Being Thoughtless

There has been some recent jokes or skits about transgender people. It started with Saturday Night Live (SNL) and the skit portraying transgender women as men in dresses. It was clearly and obviously beyond even SNL's standards of taste, which isn't very high anyway (I stopped watching it years ago after watching it from the beginning).

They didn't just ridicule transgender people, they trashed them, needlessly. They should have apologized but I doubt any apology would change anything. They couldn't put all of their stupidity back in the tube and forget they even thought about the skit let alone write it and then perform it.

It's one thing to joke about a class or group of people, but the skit wasn't a joke. It was very bonehead of them from the idea. Transgender people have to struggle throughout their life to live as they know they are in the world today. It's full of all sorts of anger and hate from people, they don't need it from SNL or any TV show.

But SNL isn't the first to ridicule transgender people. It's been done for decades and almost always badly. Transgender people are just as normal and ordinary as everyone else. This seems to be lost on people, wanting to isolate them as abnormal and then ridicule them in extreme ways. It's not fair or right.

And following that David Letterman and Craig Ferguson not only made jokes about transgender people, they invited people on to further ridicule people. Craig Ferguson is known for pushing extreme without any sense of decency, and late night TV is known for this kind of abuse against classes or groups of people.

It's discrimination disguised as humor, really bad humor. David Letterman should have known and done better, but he hasn't in the past, so this new one with Adam Sandler isn't surprising. And Adam Sandler has no decency either, at least in the media and in his movies. Why would we expect anything different from him either?

In the end, it's time to stop attacking transgender people through the media. There are many successful post-transistion men and women and there are many more in transistion who deserve respect not ridicule. But considering the powers in the media support those who ridicule transgender people, why would I expect change?

I don't but then maybe we should turn the joke around to them to the extreme. How would they feel then?