So apparently the world's richest baby is throwing a fit over Dead End. He and other transphobic jerks are spreading the hate, and I just want to say that Dead End was one of the best projects I've ever worked on.

I've been reading Dead End since it was DeadEndia! The animation team I managed was really nice, the producers were really helpful, and the creator Hamish Steele is actually somebody I'd worked with previously on many other little projects. I was super happy when this show got greenlit and I got to work on it.

It was my first TV show to work on, having previously mostly worked on advertising, music videos, and the occasional film. It was really great to work on something where I got to see the characters develop and grow. I was a bit wary of being in a more manager-y position as lead animator, because I thought it meant that I wouldn't get to animate as much. But my duties were pretty evenly split between reviewing and managing my team of artists, then animating on my assigned shots. It was a perfect balance, really.

At the wrap party I got to do a bunch of karaoke to the songs for the "Phantom of the Theme Park" episode (singing in a demon Pugsley voice does a number on your pipes i tell ya)

My only regret with Dead End is that Netflix didn't give it a third season. And that most of the animation had to be done during the COVID lockdown. Everything else was golden.

Needless to say, transphobic and any other kind of lgbtq-phobic people are not welcome in my circle, or in my blogs. The world is not a worse place because trans people exist (and have always existed).

Trigger Warning: Discussion of transphobia

I would guess that most people on this hellsite who are fans of Always Sunny have grappled with the transphobia of the early seasons in the context of a fandom that has Queer ships and a show with some iconic Gay Mac imagery. Recognizing the flaws of a show and liking it anyways because we can be critical of the things we like or because it addressed the problems is a great way of engaging in media without expecting everyone to be perfect. However, my understanding of the discourse is that there are two contradictory responses to the transphobia and, either way, neither addresses some other issues.

Responses Basically, I’ve heard two responses for the transphobia of the show. The first one I heard from Rob McElhenney himself and it’s a recognition that they shouldn’t have used the slur they use to describe Carmen. The second one, which I’m sure a lot of people have said, but Lily Simpson made a solid video detailing, recognizes transphobia plot points and language in the show, but accepts them on account that they characters are awful people, so the show paints the transphobia in negative light.

I think both arguments have some flaws. Lily’s argument centres around the fact that the main characters are framed as awful people, so the audience is supposed to recognize their behaviour as bad. Lily gives a lot of weight to the fact that Mac gets beat up at the end of Charlie Has Cancer. What I think Lily’s recognizing is that a lot of jokes in the show are structured around a gang/normal guy dynamic. The gang says messed up things which is contrasted by normal people who react in shock. We, the audience, are supposed to be on the side of the normal people and recognize the problems of the gang (e.g,. the lawyer calls them anti-Semitic for saying he’s Jewish just for being a lawyer). Other times, the gang just says things that are so horrible that we must realize the problems immediately (like the psychological torture in The Gang Goes to Hell), which is a little like the misogyny in Mad Men.

However, just because the normal points out that the gang’s speech is problematic doesn’t mean it’s explained. Seeing two guys beat Mac up for punching Carmen doesn’t leave the audience with a lesson. It’s almost like they’re showing blatant transphobia with a sigh that says “transphobia” and nothing more. Are they proud of it??

Other times, we see the problematic/normal guy dynamic being played out between Mac and other members of the Gang. For example, in Mac Fights Gay Marriage, the gang is being the voice of reason against Mac’s attack on Carmen’s husband. Mac calls him gay for marrying a trans woman. Here, the gang doesn’t take Mac’s side, but only because Carmen had gotten bottom surgery. Reading the show through a problematic/normal lens leaves us to believe that trans women are women only if they’re gotten bottom surgery.

Ok, that’s Lily’s argument. Then there’s the one McElhenney himself made. His is centred around regret for using a slur and leaves it at that. Rob’s argument neglects Lily’s framework that sometimes shows can show bad things and still be good shows. So instead of rectifying the problem by making the gang learn their lesson or inserting good trans representation (Rob writes and directs several episodes), he simply wrote Carmen out of the show entirely, with her last appearance being in like season six. It’s almost like he’s cancelling himself. This creates a taboo where, once a cis person is told their trans representation has some issues, they start ignoring trans people rather than trying to be better.

Some More Issues

Cool, that’s Rob’s argument. Thank you for staying with me. Now, I think there are other problems I want to address. Following Lily’s framework, I posit that the gang members are all awful people and that we can see internal responses to their behaviour. Within that line of thinking, though, we see half-baked responses to transphobia:

In Mac is a Serial Killer, Mac’s ashamed of sleeping with Carmen and the gang validates the shame when they find out. There’s no recognition that you shouldn’t be ashamed for sleeping with a trans woman.

Before Mac comes out in like season ten, the show is a little bit on-and-off about whether he’s gay. We see Mac struggling with internalized homophobia in The Gang turns Racist, but he’s flirting with women in other episodes. I don’t have a problem with that, the show is still finding its stride in the early seasons. However, the fact that he flirts with Carmen in the context of a season where he’s sometimes gay makes it seem like flirting with a trans woman might be gay.

There’s just casual transphobia being thrown around, like when Charlie calls Carmen “the dad” in Dee Gives Birth, or when Dennis calls Carmen a dude in Charlie Has Cancer.

Maureen Ponderosa’s whole thing about transitioning to a cat is basically the attack-helicopter joke. And then Dennis kills her. Dennis basically murders a trans woman, and the issue is never discussed. Yes, the show undoubtedly frames murder as bad, but trans people getting killed just for being trans is a serious real-world issue that deserves more discussion than a jumping off point for a true-crime parody. Fuck. This isn’t even in the early seasons when they were figuring things out.

There’s also a more material problem with the production of the show. There’s an ongoing problem about material conditions of actors and I’d like to write a post exploring this issue using The Gang turns Black as an example. But for now, I want to highlight that Carmen is played by a cis woman, Brittany Daniel. While it’s not always bad to cast a cis woman as a trans woman, it takes away a salary from a trans woman. If you’re gonna make jokes at trans people’s expense, you might as well pay them a salary. It also means that, in a show that makes so many trans jokes, there were no trans people at the table read or rehearsal room improving new lines or making edits to the script.

Conclusion

Overall, I think Always Sunny’s pretty good at showing characters who are problematic but want to try their best (we see this when the gang policing their own language to be good people in The Gang turns Racist and The Gang Goes Jihad). Because of past mistakes, I’d like to see them lean into positive trans representation and hire trans cast and crew members. We see drops of trans representation in the later seasons, but Mac’s comments in 2020: A Year in Review and the plot A Woman’s Right to Chop, the actors still have a lot to learn.

Despite all this, the show has a thriving Queer audience craving more seasons. This is the perfect context for more Sunny, more trans creative workers, and more trans story lines.

I also hate this notion that the only metric for the success of gender affirming care is a decrease in depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts. Those are certainly goals. But...I mean, life is tough out here even if you aren't transgender. You can feel you've had a positive outcome with your transition and still struggle with mental health. I think that is clear by the low regret rate. And even when people are able to tackle their gender dysphoria via transition, we cannot discount the effects of poor societal acceptance. Not to mention the cruel legislative onslaught currently underway.

It's like, "Yay! I'm finally who I'm meant to be!"

But also, "Ack, these transphobic dipshits are trying to kill me!"

No other treatment is held to the standard of creating shiny happy people at a 100% success rate.

And yes, drugs sometimes have side effects. All drugs. Even over-the-counter drugs like Tylenol. There is no medical treatment without risks. And if we banned every treatment that had the possibility of a bad outcome, we would have literally no medications at all. She was very serious about all the bad things that can happen with blockers and hormone therapy but didn't mention how uncommon those risks are. She didn't mention that bone density is closely monitored. And the risk of heart trouble she mentioned was for older patients getting treatment for prostate issues.

Which makes me wonder why in the world she did not at least consult an actual trans person? Or even a doctor that provides gender affirming care? She just googled everything and interpreted the data with her physics brain and didn't even think to run her interpretations by people with actual expertise.

I'm not even sure a purely scientific analysis of trans issues is possible due to so many variables not being quantifiable. You can't just toss out the politics and focus on the science. The politics are a huge part of transgender existence right now.

And I don't even know what to say about her giving credence to the "social contagion" theory. Her only evidence was a theory concocted by a single person. No studies. No peer review. When I was in high school, none of us knew anything about being queer aside from the existence of gay people. We'd never even heard the words transgender or nonbinary. And even my friends who were gay didn't even consider that as a possibility until they went to college. There just wasn't any information available to teenagers. All they knew was that something was different and they had no resources to help them figure out what that different feeling was.

Teens are not being infected by a social contagion, they just have better access to information. They can also find more support and acceptance in online communities. Not to mention any competent gender affirming care program will do extensive evaluations to rule out things like peer pressure or someone seeking attention. Contrary to conservative belief, they don't just throw hormones and puberty blockers at everyone during their first appointment.

She quickly discounted the left handed analogy because some gender affirming treatments have lasting effects. Which didn't make much sense to me. All that analogy is meant to explain is that teens are more comfortable with queer introspection and feel less pressure to repress said queerness. The huge increase in queer teens matches almost perfectly with the dawn of the information age.

She also said that biological sex is "simple" (it is not) and then handwaved the existence of intersex people as "rare." First, I think the number of intersex folks is undercounted, but also, they are just as prevalent as people with red hair. When there are 8 billion people on the planet, even small percentages add up to a lot of people.

It was just a mess of a video.

Anyone: vagina haver

Terfs:

This isn't an option btw. If you're a terf get lost.

Minorities (of any kind) having greater rates of medical conditions triggered or exacerbated by stress even after you control for factors that would limit healthcare quality is a documented phenomenon. You can read more by searching “minority stress hypothesis”. I would link something, but I want to be absolutely sure I avoid shadow bans.

Actress Laverne Cox safe after transphobic attack in L.A. - Los Angeles Times