Roseanne and I have a handful of things in common:
- We speak our truth with the help of
cuss wordsa colorful vernacular. - We laugh frequently and enjoy helping others do the same.
- We can’t sing.
- We use up every inch of our plane seats and don’t confuse girth with worth.
- We have gay family members and support gay marriage.
With her 8-episode sitcom reboot, I wish Roseanne’s cast and crew boundless prosperity, success, and joy. My friends of varying political ideologies and privilege seem equally passionate about either watching it or not watching it. And although I’m assuming it would be great to see the old TV characters time-machined into today’s Trump-merica?
As for me and my house, we will serve the lord pull the cord.
I spent the majority of my life being unconscious to many of my biases and privileges. I cringe at the thought of some of the hurtful beliefs that used to swim through my walnut brain. So I appreciate Roseanne using her intersectional privilege (cis/ het/ white/ abled/ rich/ neurotypical/et. al) to call out homophobia:
“I have a gay brother and lesbian sister who I always saw what happened to them growing up in Salt Lake City, Utah. My brother had his nose broken nine times by the time he was nine years old…It was wrong and it really pissed me off,” she said.
I’m grateful Roseanne had people in her life to help humanize homophobia. Pity she isn’t willing to extend the same level of humanity to transgender people.
Don’t know what it’s like to be or love someone who is trans? Super duper! Sounds like the perfect time to throw yourself a gender-reveal party and come out as cis to everyone you know. But even when we aren’t directly impacted by the pain of a marginalized community member? We still don’t have the right to be a judgmental, transphobic, knob-headed ninny.
Kit Malone, critical thinking queen of activist ass-kickery Advocate at ACLU Indiana, explained it this way:
“Not all trans folk have a PhD in gender theory or biochemistry or neurology or psychology. Asking trans folks to provide scientific evidence that they’re real is super offensive. Few other minority groups are regularly asked to defend their existence with links to peer-reviewed research and dissertation-level language the way trans people are. Maybe just go ask literally EVERY single legitimate medical organization on the planet for their take on it. You’ll find they all agree that transgender people are real, they deserve access to affirming care when they need it, as well as respect and basic human rights.”
Even the queer-ific Outsports and The Advocate don’t understand how problematic it is to imply that a gender non-conforming identity and gender-expression are interchangeable terms. The character of Mark is a boy who was assigned male at birth (AMAB).
In other words, Mark isn’t gender non-conforming, his CLOTHES are.
Having an AMAB character who is also a boy and masquerading him as “genderqueer” only reinforces the dangerous misconception that being trans is a preference they will outgrow. Have a child who likes to challenge gender PRESENTATION or traditional gender ROLES with clothes, toys, or hobbies? Fabulous. But if their GENDER is non-conforming? That’s a whole different box to unpack.
If my child goes through a Sesame Street phase, me taking away Big Bird isn’t going to make their chance of attempting suicide SIX TIMES more likely than their peers.
As someone who is fairly new to the world of being chronically ill, I’ve learned the importance of conserving my spoons and picking my battles. Some may march to let their voices be heard. Others may find the strength to resist a hella-delish Chik-fil-A sandwich and its bitter aftertaste of activist-betrayal. And for some of us, being an ally to marginalized communities comes in the form of babbling to an imaginary invisible audience and changing the channel on the boob tube.
Go team.
Wow. I didn’t know this about her. Thank you for putting light on this!