 So I guess what I'll do is I'll just go ahead and jump in and then by when I when I get done with my part of the presentation, there was plenty of time for Q&A. So let's just jump into the slides here. So the title here is the transgender ecstasy, the role of media representation. That's partially a riff on a book I have coming out that is also titled the transgender ecstasy. So the first question I have is why am I using that word ecstasy? Well, I like it. And I think it's accurate because an ecstasy is a situation marked by an urgent need. And I describe the current situation as one that because attitudes, practices and laws are changing rapidly, particularly in the 2010s. And there is an increasingly at times vehement clash between opposing viewpoints. And I literally believe that lives are in the balance. And I think that that's one of the things I'll talk about during the talk is the threats of threats and reality of violence towards the transgender community. So I think we are in an urgent situation where we need to think about the issues that I try to address in the book. Much of what you'll hear tonight is drawn from one chapter in particular that focuses on the rise of visibility in various forms of media, particularly in the 2010s. So I do want to make it clear that the scope of my comments today, in terms of what I mean by media I will delineate exactly what I mean by that in a little bit. But there is a broader view if you're interested here's there's a recent issue of the International Journal of Communication which is an online journal that you can access for free. There's a discussion by TJ billard and others that take a much broader view of the media landscape in terms of transgender issues and you can see the title they're rethinking and re theorizing transgender media representation. So I want to give a quick shout out to that that roundtable discussion. The first point that I want to make is that visibility trans visibility is pretty much at an all time high. And I can say that in part because I'm old. And I remember the decades of coverage of different kinds of issues. social movement issues including those dealing with LGBT issues before we get got to an increased visibility of the T. So for example, in 2012, then Vice President Joe Biden was quoted calling transgender equality the civil rights issue of the time he has said that, again, since that time. The 2015 stated Union address was the first time in history where a US president uttered the word transgender in public. And as a more recent barometer in 2020 literally a record number of openly transgender candidates ran for political office. And when Joe Biden was elected, literally the first day in office. He signed a number of executive orders that had that dealt with transgender issues. The visibility is no all time high. However, visibility is not equal acceptance I'm going to dive into that for part of tonight's presentation. The main point that I want to make for the next few minutes in document with various empirical evidence that's available is that there is still substantial prejudice against trans people in the US. It's not obvious but it needs to be laid out in a scholarly manner. I don't use the word transphobia I remember in the 80s and 90s when we advocates moved away from homophobia, and tried to use more precise terminology, including simply using the word trans, Gregory Herrick, who's one of the foremost psychologist who has done a good deal of research on public attitudes towards the LGBT community also calls this sexual prejudice rather than reducing it to euphobia which in some cases is not particularly accurate. Trans prejudice is a term that I've heard that I like. One of my studies in fact was by Herrick and Norton, and the data was actually collected in 2005, even though it wasn't published in 2000 2012. It was a survey of 2281 heterosexual so pretty good size. And they found some things that I think are noteworthy. One of the things that they found was that the attitudes towards transgender people correlate with attitudes towards gay men and lesbians as you can see the correlation here is between 0.66 and 0.84. That's not 0.99 however there is some differentiation going on. The other thing that Norton and Herrick point out is that the attitudes are less favorable towards transgender people as a category, then they are towards gay men and towards lesbians. So the measure that they used of that Herrick has developed a number of different scales but then for this particular study, what they use is is a fairly straightforward and easy to use tool called a feeling thermometer. And this is particularly good for short phone interviews where you where you say on a thermometer where 100 is the high 50 is lukewarm kind of take it or leave it and zero is as cold as you can get. And then once you describe your feeling towards this group and I'm going to show you a chart on that in just a minute, but for transgender people women responded with a 36.2 which is again substantially below lukewarm so that's a chilly reaction, and it's even lower than 36.3 for for men. So, you know, this data is now 16 years old, and we do know that there are changes happening in terms of attitudes towards transgender people, but it is one of the more thorough studies, and therefore one that I think still informs the political landscape that we're in right now. So here's a chart from that study. And I'll just walk you through it a little bit that top line was what I just described the thermometer score for women and men towards transgender people. Well, notice right below it is the category men in general, and notice that women scored men more warmly than men did right women scored men at 65.71 men scored men at 59.03. So we're talking even in the most favorable categories here on this whole chart, you know, we're in. It's not the exact same as temperature but you know we're, we're not in high heat of 80s and 90s here. And you can see the score for women in general is comparable actually both groups around 67. And then you can also see the scores for gay men and lesbian women and bisexual men and women. It drops down but the lowest group on this particular chart is in fact transgender people at the very bottom by the way, you'll see two abbreviations there ATG and ATL. What that refers to are two instruments that Herak has developed one is called the attitude towards gay men. And the other one is the attitudes towards lesbians. And, you know, it is a, a, I can't tell you what these particular scores mean because I have to go back and take a look at the article. But but that's those are frequently used measures of attitudes and in fact in some of the research that I'll talk about later that my colleagues back in Minnesota and I did. And with respect to media representations of gay men, we use the ATG instrument to assess those attitudes. Okay. Slightly more recent surveys 2011 2013. It's interesting this top statistic here that was found in 2011 is that less than 10% of people said that they know someone who is transgender. It's significant for two reasons. One is, as we will see, that means that stereotypes and media coverage are more likely to influence people who do not have direct real world contact with the social group. The other is that we're going to see that that number has climbed substantially in the last decade. There's still an acknowledgement in these studies that significant discrimination discrimination exists the HRC survey from 2011 also used the feeling thermometer. They report the data in the pie chart there at the bottom. If you add cool with with not particularly warm or cool. You'll see that that's over 60% you know about to almost 75% So still pretty unsupportive attitudes when asked in this particular form. Now despite this, this the existence of this prejudice and relatively tepid scores towards the category of transgender people in the last 20 years and particularly the last 10 years. There's been remarkable success in many jurisdictions in securing legal rights against discrimination. And there's a book that I wanted to share with you here by Taylor Lewis and Hader Markle called the remarkable rise of transgender rights and you know they're, they're quite clear and that is that this is a really rapid and remarkable rise that in some ways bootstraps on the rights movements and the successes of the gay rights movements which arguably culminated in the Supreme Court, validating same sex marriage, not that many years ago. What we, we know is that that attitudes torch LGBT is not the same as attitudes towards tea, but as I noted earlier, they are correlated. So there is some related effects here. Now one of the things that's particularly interesting is that if you ask people straight up, should discrimination against transgender people be legal, most people will say no. So this particular prompt in this study was transgender people deserve the same rights and protections as other Americans 67% two thirds completely agree. That's up to 89% if you add the next group which is mostly agree. That's really strong support and you'll see that, you know, even in the lower categories here Republicans, 54% agreed, 32% mostly agree that's 86% combined. And similarly with the Midwest, those are the two lowest scores, but even those. If you combine the completely with mostly agree, you'll find strong agreement with the notion that transgender people deserve the same rights and protections. However, it is in part because they are being asked the question in more broad terms, when you push more specific issues that support drops dramatically, or for another example that they that they talk about is, you know, they will support general rights but then if you ask them will you say transgender candidate for office again support drops dramatically. Now, there are various predictors, as you may have seen in that earlier, some of that earlier data, but one of the, in fact, let me just go back to that for a moment see if I can. Yeah, I think I actually skipped over this chart accidentally these are some of the attitudes towards transgender people. And so the column that's important here is the one under number one. This is what correlates with attitudes towards transgender people. So the ones with asterisks are statistically significant. The ones without asterisks means that was not statistically significant. So you'll see if you look basically from seven down to 11 political conservatism means more prejudice or cooler, cooler temp, right. Anti egalitarianism, similar to authoritarianism I might add, really religiosity gender binary beliefs point to nine right. So, you know, you can a lot of people today understand gender binary well enough to say do you do you favor gender binaries or you think we should be breaking them down. And a significant number of people still strongly believe and support the gender binary, including by the way some transgender people. And, but what we find is is that that correlates, not as strong as religion does, but it's the second strongest factor on this list in terms of predicting negative attitudes towards transgender groups. And the strongest factor there at the very bottom is that ATG score that I talked about earlier, meaning that if a person has negative attitudes towards game in in particular. They are more likely to have negative attitudes towards transgender people in general. Okay. All right, so. All right, so one of those as you recall, was this belief in the gender binary and one way to describe that is belief in what is commonly described as biological essentialism biological essentialism or biological determinism are terms that refer to the belief that sex determines the gender that, and that's genetic, right. So if you believe that, you know, and again to throw in the religiosity part, you know, God made boys and girls gave them this genetic code, and that's what makes them naturally feminine and masculine. That's a belief in biological essentialism. That of course is a belief that feminists have been battling since the late 60s, early 70s. Sandra Bam has a wonderful book called the lenses of gender. She identifies three core beliefs that inform sexism and this is number one, the belief in biological essentialism. Similarly studies that find that if people are supportive of what we call gender traditionalism that also correlates with anti trans prejudice. You know, there's a there's literally a beer commercial that says men should act like men. And that's an example of gender traditionalism. Being reinforced, right. A couple studies here that support that. I'm happy to share these slides by the way with anybody who wants a PDF of them later. And I can also provide citations I'm hoping that I provide you with enough that you could look it up yourself but if you want fuller citations, happy to provide any of those. So let's talk more about the media now and the media's role. First thing I want to recommend if you have access to it is a documentary that's available on Netflix called disclosure. And if you remember the cellular celluloid closet from a while ago that gave a narrative about how gays and lesbians were just were portrayed in popular media particular fiction. This is sort of the updated version of that applied specifically to transgender issues. And I think they do a good job with it. I want to point out a few examples from the early 90s that again I'm old enough to remember pretty vividly when these came out upper left hand well actually start with the lower left hand corner this is a talked about scene from the crying game, where the protagonist is about to make love with a character named deal who in this moment in the film. Fergus realizes has a penis is a trans woman and responds by punching dill and then running to the bathroom and vomiting. The upper right hand corner is the comedy soak dish. The villain of the movie is the one yelling no no no here. And what's happening is on a live broadcast of the soap opera. The characters come out and reveal from a year book that in fact she's a transsexual, as the terminology was at the time. And this is apparently such a humiliating revelation that she goes running off stage and is plot wise, defeated in the movie. The upper left hand corner is Jim carry in Ace Ventura the pet pet detective. And this is the big reveal scene, we're again a female character is revealed to be transgender. And it is. It actually parodies the crying game a little bit because one reaction that some people have to the revelation is that they throw up. And again, you know these portrayals are examples of, you know, pretty negative portrayals that were. People kind of went with the flow in the early 90s and these, these movies, all three of them were successful in their own in their own right. And the point that I want to make here is if you put these things together is prejudice is really bad we're not just talking about people saying rude things. We're talking about real consequences here. And want to share some of that that data with you. So the gay lesbian and straight education network reports at 75% of transgender students feel unsafe at school, because of their gender expression. The most comprehensive gathering of data the US transgender survey in 2015 that transgender students indicated 54% being verbally harassed 24% physically attacked 13% sexually assaulted. Those are pretty unfortunate statistics. And there is a meta analysis in the sense of kind of actually a meta literature review done by Zach Marshall in 2019 that found that between 2010 and 2014, looking just at studies at transgender non bare binary and gender diverse individuals that did 99 studies or articles exploring discrimination and marginalization of transgender people 47 another 47 documenting violence and trauma. So, a very well documented phenomenon. The survey of just from last June 2020 1500 self identified members of the LGBTQ community 62% of transgender Americans reported facing discrimination of some kind in the past year that have been 2021. And two thirds report that that discrimination moderately or significantly affected their psychological well being with roughly half reporting moderate to significant physical impacts as well. There's a lot of prejudice and the media has played a role in that well let's let's unpack that a bit more. But before I get to that. One last slide here in 2019 again, you know, less than two years ago, both the human rights coalition and the arguably non partisan American Medical Association described violence against transgender people as an epidemic. And it's not all stranger violence there's a lot of documentation on partner violence against transgender people as well. In this particular study by the Williams Institute at UCLA found that as many as 50% experienced that the violence continues this is a headline from May 2021. And that's hits record for transgender killings. And there are actually not one but two Wikipedia pages that are devoted to trying to keep up with documenting these unfortunate killings. Okay, so there's a problem here in the media plays a role, and that's what I want to talk about two ways in which the media plays a role. The way the news frames issues. TJ billard who I mentioned a little bit earlier did a study 2016 where he analyzed a number of different dimensions of language used in media coverage and argued that there's certain kinds of language that are very delegitimizing for the trans community. And misgendering would be an obvious example, and that that kind of language can get tremendously impact both the projected legitimacy of transgender claims, particularly political claims, and in general public perceptions of the transgender community. So how stories are framed that involve transgender people can play a attitude influencing role. Barry Tadlock political scientist did a study that covered over about 20 years worth of news coverage he looked primarily at these newspapers that are some regional but mostly, you know, nationally read newspapers and found some interesting things. Most articles about transgender people were highly individualistic about this transgender person or that transgender person. And that is processed by people very differently. And that's different than a systemic or a policy oriented kinds of orientation best systemic orientation only occurred in 1.7% of the articles that tadlock looked at the dominant frames that tadlock found were things like education which means educating the reader about transgender equality claims liberty claims safety insecurity which sometimes refer to the safety and security of transgender people. Sometimes the safety and security fears of people of transgender people pathology is as it sounds a negative frame that describes transgender people as having a pathological issue. And so what tadlock found in about half of the study studies are articles that should say, analyze, there's actually pretty evident positive or negative perspective being proposed about half the time. And of those 29 articles 10 of 29 were explicitly negative and anti transgender rights. So the media framing plays a role. And all that tadlocks analysis ended in 2011 I think it would be a good research project to update that analysis. And if anybody's interested in working with me on that I otherwise I do know of some potential collaborators across the river. And secondly, I tend to notice in the last year or so to sort of frames that again I've noticed I can't claim empirically that they're dominant, but one is framing that that clearly makes it a statement that there are policy proposals that are attacks on transgender and this one from CNN from April of this year says this record breaking year for anti transgender legislation would affect minors the most. So, you know that positions transgender people as in this case, you know, victims of policy assault, if you will. The alternative framing that I think is also pretty common this is this is one from a television is the more typical pseudo neutral frame of it's a battle. A battle over transgender rights, and which case the news author is ostensibly not on either side, but is reporting that there's a battle that kind of and that kind of framing of course equalizes matters and normalizes the conflict. My working hypothesis that I'd like to explore empirically is whether or not those in fact are predominant frames or or not. We also know this is an interesting study that came out this year. The framing impacts transgender people as audience members as well and here you see the headline for yourself this is in a journal called LGBT health, negative transgender related media messages are messages are associated with adverse mental health outcomes and a multi state study of transgender In fact, in some instances that kind of reaction was described as like post traumatic stress because the coverage forced some viewers to kind of relive prejudice or attacks that they had to experience themselves in the past. The other way that media can influence attitudes that potentially I think is more positive is through entertainment media. There's a great deal of research some of which I'm going to talk about here that indicates that media representation really does matter it's not only the if you can see it you can be at coverage which I think is also important, but it can also actually decrease prejudice towards specific social groups. And remember that statistic I said earlier we're only 10% said they know somebody who's transgender. I know from the research that I'm about to describe that the entertainment media's effect is the biggest with those people who don't have real world contact with those groups. So, to get us there I want to quickly recall what's known as the contact hypothesis that dates back to the 1950s. The most often credited although you don't think he actually originated it but he certainly popularized it Gordon Alport. And he believed and argues in his is 1954 very very influential book on prejudice, the prejudice is fueled by ignorance that we don't know a social group and therefore we reduce them to the stereotypes that we've heard about them that are frequently false and negative. So, Alport helped to popularize the contact hypothesis that says contact facilitates learning about a social group. If you the more you learn about a group and recognize how diverse they are and that you know the stereotypes are wrong and over generalize, then the more you can reduce prejudice. There's been six decades, almost seven, seven decades of research on the contact hypothesis is been supported by literally hundreds of studies, the last meta analysis I saw I think had over 600 studies that have supported the contact hypothesis, but in the process of articulating it there are certain conditions that need to be met for contact contact to have a beneficial prejudice reducing effect. There needs to be a perception of equal status. That's why in the Deep South, blacks and whites had a lot of contact. But until the civil rights legislation established equal more equal rights, you know, Jim Crow laws were still essentially reinforcing the presidential attitudes that many southerners had. It helps to have common goals. It helps to have situations where there can be intergroup cooperation. So, importantly, this next one deserves sort of an extra star. It needs to not be opposed by authorities and the law, which again explains why in the South. It took major legislation to begin to break down the level of prejudice and, and there of course needs to be sufficient contact both quantity and quality wise to permit people to learn about a groups and further prejudice to be reduced. A movie that really nicely illustrates what I'm talking about here is a movie called remember the Titans, which is actually based on a true story in Virginia, where they, the first year they integrated the football team. And both sides start off very distrustful of the other. And particularly the white students were, you know, obviously in the, in majority group and were many of whom were pretty racist. But the coaches eventually work together and they create that situation where there was a black and white players had to room together at camp they had to learn about each other they had to report something that they learned about their, their roommate. And then of course they had the common goals of success in the game. And by the end of the movie, the, the two featured characters one white white one black had become essentially best friends. And of course the team was very, very successful. But what I like about it in particular, other than it's based on a true story is that it, it really does illustrate the contact hypothesis in the various conditions involved with it being met. Yeah, as I just said, it met these various conditions. Now, what happened in about 2005 is the development of something that my colleagues and I called the parasocial contact hypothesis parasocial simply refers to the fact that the contact is not face to face but is mediated. And there's already a body of literature going back to the 50s that talked about parasocial interaction and parasocial relationships. Hortman wall, wall termed that phrase back in 1956. So what we did was we basically smushed together the notion of parasocial interaction with the contact hypothesis, and did a series of, I think we did a total of five or six studies that found that people can learn through that parasocial contact in ways that are analogous to the contact hypothesis face to face learning experiences, and it can reduce prejudice. So, five of those studies were published in I guess it was five studies. Communication monographs the 2005 article was simply titled the parasocial contact hypothesis in the journal of homosexuality we published a study specifically on the TV show will and grace. And in my book beyond representational correctness. I talk about a film class that I talked that we found that watching certain films decrease prejudice towards sexual minorities. The studies are the shows in the communication monographs article included six feet under. The original iteration of the show queer eye for the straight guy which was a great stimuli set of stimuli because there are five different gay guys on the show so there's a lot of opportunity for viewers who might not know any gay men in real life to learn a lot about that category. The research was actually the first empirical research that documented that prejudice could be reduced towards sexual minorities. And yeah, so that's the parasocial contact hypothesis. And again I want to emphasize that the site the amount of change dependent on prior contact. So if you had a person who already had two or three gay friends their attitudes were not changed all that much, if at all. It was a group that had little to no real world contact and therefore, you know, didn't know much about other than stereotypes. That is the group where we saw the most dramatic decrease of prejudice. And I love this quote from Gordon Albert. A differentiated category is the opposite of a stereotype. I love that members of a particular social group are actually quite varied. It is a key cognitive step into breaking down that prejudice. We actually also included a study I forgot this one this was on about Eddie is it who is a actor and stand up comic and Eddie in those days, referred to themself as a transvestite. And in a stand up routine that we had people view any differentiated between weirdo transvestites and executive transvestites and he does this whole thing about it being a broader community. That's category work that is exactly the kind of benefit that contact help provides our research has been out there for a while now it's been replicated by scholars literally all over the world. Working on mediated contact between a wide variety of majority and minority populations so as an empirical proposition it's it's it's in pretty good shape. So what does that have to do with transgender issues this is jazz Jennings if you don't recognize her in this photo. Well, again, you know, I had a picture on the very first slide of the when Time Magazine declared transgender moment. We had increased visibility particularly in 2015. You had things like oranges the new black with Laverne Cox featured in it she was on the cover of that Time Magazine article I had earlier transparent was hitting the airwaves and had several seasons. Diane Sawyer had her interview with soon to be Caitlin Jenner. And there were three new reality shows that all featured transgender lead characters I am Kate about Caitlin Jenner I am jazz about jazz Jennings which had six seasons and becoming us that was a one season reality show. And I'm actually not going to show this film clip in the interest of time. But this was an article about Jenner's interview with Diane Sawyer, which was actually right before Jenner came out as Caitlin, but it was announcing the intention to transition. And that created quite a media moment that is been studied. No, there we go. Later that same year is when the famous family fair issue came out, call me Caitlin, and what there's very interesting research that specifically is about the impact, Caitlin Jenner had in particular. So, Lee, in a 2018 study found that news framing of transgender issues improved after that 2020 interview by improved I mean things like less misgendering and more sympathetic framing of transgender issues. In a study by Patrick Miller and colleagues. And there is a unpublished version in 2019 and a published version in 2020, both of which providing empirical support that particularly among older viewers who remember Jenner as an Olympic athlete in 1976. And I'm going to confess that I'm in that group that remembers that found that that group in particular older viewers who generally are more conservative in their attitudes on on issues of sexual minorities. That Jenner story was meaningful and prompted a more empathetic response. They found that exposure the Jenner Jenner story predicted reduced prejudice and quote following the Jenner story itself as a form of parasocial contact may have caused ameliorated attitudes towards transgender people and rights. Okay, so that story by itself was quite noteworthy in 2015. There were other shows as I mentioned earlier, some of these documentaries and of course, New York reality shows rather. And one of the things that Lee notes in 2021 article is that the depiction of the site of the transition itself the psychological shifts and coping mechanisms of transgendering with transgender loved ones guide out group members that is to say cisgender viewers. Through the process of learning what transgender identity is how to live with it and unlearning gender hegemon. So very much consistent with what the parasocial contact hypothesis would say learn about the group by seeing transgender people portrayed in this works by the way, regardless of whether it is reality or fictive television, fictional narratives also have this, this can have this prejudice reducing effect. A couple others that I'm going to run through fairly quickly in the interest of time here. If there is a YouTube channel Nikki tutorial who is a makeup makeup and fashion, primarily makeup I think I'm not an expert, but she came out as transgender. I want to say, and that view has been viewed over 37 million times. And there is another study that I cite in the book that looks at YouTube content talks about how important YouTube content is for transgender youth in particular to connect with others. There's a study of 400 viewers of an episode of royal pains which is a dramedy. That is not ostensibly about transgender issues it's a medical dramedy, but there was an episode where a transgender character was central, and they found that even a single episode. With a relatively brief storyline can be influential for decreasing prejudice and that was a study that was published in 2018. Visibility and representation of transgender people and TV is up, you see two examples here of Nicole mains and super girl, who she is transgender and she plays a transgender character. She plays anatomy I don't know I don't watch the show, but this character was on there for a while I don't know if he's still on there but Alex blue Davis, again a transgender man playing a transgender man so representation is increasing. As I mentioned that the outset visibility can be a double edged short on one hand we do know that prayer social contact has the potential to decrease president prejudice. And remember those conditions that outputs subsequent research so all the hundreds of studies that were done on the contact hypothesis demonstrated opposition from a salient authority can mute or moot the impact. Some or all of the impact of positive prayer social contact, if it is opposed by a salient authority figure. So, and we just had four years of that right we had pretty pro the emergence of pro transgender issues and the in the at the end of the Obama administration in particular. You know, and that came under a crashing halt under the Trump administration. And we now find various Republican politicians. Taking pretty anti transpositions that matters to a study just published in 2020 here by Jones and Brewer basing that they're doing a study of data from 2015 16 found that politically aware citizens tend to follow their elite cues along ideological lines. Once it matters if the head of the Republican Party takes an anti transposition, and the head of the Democratic Party takes a pro transposition that is a doesn't have to be translated that way. But the fact is that it is, it is for many people. And that's why they conclude that the future trajectory of public opinion on transgender rights would thus seem to depend significantly on the behavior of elites. Okay. And in general. Yeah, so I'm going to have to look at the chat stuff when I get done but I promise I will do that at that point. So in general, what's happened with transgender issues is that they become the latest front in the so called culture wars is a recent. In the last week column by Judith Butler in the Guardian, where she describes what she believes is a worldwide effort to quash LGBTQ in general, with transgender issues being sort of the wedge issue, if you will. The facts on so called gender ideology have grown throughout the world, stoked by electronic networks and backed by extensive right wing Catholic and evangelical organizations and we might add in the US in many places the Republican Party. Her point is is that, you know, even those these efforts may be in terms of their leadership nationalistic, transphobic misogynist and homophobic. The aim, they believe is to reverse progressive legislation that has been one over a period of decades, decades of progress by the feminist movement and LGBTQ issues and there's a link to her article from last week in the Guardian, you find it pretty easily by looking at that date October 23. So it's definitely been activated I'll give you a couple of quick examples. There have been efforts in some states to deny medical care for transgender minors particularly puberty blocking or hormone therapy drugs. The red states or states that are either past it or considering passing it. Another example is dealing with bathrooms in particular. You'll see that North Carolina is no longer read. It was actually one of the first states that passed such a law, but there was so much backlash to it that they largely have backed off of that with the election of a Democratic governor. But you can see there are some states that are green that means that they actually have passed legislation to protect transgender peoples from being discriminated against for bathroom access. In some of those laws have actually been on the books for years and years now so we actually have a lot of empirical data showing that there's no harm done. But we do still have some conservative states there that are considering or passing there's actually a number of states where this has been proposed but relatively few were at his past so far. And sports is a particular hotspot there have been, I think, your 10 states now that have passed laws that they that in public schools that forbid. They're primarily aimed at transgender girls competing with on the girls teams. These are all sort of recognizable as fairly conservative states. South Dakota was a state where the governor actually vetoed the law but then did very similar things through executive action. Texas Governor Abbott just signed that that law this in this past week. There are other states including Massachusetts and Connecticut that have the opposite kind of laws that specifically protect students access to sporting teams based on gender identity so it's definitely a flash point going on right now. And that's what essentially led to this book. So this is a transgender agency defining section gender in the 21st century. This is the book that I started on my pen to actually I started before the pandemic but basically have written over the last two years it's going to be out in December. And what I found out today in terms of media is mostly standing from chapter three of that book. What the rest of the book looks at are these controversies over how sex and gender should be defined in context specifically that have been traditionally segregated by sex including single sex schools bathrooms the military sports and prisons. Obviously I don't have time to talk about those tonight. But those are that's what makes up the bulk of the book. And so what I try to do in those case study chapters is understand the history of sex segregation in a particular context because they have very different historical roots and thereby try to identify what are the values and interest that competing definitions represent. And in some cases, the value is plain misogyny or sexism and in or or trans prejudice in the case of the military. And so that's what I try to do is unpack in each chapter what the values are that underlie competing the competing definitions in there. I'm going to skip over this this was going to talk a little bit about the bathroom chapter but since it's already six I'm going to I'm not going to do that. But what happened in that case just as you can see here is that the bathroom. The ordinance that simply said don't you can't discriminate against people based on gender identity turned into Oh this is a law that's going to let men use women's bathrooms. And that's a threat. And that was what the whole campaign was that ultimately ended up reversing that Houston City Council ordinance. And I'm not going to show you the ad. On the other hand this is one of my favorite visual arguments on the other side. This is Michael Hughes on the right trans man. And when this was all hitting the the airwaves a few years ago, he had a series of photos like of this of himself in women's bathrooms these are friends of his that are helping him make the photograph to show how absurd it would be to require him to use the women's restroom. As I said the battle particularly in bathroom bills is far from over it turns out that the latest surveys are indicating that a growing number of people are actually supporting restricting bathroom access. I think that goes back to the fact that those they're getting their cues from certain political elites with whom they want to identify. And this is a headline from just September 29, you know if you just about a month ago. Most Americans generally support pro LGBTQ policies as I documented earlier, but are getting increasingly divided over specifics, such as transgender sports and bathroom policies and that's a study that was recently released by the Public Religion Research Institute. There's their link if you want to take a look at the study as a whole. We do know by the way I just want to say that the empirical evidence makes it very clear that there is no threat in these bathrooms there are jurisdictions that have had bathroom bills on the books for years, with no problems. In other hand, we do know that there are substantial psychological and physical harms that are imposed on transgender people when bathrooms, but bills are passed. And that includes everything from increasing rates of UTI for people having to hold it too long to physical violence and increase suicidal ideation as documented by Seelman study in 2016. That's a clear call in terms of what the relative harms of the two definitions are there. There's a wide range of what I call regulatory definitions that is definitions that regulate who counts as male or female man or woman in any particular context. They range from single sex colleges that only require like Wellesley only require you to say I'm going to live my life as a woman to be eligible to apply for admission. Others want a matching birth certificate. So even in single sex colleges, there's the variety. Sports is another example I gave you there are 10 states that now have a biological essentialist definition of sex where there are a fewer number of states, on the other hand that allow self identification as the means of defining gender for sports participation. The same is true with jails and prisons there are states that require that you go to the jail that your birth certificate says you belong in and California Massachusetts. And other states are trying to empower self definition for being a presumptive, not necessarily final but presumptive means of assigning whether you go to the men's or women's facility. So that to the conclusion of the book. Basically, I argue that look the more onerous a definitional criteria with, you know, the surgery being the highest demanding criteria which the Olympics require, if you want to compete in a sport. So you have to decide your assigned birth sex with self identification being the least restrictive that the more you move up that that ladder, the more compelling and powerful the rationale needs to be. And as I said is coming out actually in December 17. I want to give a shout out right here to MIT libraries thanks to a generous grant from them the book will be available open access. So, if you don't want to buy it you don't have to you can download it I believe it will be like a PDF that you'll be able to download. That'll be on December 17 and maybe, maybe sooner but probably December 17. I've also referenced a couple times in this book, the other books and articles that I've done that are relevant to this talk on the parasocial contact hypothesis. The previous book I did on on pragmatic approaches to definitions is called defining reality. I have all this in PDF form and if anybody would like a copy I'm more than happy to share that with them. And there is my email address, just my last name at MIT.edu. And you can see some of my early gender socialization going on there with the way my parents dressed me on the left hand side there. So, I'm going to finally end it there a little bit longer than I meant to be. And going to turn it over to whatever questions we have time for in the remaining minutes of the of the talk. Thank you, Ed. This is Heather. I'm in the dark. Hi, I apologize for missing the very beginning I had an unstable internet signal and everything went to hell in a handbasket but I'm on my hot spot on my phone now so I should be fine. I wanted to make two very, very quick comments and ask two questions is to kick us off. For the comments I just wanted to say especially for some of the younger folks out there watching this talk that this this argument about the dangers of different sexes being in bathrooms. It goes back to the ERA, the Equal Rights Amendment and we were talking about Phyllis Schlafly in my grad class, just the other day and so I just wanted to like fill people in that like this as a kind of crisis rhetoric has a history going back, I would say to to at least the 70s and it's just fascinating how it just sticks. I'll stop you for just two seconds because I have a bathroom related comment. So if you've ever used the restrooms in building 14 in. Right we're CMSW headquarters are. Yeah, the women's room on the third floor is much nicer than the men's room. There's an interesting sexist history behind that, because laws requiring bathrooms to be separated by sex are actually not all that old. They're actually only emerged in the late 1800s, and a lot of the rationale for having separate bathrooms was based on this idea, not only a privacy, but a protecting women. And that's why a lot of women's rooms are sometimes they're called lounges even that there's a be an extra couch in there are things of that sort. And not every place of course but in many places and that actually has its historical roots in this sort of differential treatment between of the sexes with the bathroom. And that's an interesting point that these spaces for women are treated as kind of aesthetic spaces in some ways the place to fix your makeup and that they're treated as utilitarian spaces when they're targeted to men. So yeah, thank you for filling us in on that. The other comment was about just quickly about Caitlyn Jenner that she is a, you know, very aggressively a pro Trump supporter. And so it's just, it's an ideologically sort of incoherent to me and speaks to some of the complications what you're saying about the importance of authorities, and how that influences attitudes, my questions were first about disclosure which I will watch I'm very glad you draw attention to that. And I'm a, I've seen the sale a closet several times I also recommend that to those who haven't seen it. And one of the most fascinating things about the cellular closet is that the focus is really on interviewing people who wrote for them in the 50s and 60s and maybe the 70s but it's really that that earlier era. And you get to see people behind the scenes, talking about, you know, something that seemed like a reading against the grain when you saw the film and they're like oh no we totally meant that to be about gay people or yeah camp is not a, you know, a hidden thing it's what we were doing because we wanted to express ourselves and so. The behind the scenes stuff in that film is really fascinating and I'm wondering if, if disclosure gets into that at all or if you've just thought about the world trans people as producers, as opposed to just on the representation side of the equation. And my other question was also about it's more about representation and just if you've thought about or seen any studies about trans people appearing in media or in television say where it's not an issue it's not a very issue about trans but just you know you have a trans actor like say in the in the in the Queens gambit where it's not discussed it's just sort of there. And this of course was a tactic for African Americans, in particular in the 60s of just sort of casually incorporating African Americans into cast and not making it an issue that had to be discussed. So those are my two questions. So I didn't say this but thank you very much for your talk I should have open with her. Let me address those questions in reverse order so I don't forget the second one. For a representation to have the possibility of decreasing prejudice, the viewer must recognize that that person represents that group. Even if it's not, you know, it could to answer your question, it could have a positive effect, as long as the viewer recognizes oh that's that's a trans woman or that's a trans man. But if, if it's not called attention to in the narrative of the show, then it depends on how savvy the viewer is. Right. So, you know, they do have on the other hand with African Americans, you know, or, or certain other groups. And again people are not necessarily fine grained right then what I mean by that is most people are not. There's a long history here of Japanese people portraying Chinese people and you know but they get grouped under Asian, which means Asian representation tends to end up being more holistic set of attitudes. So anyway, yes I think actually the more normalized, it is to have trans people in a narrative the better, but it won't reduce prejudice and less viewers recognize them as trans. And then to go back to the point about disclosure, particularly with celluloid closet disclosure I think I think they learned some lessons about cellular closet what I mean by that is it ends on a more upbeat note that I recall celluloid closet ending, which is, you know, I mean the basic narrative is, here's all these horrible horrible horrible representations, you know, which is not a shock. And, but devoting a non trivial amount of time towards the end of the documentary documentary, noting progress in some of the with some of the shows that I've talked about before. And the issue, I believe of trans writers being in the writing room is also. I think that's also talked about, if my memory is correct, I, I know I certainly am aware of that discussion being taking place but so I hope I answered your questions. Yeah, thank you that's very helpful. So let's open up, we could go to, we have a few things actually in the chat, we want to take a look at that. Or actually maybe we have an actual question fully fleshed out in in the Q amp a here thanks for a great talk at this is from Tom. I'm going to go to the heel scale, your example supporting the parasocial contact hypothesis involve visual representations. Do you know of any studies that that discuss the efficacy of non visual media written and maybe even strictly audio media such as podcasts for parasocial contact changing attitudes towards trans people. Hi Tom, first of all, secondly, yes, as a matter of fact, I've got the cards. And I don't have the sites memorized, but they are cited in my chapter three of my book, and I'd be happy to look up their sites, but they included like short stories. Obviously the portrayal has to be not negative, right, you can't have a trans character who's the villain and expect it to change attitudes in a positive way, but sympathetic portrayals and even relatively short vignettes. There's like a few paragraphs about my experience as a trans person found. And again when we talk about changing prejudice. I want to get real clear. It doesn't mean we're like that it's not necessarily 180 degree turn, but that's okay. Because what the research on prejudice reduction shows is that you do work by stages. And if you can get the foot in the door and get people away from a highly negative attitudes, then they're more likely to actually interact with a transgender person in real life. Boom, you move the dial a bit further, or they'll watch a show that you know it has transgender characters boom a little bit further. And so these things can can build on each other, but it really is interesting I haven't heard anything of any research about podcasts, but I would think that the logic would be the same if you are learning about a category of people with whom you do not have real world face to face contact. Yes, mediated contact. If you learn about the group and it's a positive representation can reduce prejudice. The way we operationalized positive representations in our studies was we had a series of measures that we did about how people felt about straight characters the main straight characters as well as the main gay characters. And we wanted to make sure that people were we're not seeing them substantially inferior negative to those. That's interesting what you say about negative characters because of course negative characters can be written such that they are incredibly appealing. So, you know, I would just wonder if it's a kind of victory for a subjugated group when they when having a negative character from that group is no longer problematic in the way it was earlier. And I think it's kind of like Jen Carlos Pizito and the Mandalorian right he's a villain and he is probably you know one of the very best characters on the show, but if that character that type of character in the 60s would have seen been seen as you know very problematic perhaps can compare to now. Do we have anyone else who is live on our zoom or not live but you know who's face we can see who would like to kick in and say something, ask something. I see Sulafa has her hand up. You'll need to unmute. Oh, hello. Thank you for your talk, a really interesting topic I actually have a follow up about the parasocial relationship and I'm really thinking about like how many of us now practice binge watching a show rather than like watching once a week. I haven't really studied parasocial relationships but my hunch tells me that that might form like a different type of relationship to a character where we binge an entire season in a day or two rather than like wait weekly to meet with them. Do you do you think that that might have a different effect or have there even been studies about that I think there's I think there's actually been one study on that and I have to do a little digging to find it. Not so much that the study was on it was not necessarily about prejudice reduction but it was about the kind of parasocial relationship that you might have with characters. We do know, for example, that when that people respond psychologically speaking, similarly to the loss of a beloved character. And not unfamiliar ways as they would lose when they lose somebody in real life there's there's grief involved. And there are, you know, I miss that character, kind of reactions. I do I either I think I may be reviewed a study I don't know if it's in print yet but I think I reviewed a study that was trying to address this very issue about periodic experience of a show versus been watched binge watching. And I think that it's the periodic watching that builds sort of grows deeper roots. I mean you binge watch it's like the difference between getting drenched in a drip drip drip effect over time drip drip drip is actually will have a bigger long term impact because you'll remember it in memory is where these reactions live. Whereas binge watching, you know, whether those attitudes that are encouraged by by spending a couple days deeply invested, will those last over time. You know, depends how much you like it if you go back and re binge, you know, which some of us have done during the pandemic rewatch the series we've already seen, you know that's a good way to dig the roots in deeper as well. I hope that answers your question. As I said I know I read a study on that. I might have been a reviewer at the time. So to check to see if I can figure that out. Thanks Ed, we have a question in the Q amp a from Carl how do you think about, excuse me how do you think about our account for the backlash effect of increased visibility. Yeah. There's a couple of people who I site on that who who first drew my attention to the notion that's a double edge sword because there are of course many trans people who just want to live their lives and they just want to pass and they don't want the attention. And the kind of the more you make these issues salient than the greater the risk that somebody's going to notice or somebody's going to bring it up. And as I commented earlier, the visibility has led to this being a politicized issue now, and that politicized issue is fueling trans prejudice. And so it's it's sort of a double edged sword now I think in the long run. You need the visibility. Right, you need to normalize transgender characters in fictional TV for example or fiction or in movies. But the ability of those kinds of representations to reduce prejudice are going to be less pronounced in a period where political elites that you might affiliate with I mean Tucker Carlson. And vice Tucker Carlson offered on anything, but he's got millions of people who do and the guy is anti trans, and that's going to influence viewers. So I say Amber has a question so let's go to her. Thank you for your tech. It's fantastic. I have a question. Do you have a sense about how reception or prejudice might change if we add the issue of like race and class to trans people in media representation. Absolutely and thank you for for raising that I do address the issue of intersectionality in the book. I did not do so much obviously I didn't mention those terms today. The most vulnerable group in the group that is victimized and the most violence against our black trans women. That is the group that are, for lack of a better way of putting it murdered the most of all trans of all trans groups. That's because within certain cultures they're they're violating the norms that are expected by some who believe in those gender binaries. And so, again, I think that that's why you know, in the book beyond representational correctness one of the points that I make is that there's no such thing as a perfect representation. There's no such thing. There is also no single representation that's going to solve a problem of prejudice. So the solution is more and more and more and diversity. If you want to reduce prejudice towards trans people, then you need to have trans men as well as trans women, and you need to have Hispanic trans women Hispanic trans men. And you need to have, you know, again, the full spectrum, because it is intersectional. There's a HBO show called we're here that if you have not watched I encourage you to try to catch it if you get a chance to. It's aired on HBO and then you if you miss episode you have to go to HBO Max to view it which I'm not real fond of but and it's mostly about it's a show about three drag queens who go to bless their heart. You know, conservative rural areas and put on a drag show and take three people who are in the LGBTQ community there who participate and in some cases, and they're very dramatic stories. Some of those stories are transgender stories. And they are also pretty diverse stories because of where they travel the episode that I just recently watched, they were in Del Rio, Texas so there was a added dimensionality of people who live on the border, and who have Hispanic background and Latino background background. So, that's, I don't know if I've answered your question, it is is important added dimension, absolutely. And I do discuss it some in the book. And I have a chapter actually on how feminism is wrestling with issues of transgenderism. And that's a place in particular where I do a quick call back on the history of the rise of intersectionality as a important topic in feminist theorizing in particular. Thank you. Do we have any other questions. I'll look at the chat says from Narbol brilliant professor always pretty good to listen to you and your reflections I would love to hear you talking about the possible connection between pch and human rights greetings from Brazil. Hi Narbol. Nice to see you. We're nice to hear from you. Yeah, so the part of the problem of answering this is so I'm going to limit myself to narrative media programming. That is to say whether it be reality or fictional, they're both narratives. And that means they have recognizable characters. And what television and film are good at is evoking an emotional response between viewers and characters. Again whether those characters be fictive or real. Not so good with more abstract philosophical concepts like human rights. What that means is is that you could get sympathy for a group of people that may be related to the fact that their rights have been denied. You betcha you betcha it can do that. But what we found was is we did we did a one of the research projects we did. We wanted to see if a class devoted to masculinity changed anybody's attitudes about masculinity. In particular how they saw themselves whether they're biologically considered male or female on birth or not, whether their attitudes about their own gender norms was was changed. You know, people did not get into the abstractions nor were they willing necessarily to change how they would describe themselves. What it did do though, is again, it provided elicited a sympathetic response with the characters that they saw. So it reduced prejudice against gay men against transgender men in this we had a film that featured that. So they had a sympathetic response with the characters, but that doesn't necessarily translates to broader political abstractions. I wish it did. I wish it did. It's hard to do systemic critique through narrative media. Well, we've just about hit 630 but do we have one last question before we sign on. By the way, thank you, normal normal for for joining us. Professor from Brazil, great guy. That's great. Okay, well I think we will stop there then thank you again, Professor Shapa for your talk we really appreciate it. And I'm putting my email address one last time in the chat box for those who are on zoom otherwise it's just my last name schia ppa at MIT.edu. So if there are any sources that I've described here that you would like more information about any of the publications that I've discussed. Just reach out. And we will also have a recording of this available shortly so if anyone wants to revisit any of the slides or the citations you can also do it that way. Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you. Bye everyone.