squid-in-a-party-hat:

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Okay, I’m not gonna touch on the main plot, simply because they kinda captured what’s wrong with Trump and his type of politics in general. I’m gonna focus on how South Park has been depicting Transgender individuals.

Okay, I’d be the first person to admit that Caitlyn Jenner is not a perfect person. Her negative stance on gay individuals has been highlighted pretty well on this website, and the fact that she may not got prosecuted for manslaughter (probably because she’s famous) has been highlighted in the media. So, I’m all on board for a thoughtful critique of how some people try to make her out to be infallible.

What I cannot approve of is South Park’s track record for making Transgendered people looking more like people in drag or making them look straight up bizarre looking.

Past cases of this include:

And Most Recently

(I know Randy doesn’t technically count as transgendered but Randy was used pretty extensively as a comparison to the kid’s trans arc, so I’d say he fits the billing.)

The first two, I am willing to be lenient on. It wasn’t like Mr. Garrison was every an attractive individual, and the same pretty much goes for Randy. However, Caitlyn’s appearance seems to be altered simply to make her look unattractive and extremely unintelligent. I may have been able to let this go if Caitlyn had appeared as a character back on the show when the world knew her as Bruce and maintained a similar appearance, but the fact of the matter is, she didn’t. The Kardashians had appeared but never Jenner. You could argue that this simply South Park’s style of depicting Celebrities, but the fact of the matter is, they only do this to celebrities that they won’t to appear as unintelligent and attempt to devalue everything that the celebrity has to say, case in point.

In fact, the way that South Park has been depicting Transgendered individuals is the same way that they used to depict gay individuals. To be more specific, DMaB (Designated Male At Birth) characters whose entire characterization is based off of stereotypes, and usually only being utilized for humor. Examples of this being used for gay characters include Mr. Slave, Big Gay Al, Mr. Garrison, and the list goes on. I’d say this only really stopped around the episode, “Cartman Sucks”, which features a character named Bradley who is gay that befriends Butters.

Now, on the flip side, I would like to jump to the closest thing to a positive trans gender character in the series.

Now, when I first saw Wendy appear as Wendyl, I was really hoping that this would have been a permanent change to her character, rather than her just trying to aggravate Cartman. Honestly, Wendy is one of my favorite characters in the entirety of the show, so when I saw them utilizing her as a form of positive representation for Trans people, I honestly thought it was pretty cool.

Unfortunately, after the arc was over, they switched Wendyl back to Wendy and Stan questioning his gender was never really explored outside of a few throwaway lines.

Although, this did get me start thinking. Every time South Park has depicted a transwoman, including the time Cartman put a bow on his head, it’s always made to look like the equivalent of a male in drag. Yet, the one time they do depict some semblance of a Trans Male, it seems to be respectable. Like, she didn’t rub charcoal on her face to fake a beard or anything, and there’s nothing truly indicative that Wendy was born a girl. Honestly, if you removed the beret and told me it was a different character entirely, I would believe you.

I think this is less of just Transphobia in general, and more specifically Transmisogyny. Again, i’m not trying to call Matt or Trey transphobic, as this is pure speculation, but it honestly seems like at least a couple people on the creative team may be uncomfortable with the idea of trans women. Everything about the way they design their Transwoman Characters is indicative of them being disgusted with them in some regard.

I don’t know. Again, this is an arc of episodes so I really should be reserving judgement to the end, but I really would enjoy to have some intelligent conversation about this.

Again, if you didn’t read the last post, I am actually a fan of South Park, but I’m just finding some of the creative choices their going with right now as… questionable at the least. Just like this episode was trying to bring up, no one is infallible, even someone who you may view as inspiration. As far as I am concerned, Matt & Trey are not infallible either.