In May 2014, Time Magazine published a cover story entitled ‘The Transgender Tipping Point’ which argued that the social movement around trans rights had gained so much momentum that it was poised to challenge our deeply held cultural beliefs. This idea was celebrated in much of the Western media with many journalists pointing out that transgender people were ‘everywhere’ in popular culture. While it is true that transgender people have gained greater visibility, and that many of these new representations are challenging the transphobic stereotypes of the past twenty years, there are still shortcomings in the way transgender people are coded – particularly in popular fiction texts. This lecture will review the critical responses to transgender politics and analyse the popular stereotypes of trans people before then discussing recent revisions in contemporary film and media texts in order to ask if there actually has been a transgender tipping point in popular cultural representation.
About the Guest Speaker: