Seems like I missed what has the trans community doing a slow burn right now.
They had a parody commercial for a product called Estro-Maxx which has the trans not too happy right now with the show thanks to
another medically inaccurate misrepresentation of trans lives.
They and some people watching it may have thought it was funny, but MAGNET .and many of our allies aren't laughing.
Ashley Love, a founder of MAGNET, explains, “ Instead of showing the characters as women who were treating their transsexual and/or intersex birth challenge by undergoing legitimate medical transition to have their mind in alignment with their body, they were blatantly mis-gendered and depicted as “men in dresses” and transvestites. It’s unbelievable that such a tele-hate-vision crime would air on NBC, a public network.”
I didn't find it funny either. As someone who comes from a people who were denigrated with blackface minstrel shows since the 1830's, and once again by a gay male doing a blackface character, the Estro Maxx skit not only fell flat with me, the inaccuracies in the fake ad also bothered me as well.
Don't waste your breath telling me the bullshyt 'lighten up', 'it's a joke' or 'you're too sensitive about this'. When you're a marginalized community that doesn't have much civil rights coverage and you're fighting tooth and nail for laws to protect your civil rights, much less keep them from being rolled back, media images matter.
And for those people who claim that no one pays attention to what's said on Saturday Night Live, ask Sarah Palin or the McCain campaign.
