly coy. Probably that’s a good thing because we don’t want the audience focusing on genitalia. On the other hand, there are myths that need exploding. The TERFs still go around claiming that trans women can’t enjoy sex because we have “mutilated ourselves”. I wish someone had addressed that.

Mostly it wasn’t a very interesting episode, though it did make me very homesick for California. Next week, however, Cait gets to meet Kate Bornstein, which should be fascinating.

I was slightly more organized this weekend and got to see episode 2 of I Am Cait shortly after it was broadcast. Thoughts, I have them.

One of the things that comes over quite strongly in this episode is how innocent Caitlyn is about the whole trans scene, and the lives of other trans people. I guess in her position there was no possibility of mixing with other trans girls prior to transition, but that means she has got a lot of catching up to do. Still, I feel a little bit better to know that even Candis Cayne has trouble getting her hormone prescriptions. My own troubles don’t seem quite so bad now.

Something else that came through during the episode is Caitlyn’s right wing politics. The main plot of the show (and yes, reality TV does have plots) was that Jenny Boylan introduced Caitlyn to a bunch of other trans women, and they persuaded her to come up to San Francisco to meet others. Even in California, many trans people have fairly terrible lives. Cait, who has doubtless ingested a regular diet of Faux News, seemed to think it was more important to get them off benefits than to help them. Like I said, a lot to learn.

Jenny Boylan and Jen Richards seem to be doing a good job of education, and some of Jen’s expressions when Cait comes out with some horribly naive comment are a wonder to behold.

I now know why Angelica Ross was so upset. That was a truly vicious piece of editing that she was subjected to. I guess that because she is a) black and b) very pretty, the show’s editors decided to single her out for her involvement in sex work. Something needs to be done to stop that sort of thing happening in future episodes.

It was particularly annoying because, as Angelica noted on Twitter, it came shortly after a clip in which Jen said that it was important not to reduce trans women to their traumas. Yes, many of us have had terrible aspects to our lives. But those of us who have survived that have often gone on to do amazing things too. Angelica is one such person.

Jen, who has a particular facility with sound bites, came up with another interesting comment elsewhere in the show. She said that from a PR point of view, what the trans community needs after Caitlyn is for a male celebrity to go public with the fact that he is dating a trans girl and thinks she’s a wonderful woman. It’s not like it doesn’t happen, but of course if the tabloids find out the guy always dumps the girl and tries to pretend he never had anything to do with her (not looking at anyone in particular, Danny Cipriani).

Talking of which, if there are any guys out there who don’t think that trans girls can be pretty, tune in and get an eyeful of Candis, because that girl is smoking! Respect, sister! Loved the lace dress too.

Talking of relationships, Jen Richards and Angelica Ross are two of the main driving forces behind Her Story, a TV series about trans women and love. The material is all shot, but they need money for post-production. Go here and help.

Last night I finally got to watch episode 1 of I Am Cait, the Caitlyn Jenner reality show. I figure I should probably say a few things.

First up, Jenner’s trans identity seems very genuine. All of the talk about having struggled with it for years, and family hoping that she could be “cured”, is very familiar to many other trans people. It also seems to me that Jenner is very genuine in her desire to help other trans people, using her celebrity to do so. How effective she can be is another matter.

On the one hand, Jenner is very famous. She has a platform that no other (out) trans person can match. Because of that she can reach segments of the population that would otherwise ignore trans issues. She may even gain their sympathy when others would not.

On the other hand, it was clear watching the show that it is being made at the worst possible time for the message it wants to convey. Obviously both Jenner and the network want to cash in on the story while it is still hot. But transition is a difficult time of life, both for trans people and for their families.

Jenner has done what she can physically by getting a lot of treatment in advance of the announcement. This is important because trans people do grow into themselves over the years. While it shouldn’t be necessary for trans people to look gender-normative, for a show like this it helps a lot that Jenner has been able to put a lot of effort into her appearance. For most people it takes time for the hormones to work their magic.

What you can’t do in advance is get your family used to the change. It is often the case that those who know you best, and who are most closely emotionally connected to you, find it hardest to adapt to your transition. It is particularly difficult for Jenner’s family because they know that they are in the public spotlight, and will be judged on how they behave on camera. In all probability they will get used to Caitlyn, will get the pronouns right, and will come to accept her for who she is. But it will take time, and they haven’t been given that time. Consequently the public are going to see some very uncomfortable family moments, and assume that transition is much worse for a family than it often is.

The other major problem with the series is that, no matter how committed Jenner is to doing it right, she probably can’t control how the shows are edited, and she certainly can’t control how they are reported. In episode two Jenner is seen meeting a number of high profile trans rights activists. One of them is Angelica Ross. Yesterday Ross tweeted this:

I'm hate how I'm being framed in the media as a sex worker, the @IAmCait show & my narrative have been edited to inaccurately portray me.

— A N G E L I C A (@angelicaross) August 6, 2015

The media commentary that Ross is referring to is an LA Times review of the show. It is entirely true that Ross has done sex work to survive. She’s since built a career for herself and is now CEO of a non-profit organization, Trans Tech Social, which exists to help other trans people find work in IT. Calling Ross a “sex worker” is no more accurate than calling Roz Kaveney a “sex worker”. Roz, of course, is generally described as an author, a poet, a critic, and a political activist. She’s all of those things too. But Roz is white and has a degree from Oxford, while Angelica Ross is black. The media stereotype of black trans women is very hard to shake.

On balance I think Jenner will do good for the trans community. However, that doesn’t mean that she’ll be good for all of us, or be good all of the time. What she’s doing may not even be good for her. Working with the media is always a case of holding a snake by the tail. You never know when it is going to turn around and sink its poison fangs into you.