I love the BBC programme called QI. It has all the things I love in a TV programme: Great comedy, interesting subjects and Stephen Fry! Last night, it returned to BBC 1 and I naturally watched it and, as usual, it was fun, it was interesting and it pushed the barriers a bit, this time having as a core theme gender discrimination.
As usual, Stephen Fry kept things interesting and in a fun way, they tackled several areas of gender discrimination. Then, they started bringing up the ways of telling a male from a female, neatly dismissing the preconceived ideas that hand size and an adam’s apple are good ways of telling a man from a woman (yes, cis women can have larger hands and prominent adam’s apples), but, hugely disappointingly, Stephen Fry did this referring to trans women as ladyboys.
I know that the trans naming game has been played to death, but I still feel it is important. Ladyboy and shemale both have some major problems with them. First of all, they dismiss the fact that a trans woman is a woman. They frame us in the light of something in-between, something weird and less than normal. In addition, they are words which though not necessarily born in the world of pornography, they have been the terms of choice for decades and that demeans trans women even more. I, as with most trans women, am no more likely to end up in a porn film than Edwina Currie or Hillary Clinton!
It’s important that the dangers of misnaming are emphasised. In the middle of a section which was doing good for trans women, Stephen Fry’s use of the term ladyboy perpetuated the link between trans women and the sex industry. That harms us, it causes prejudice and it creates the environment for discrimination and the extension of it, transphobia and violence.
I expected better of Stephen Fry and the team at QI. Ladyboy is not an acceptable term for a trans woman in the West (it is acceptable in some places such as Thailand, but that’s a long way away from the viewers of BBC 1). It saddened me that an intelligent man on a show centred on intelligence should employ such derogatory and discriminating terminology, something which he would have known if he’d read even the most basic Trans 101 or the media guidelines for discussing LGBT people.
We still have a long way to go when it comes to how the media covers us if even this programme can get it so wrong.
UPDATE: I’ve written a complaint on the BBC Complaints page… Maybe others could do the same?
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Tags: ladyboy, QI, Stephen Fry, Trans, trans women
I saw that the program was on but I was watching something else. After what you have just written about Steven Fry’s lack of tact I am glad I didn’t see it. I totally agree with you on all points. I think those two terms are very insulting and derogatory and are really more suited, if that is the right thing to say, to those guys (and I have to call them guys) in Thailand who simply have their genitalia removed with no reconstructive surgery such as vaginoplasty. They may take hormones but even they do not consider themselves as women and they usually have no intention of going the whole way. We on the other hand are women who by some quirk of nature had been born physically wrong. We are certainly not ‘in between’ as those terms suggest by default. Mr Fry and many others would do well to educate themselves. Being in the media they should have a more professional approach to their work. We mortals are not given the chance to defend ourselves very often where the media is oncerned. Perhaps we should have representation or recourse when this sort of thing happens a sort of ombudsman if you will. Love
Shirley Anne xxx
Shirley Anne´s last blog ..The Toilet.
It is very poor that a show such as QI would make such a mistake, especially when one considers Stephen Fry’s position in the LGBT world. Ladyboy is an unacceptable term in the West. In Thailand, it’s acceptable, but that’s because it’s their society’s way of pigeonholing trans women – the vast majority of them in a survey last year didn’t feel they were a third sex, but normal women. Naturally, as with the transgendered and the transsexuals in Europe, there are wide variations in what drives people. It’s only a minority who are born with the condition we have which requires such drastic treatment. That said, a lot of trans women/kathoey in Thailand would love to do the full surgery, but can only afford the cosmetic one… I feel very much for them… That must be terrible.
Anyway, as for QI, I do hope that we can make the BBC and Stephen Fry realise that this is not acceptable.
Ugh, how fucking awful.
Sadly I’m not that surprised at Stephen Fry though. Remember him making a joke on twitter about how he was on a plane and wished he had some poison blow pipe darts to kill the noisy child in front of him. Never apologised despite being requested to do so by many. He’s kind of full of himself.
But I do think the programme makers/channel itself are responsible for its content, was it on the beeb or on another channel do you know?
Ruth Moss´s last blog ..Strange to think…
What a shame that such an intelligent man acts that way. I hadn’t heard about the blow pipe situation and that’s just not acceptable.
QI is shown on BBC One… I’ve written a complaint on the BBC Complaints page but considering that I don’t live in the UK, I imagine my complaint will not be given the same priority as one from someone living there. Let’s see what happens!!