Mainstream entertainment - Is this regularity capture, or am I paranoid?

[GirlDownUnder]

I’m not sure if I’m being hyper aware or paranoid, but in two recent programs I’ve watched on Netflix (in Oz) I’ve noticed a casual acceptance (as in no questions asked) of transgenderism.

If this was about LGB I’d say yay, it should be in our programs as unremarked, but it’s about the T, and in the programs I saw it impacts on other people’s realities.

If I need to wind my neck in, please tell me.

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina 2019. Series 2, starts at episode 1.
Suzie to Theo
Dresses initially (as I probably do mostly) in jeans, boots, T-shirt’s
Hates being feminine
Decides she’s a he
Tells friends (totally ok, no discussion, pronouns and name changed no slip ups)
Tells dad (totally ok, no discussion, just an offer of a hair cut)
No mom anyway
Cheats (well s/he doesn’t but Sabrina uses magic) to get her/him on the boys basketball team
Uses the boys changing rooms (to ridicule at first but helps win some games, and then accepted as one of the boys)

Ok I’ve just googled Suzie to Theo
www.popbuzz.com/tv-film/chilling-adventures-of-sabrina/theo-susie-trans-lachlan-watson-season-2/
And I promise I wrote the above before I googled!
From the link
In a scene with Ros, Harvey says: "We just call her Theo now?" Ros then replies: "No, we call him Theo. Theo might look like a girl but he's not, he's a boy and that's how he's always been. He's just ready now to live as himself, as Theo". Harvey then answers: "Ok, Susie no more. Now Theo." This is important because Harvey isn't asking Theo insensitive questions. He's doing the work himself.

Dynasty 2018 Season 2, episodes 2 / 3
Steven and Sam Jones (Sammy Jo) as a gay couple, decide they want a baby
Turkey baster discussed with the butlers daughter and money agreed
Butler disagrees and says it’s all very wrong
Impassioned youths explain that it’s all lovely, my body, my womb, and mom to be won’t drink for 9 months (obvs biggest issue )
Stuff happens and butler then agrees actually you’re right, life’s too short
In the mean time one of the prospective dads talks about ‘if we have a girl baby, or a boy baby, or whatever they decide their ID is later, it’s all lovely’.
Yes, ‘rewound’ that bit.

Please do not judge my TV habits - I like the wind down from life, but the fekkers followed me, and here I am. Again.

AIBU to a) notice b) question?

I found it very sad when Susie had fought and fought to be seen as equal to the boys, and as soon as she got what she wanted she became Theo. The whole big deal of a girl on the boys basketball team becomes much less of a thing if she was actually a boy all along. Before she was a fabulous gender non-conforming girl, although I wasn't happy that she cheated her way onto the basketball team. The first season really focused on how hard it is to be gender non-conforming in school, the importance of friendship etc which was a much more positive message imo.

However in a later episode when SPOILERS SPOILERS

mandrake Sabrina offers Theo the change to have a male body they refuse. And in a tarot reading of a possible future when they do get the body they wanted due to magic, they end up with a cursed arm and have to have it chopped off with an axe. I found that counterbalanced some of the gender bollocks that permeated the second series. I didn't think the dad was totally OK with it either, he looked pretty shellshocked and quite upset. I felt quite sorry for him and I don't think the Theo character came out of it as well as expected.

I quite enjoyed the underlying message of the patriarchy personified in the headmaster of the magical academy and then Lucifer, being defeated by the witches (and Lilith) working together. The male characters take quite peripheral roles until the very last episode.

Have you seen Wynona Earp? Thats an excellent female focused supernatural series with actual lesbians in it.

On Netflix there are trans characters in Secret City (an Oz based thriller series), The Mist and The OA too.

I like a decent medical drama so started watching New Amsterdam on Prime. Episode 9 is mostly taken up by a stroppy teen girl demanding 'top surgery'. There are a number of 'oh trans people are all so hard done by' speeches throughout the episode.

Moonsick you’re right there was other more subtle, nuanced themes at play. And to be fair Susies dad did initially say ‘you’re my best girl’ before offering the hair cut.
He (dad) did look pained, and we could have inferred lots of meanings - he’s old and not with it, he’s lost his wife and needs help with his daughter, he’s loosing a daughter, gaining a son.
I def preferred the story line when Susie was GNC, and the chances to ‘change body’ grated because ‘I’ve always been a real man’ to ‘this is a mans body’ is biologically wrong but that wasn’t touched. It was the ‘I am a man, in this body’.
I think if they’d done it arse over, and had a m2f, in female change rooms, and female sport, we would have seen more push back.

I really love the arse handing the headmaster of Lucifer get. Tis glorious ! and Wynona Earp rocks!

That New Amsterdam episode also had the redeeming feature of the trans child being told no surgery, and their reaction to having to let down their online followers.

This week's Greys Anatomy had a non-binary patient and Webber being confused about that. Before that it's been very very woke with both ground breaking neo-vagina creation, and a full time FTM resident.

Always did you watch Sense8? I loved it, and v strong trans character but not so in your face, here’s my new name and pronouns.

I’ll have to recheck The Mist as I missed the trans character.
In Secret City and the OA again, it’s subtle. Maybe my issue is clunking bits of script that bash me over the head with ‘there, there, nothing to see, it’s just a hair cut’ narrative. Especially when the programmes are for YA.

Miss Snippy I’ll go find New Amsterdam but it’s getting to the point where I just get grumpy at the TV and stop listening. The message is becoming overwhelming.

Garth I’m glad I stopped watching Greys Anatomy in that case!

Is this all just a drip, dip, drip?

Or maybe I’m just old now?

You on Netflix has a transwoman playing a woman. I Googled as soon as I saw the character as it's really obvious but the character is definitely female. One of the main characters friends is played by an actress who has quite a strong brow and jawline and I did wonder if this was deliberate and you're meant to see her to make the transwoman less obvious.

GarthFunkel said " That New Amsterdam episode also had the redeeming feature of the trans child being told no surgery, and their reaction to having to let down their online followers."

That was quite an important theme I thought, the pressure of social media, and quite well handled. Didn't stop my eyes nearly rolling out of my head at the more 'woke' parts.

I think if we compare and contrast with the presence of trans characters on TV and on the BBC 'news' website from 10 years ago?

It certainly looks like regulatory capture in the entertainment and news industries to me.

BBC Radio 4 have embraced 'Non-Binary' ideology.
Its been noticeable over the last few months.

Pose on the BBC about black trans women in late 1980s New York is a piece of trans propaganda featuring beautiful young black trans women rather than the white middle aged AGP MTFs who would push everybody up against their cognitive dissonance. There was a weird gushing review about it in the Guardian which seemed to reflect the cultish thinking which surrounds all this:

www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/mar/21/pose-review-ryan-murphy-show-voguing-underground-ballroom-new-york

Pose based on the 90s documentary Paris is Burning, which, in contrast, is worth a look:

vimeo.com/199274267

In Secret City it’s the lead character’s husband who’s trans. I don’t think an agenda is being pushed other than having a trans character being trendy. Anna Torv‘s character does look a little hurt by her husbands transition.

I didn’t get further than the first episode of The Mist because it felt like being hit over the head with a woke-stick. I think the character might have been non-binary rather than trans.

In Supergirl there’s a race of aliens with female seers, one in every family.

They make a big deal out of it being only the females. So of course when the transwoman alien is introduced, she ends up being the one in her family with the power, to the detriment of her only sister.

It really has given me the rage.

Supergirl has a mtf character. Glamorous young superhero called Dreamer. There was an episode where they discussed how they were born male - their ‘origin’ story. Their superhero power was meant to pass to the female line (ie their sister) but it had passed to them instead (obviously superior female ) and they would pass it on to their children (not sure how that was going to work!).
The character is played by a mtf trans person who must have transitioned pretty young as they are only early twenties ish.

Ha cross posted YippeKayak! It’s really spoilt Supergirl for me.

Oh god I’d missed the bit about passing it on to their children. It’s perpetuating a bizarre delusion.

Same. I haven’t bothered with the latest few episodes.

So the superhero isn’t just a woman but a superior form of woman?

The TW in You was an awful actor, and not just at being a woman.

I gave up on Supergirl this year but I was teetering on the edge anyway.

Season Two have is lots of lectures about not being prejudiced against aliens despite the first season presenting us with alien criminals week after week. If every alien you come across wants to destroy you it isn’t prejudice to be afraid of them.

Then there was all the stuff with J’onn J’onzz telling us how difficult it is to grow up Black in America when he isn’t really Black anyway; he’d taken the identity of a Black man he’d thrown off a cliff!

At one point he said he wouldn’t change how he looked because he shouldn’t have to give into prejudice - despite the fact that in reality he’s a giant green Martian.

There’s a massive difference between what the characters say and what the show actually portrays.

I much prefer DC’s Legends of Tomorrow which has a strong female lead and doesn’t feel forced.

And it’s genuinely funny.