Evidence from film, plays, etc of the historical background of casual accepable male violence against transwomen

[seethesuninwintertime]

I am trying to engage more effectively locally and to redirect attention to the real issues transwomen were trying to overcome pre GRA in the hope of highlighting the modern attacks on actual women for what they are i.e. misogny. I'm a great believer that if you gather data and put it on a timeline then it will confess its secrets and show its patterns.

Happy to look at Gender studies literature i.e. stuff written by people I don't agree with.

My tentative hypothesis is that transexuals were a legitimate target of male mockery and male violence until very recently. What I wonder if whether there was always misogyny behind the abuse of transexuals and whether that misogyny has now changed. I wonder if the abuse that was casually directed at transexuals has now been partially redirected at gender critical women but it's the same old thing. I wonder whether all that hatred needed somewhere to go once it became less acceptable to simply mock transsexuals. I dont' know.

Off the top of my head I can think of:
"She-man" in Sopranos series 2
Crocodile Dundee scene where he grabs the transexual's genitals and everyone laughs and mocks
"Rent" (which had a bizarre line about the transsexual being a better woman than other women).
Rocky Horror Show which was how most people born in the 1970s were introduced to transvestism/transexuality.

But someone must have done a phd in this - in fact loads of phds must have been done. so I don't need to reinvent the wheel

In terms of my bona fides, I am a regular but frequently name change.

Plenty I can think of that is against gay men in drag, Torch Song Trilogy for example. However I seriously disagree that any of those men would identify themselves as trans rather than gay.

Going back a bit, there was Corporal Klinger in MASH. There was some mockery of the cross dressing.

What I wonder if whether there was always misogyny behind the abuse of transexuals and whether that misogyny has now changed.

I think that the abuse of transexuals has its roots in homophobia rather than misogyny.

This is an interesting thread. I think that almost all of the mockery & hostility that I've seen is related to males "trapping" men sexually by pretending to be women.

I don't think I've ever seen a female attracted transwoman ("trans lesbian") in any popular culture thing, or any hostility towards them, although in reality they are the majority.

In the early part of Life of Brian Stan, a member of the People’s Front of Judea wants to change sex and asks everyone to call them Loretta.

Stan: I want to be a woman. From now on I want you all to call me Loretta.
Reg: What!?
Stan: It's my right as a man.
Judith: Why do you want to be Loretta, Stan?
Stan: I want to have babies.
Reg: You want to have babies?!?!?!
Stan: It's every man's right to have babies if he wants them.
Reg: But you can't have babies.
Stan: Don't you oppress me.
Reg: I'm not oppressing you, Stan -- you haven't got a womb. Where's the fetus going to gestate? You going to keep it in a box?
(Stan starts crying.)
Judith: Here! I've got an idea. Suppose you agree that he can't actually have babies, not having a womb, which is nobody's fault, not even the Romans', but that he can have the right to have babies.
Francis: Good idea, Judith. We shall fight the oppressors for your right to have babies, brother. Sister, sorry.
Reg: What's the point?
Francis: What?
Reg: What's the point of fighting for his right to have babies, when he can't have babies?
Francis: It is symbolic of our struggle against oppression.
Reg: It's symbolic of his struggle against reality.

"almost all of the mockery & hostility that I've seen is related to males "trapping" men sexually by pretending to be women."

yes this seems to create a visceral reaction in fictional men justifying anything up to murder.

"I don't think I've ever seen a female attracted transwoman ("trans lesbian") in any popular culture thing"
Isn't that weird? Maybe evidence is there (haven't looked at the youtube link yet).

Chandler’s trans father in Friends is one of the reasons the show gets criticised by modern audiences…

There is a trans character in The World’s Fastest Indian but she is treated with kindness and respect by Antony Hopkins as Burt Munro.

What are you looking for? Transphobia from the makers of the film/programme, or depictions of transphobia?
Long running tv programme Silent witness has had a few goes at trans issues. In Body 21 (2004) They had skeleton which they thought was a male which turned out to be a transwoman, it would be thought transphobic nowadays?
In 2019 the feminists were one category of suspected villains in the murder of a transwoman.

I think that the abuse of transexuals has its roots in homophobia rather than misogyny

Yes.

Men will laugh at drag etc because it's an act. They don't like men in real life doing things that they see as a threat to their manliness, so effeminate men are viewed as less, lower don't the food chain. Just not as low as women.

Also back then straight transvestites and cross dressers weren't under the same 'umbrella' as homosexual transexuals.

So I saw the likes of Kenny Everett and even Freddy Mercury doing hoovering in fishnets as taking the piss out of the former not the latter who would then be attacked because people thought their dysphoria was a performance or a fetish.

They had skeleton which they thought was a male which turned out to be a transwoman

So a male skeleton then

one cliche I have in my mind is the trope of the man believing he is about to have sex with a woman only to find at the last moment that it is a transwoman and therefore becoming violent in the belief that this is somehow necessary/justifiable to protect his own masculinity. I don't know where I got that cliche from but i think it does appear in the movies I watched from childhood onwards (70s,80s,90s).

The obvious example we're all forgetting is the episode of The IT Crowd where one of the characters forms a relationship with a woman, who later reveals that she's trans. The character then punches her, and the joke is that she punches him back harder. Now banned by Netflix.

Now banned by Netflix

Oh I remember that one

But i only watched it a few weeks ago….when was it banned?

There's the episode of Blackadder Goes Forth "Major Star" where the Lieutenant played by Hugh Laurie stars in a variety show as a singer, and General Melchett (Stephen Fry) falls in love with the mysterious "Georgina" and proposes marriage. Meanwhile a woman dressed as a man, Bob Parker, who is General Melchett's driver, is derided as looking ridiculous when she attempts to replace Georgina in the show. Whilst no abuse is directed at Georgina, the cast can only deal with General Melchett's passion by telling him that Georgina was killed having unknowingly waltzed out into no-man's-land whilst floating on a cloud of romantic bliss after her encounter with him.

I don't understand though it someone like Les Dawson in drag is offensive, then why are drag queens not offensive? It's the same thing isn't it? Men dressing as exaggerated versions of women, in order to 'entertain' and make money?

What about Mrs Brown's Boys? The main character is a woman but the actor is male. That's current!

Has anyone mentioned Mrs Doubtfire?

Another example is the Davina episode of Rab C Nesbitt. Its the sleazy men who come over badly but I doubt it would get made today.

Sinooh and the episode in the second series where Blackadder falls in love with “Bob” when he thinks Bob is a boy…the jokes are on Blackadder to start with as he is derided as gay.

The Les Dawson stuff is interesting - in some ways it sends up the stereotype of the “hard” northern matriarch who rules the family including keeping her husband under the thumb. The Two Ronnies had a running skit on this, a sort of mini series called “the worm that turned” where women ruled the roost and men were subservient.

reading these, there seem to be two groups of transexuals in the old pre-GRA stuff

1. people who are obviously pretending. generally that's ok. They are holding themselves up to be laughed at whilst pretending to be in on the joke? They may be pretending (Mrs Doubtfire) or they may be inwardly deceived but they are not deceiving men. Men might scorn but don't attack them.

1. people who - irrespective of whether they are pretending - might deceive a heterosexual male into having sex with them. Which is the Worst Thing You Can Do. And justifies the backcountry hero Crocodile Dundee grabbing someone's crotch and humiliating them to general applause. And violence.

Is the dividing line between those who are depicted as deserving of violence and those who aren't - is it the place where the alpha male might be displaced/lose his identity through being deceived into having sex with another man?

And if modern alpha-males now have to put on a veneer of being an "ally" to transwomen - where is all that fear and hatred going to go? Perhaps to the people who are saying "but this is just one way of being a man, this is a man, men should be free to be like this subject to certain protections for women?". ie older women? Because if transwomen are actually women, the alpha-male isn't being deceived or robbed of dominance is he? But if they are in fact one way of being a man - that's a problem for toxic men - and women who point this out must be scapegoated?

I don't know. I'm no expert. But I suspect the study of historic male violence patterns towards transwomen pre GRA would teach a lot about the backlash against gender critical women now.

I think your first category splits down a bit further as well actually.

In the Two Ronnies' sketches, or Mrs Brown's Boys, although the audience knows they're men, we're supposed to take them as women for the purposes of the sketch (they're not playing a character who is cross-dressing or trans).

In Mrs Doubtfire, or Some Like it Hot, or Victor/Victoria, we know that the character is cross-dressing (even if not all the people they encounter in the film do).

I think that woke, "liberal" men might shove that sort of revulsion or anger into other things. But I'm sure there are still lots of others who still loathe Group 2, and would be violent.

"Transphobia" (or perhaps homophobia, as it's more about not wanting to look gay?) is still around and probably always will be, along with hatred of women. It's just easy to eye roll because it's applied by TRAs to everything and anything they don't like.

@applesandpears33

Going back a bit, there was Corporal Klinger in MASH. There was some mockery of the cross dressing.

Many layered too.

As in he was the worst, he wore a dress to be sent home unfit for duty. A man wanting to be feminine was weird enough to get him sectioned.

Everyone else just saw Klinger in a dress...

... and balanced against all the female Drs and nurses in the MASH unit.

Lots more social commentary going in than a simple 'use of transwoman' to make a point.

And nobody beat him up because of it!

@Nemorth

What about Mrs Brown's Boys? The main character is a woman but the actor is male. That's current!

Yes that is on the same level as Les Dawson's sketches but the content of what they say may differ a lot. I can't really remember but I think Les Dawson was doing Mother-in-law jokes when a straight man and anti-husband (men) jokes when dressed as a woman but probably poking fun at both sexes. My Grandma definitely liked Les Dawson. Dick Emery used to do drag as well and it was family viewing I think on at about 6pm. Wow we were exposed to a lot of drag in the 1970s.

fair point blazeaway.