April 18, 2012 by b. binaohan
In seeing the debates over Kurt’s gender ID, I’m little amused ’cause I thought Kurt’s gender ID was a settled question… Like doesn’t he say once or twice, “I’m a guy.” Like. Out loud. On screen? Whatever.
Having a trans character could have been rife with fail but they pretty much nailed it. What is life like for TPoC? Misgendering, erasure, people not understanding/respecting, other people using it against you.
One of those rare moments where glee gets too real for the show.
But, yet, not real enough. Because we don’t get even a whiff of how incredibly dangerous it is for a girl like Unique on the show (although, I may be inclined to agree with RM who thinks that it isn’t necessarily clear that Wade/Unique has a binary gender — but I do think it is a reasonable assumption at this point because I sincerely doubt glee is ready to handle non-binary genders and, more importantly, I think leaving people to fill in the blanks themselves was a strategic decision to avoid a whole new level of controversy because people are really fucking serious about enforcing gender normativity).
What Unique does (coming out in a very, very public way) is super brave. Entirely unbelievably brave for a Black teen in ohio. Because the moment she steps out of that closet, this is what she has to look forward to:

Discrimination was pervasive for all respondents who took the National Transgender Discrimination Survey, yet the combination of anti-transgender bias and persistent, structural and individual racism was especially devastating for Black transgender people and other people of color.

• Black transgender people live in extreme poverty with 34% reporting a household income of less than $10,000/year. This is more than twice the rate for transgender people of all races (15%), four times the general Black population rate (9%), and over eight times the general US population rate (4%).
• Black transgender people are affected by HIV in devastating numbers. Over one-fifth of Black respondents were HIV-positive (20.23%) and an additional 10% reported that they did not know their status. This compares to rates of 2.64% for transgender respondents of all races, 2.4% for the general Black population, and 0.60% of the general US population.
• Nearly half (49%) of Black respondents reported having attempted suicide.
• Black transgender people who were out to their families found acceptance at a higher rate than the overall sample of transgender respondents.

Read the full report on Black correspondents.^[1]

Sure, she schools Kurt on the whole gender/trans thing… but I’m bored of the ignorance of white cis gay men, which Kurt is most definitely representing in this episode. And I don’t give a fuck that he is in high school. He has an iPhone. He has the internet. He could be educating himself.
But. Yeah. There was some definite realness on the show yesterday. But I sincerely wish that TPoC weren’t again being exploited so that white people can get their education.
(and I’m even less amused by the juxtaposition of the ‘man in a dress’ comment from last week with this week’s episode. If you don’t know the vile uses of that phrase, google it and read the hateful screeds written by evangelical christians and r*dfems)

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