The second season of the Amazon show “Transparent” will be released in December. Monday the show creator Jill Soloway said that Caitlyn Jenner has had a big impact on the show. "I think we felt like once Caitlyn came out, America kind of had its Trans 101 education,”.
The food writer Jack Monroe first came out as transgender, then clarified to ‘gender non-binary’. A term that I embrace myself. Monroe cited Ruth Hunt and Ruby Rose as influential.
The American public has had a whirlwind of a transgender education this past year and a half. Beginning modestly with ‘Transparent’, The Caitlyn Jenner, TV shows, movies and articles popping up everywhere.
Caitlyn introduced her female self to the world with a stunning Vanity Fair photo spread, looking fabulous. HBO introduced Ruby Rose to Americans in the very popular ‘Orange is the new black’
The message has been presented in it’s best possible light. The public has been presented with beauty and wealth. Caitlyn was already wealthy and became very attractive. Ruby is alluring, beautiful and exotic. Ruth Hunt wealthy, and not unattractive. But what if the public got a different view? Replace Caitlyn in Vanity Fair with Milton Berle in drag. Ruby Rose is suddenly Roseanne Barr with a flat-top and cigar. Or how about Dianne Sawyer interviewing a homeless transgender straight off the street? The results would be, I think, quite different.
Please don’t think I don’t appreciate the way things have happened, I do. It’s has been such a wonderful thing for me and all my gender non-conforming brethren. But the public can be a fickle beast. We need to be mindful of the delicate transgender public marketing in place. There are a growing number of voices crying out that these celebrities do not, in fact, represent the Trans community. They are right of course, but do we really want the public to know this yet?