Medical Curiosity and Tabloid Freakery: Contrasting Media Representations of Trans Children and Adults

Abstract

In 2014, the US edition of TIME magazine ran a cover story featuring Laverne Cox entitled ‘The Transgender Tipping Point’ that declared a new frontier for civil rights in North America. The article both refers to and demonstrates an increased attention towards trans people in mainstream media. Cox’s rise to fame, and the discussions emerging out of her media presence, is just one example of this increased attention. In order to explore this emergence, my thesis examines the differential treatment of trans children and adults in television and print media. It uses textual and visual analysis to examine news broadcasts, talk shows, television documentaries, magazines, and newspaper articles. My conceptual framework draws from trans and queer theory, feminist theory, critical disability scholarship, and sociological analyses of childhood. This thesis demonstrates that increased visibility does not necessarily equate to trans-positive or constructive forms of representation. This is pertinent to both sensationalised and out rightly transphobic representations of adults, and to what at first glance appear as more positive or sensitive portrayals of children. Through a comparative analysis of the media’s treatment of trans children and adults, the complex nature of such representations becomes clear.