'On The (Queer) Waterfront: Brooklyn Histories': Pop-Up Museum Of Queer History's Hugh Ryan On New Exhibit

I was interviewed on October 8th, 2013 by the Huffington Post, about the Pop-Up Museum of Queer History's Brooklyn show. Read the original (with photos) here.

"On the (Queer) Waterfront: Brooklyn Histories" kicked off this weekend, a unique and collaborative art and performance show curated by The Pop-Up Museum Of Queer History. A multifaceted intersection of history lab, art space and teach-in workshops, the show sought to provide visibility, education and celebration surrounding queer identity in Brooklyn, N.Y.

The Huffington Post caught up with Hugh Ryan, Founding Director of the Pop-Up Museum of Queer History, to discuss the show's Oct. 5 kick-off, the history of the Pop-Up Museum Of Queer History, and Brooklyn's legacy of queer identity.

The Huffington Post: What does "On the (Queer) Waterfront: Brooklyn Histories" as a project stem from? What are you trying to provide visibility to in regards to queer identity?
Hugh Ryan: “On the (Queer) Waterfront: Brooklyn Histories” was a show long in the making. We knew we wanted to return to Brooklyn –- Pop-Up began in 2011 as a one-night-only event in my loft in Bushwick, and although I’ve since left the borough, almost all of our core committee live in various Brooklyn neighborhoods. More than that, though, we felt that Brooklyn has a long and illustrious queer history all its own, which is too often lumped into New York City’s queer history. We wanted to look at Brooklyn as a place with its own specific queer history –- in part because it has such a thriving queer present.

Can you explain what The Pop-Up Museum Of Queer History is? What kind of work does this organization do?
The idea for the Pop-Up Museum of Queer History came to me shortly after the conservative attack on the "Hide/Seek" exhibit [at the National Portrait Gallery] forced them to remove David Wojnarowicz’ piece “A Fire in my Belly” from the show. I was frustrated that the Republican establishment and the whims of governmental funding could so easily play political football with both art and history. I wanted some way to both protest the removal, and provide an alternative venue for queer histories.

Around the same time, a group in New York City called Queers Organizing for Radical Unity and Mobilization (QuORUM) put out a call for events. They were organizing a week of queer workshops in queer homes, and they were looking for a space big enough to hold the kick-off. At the time, I lived in a large industrial loft in Bushwick, and I proposed a one-night only museum show. I put a call out for exhibits over Facebook, not really knowing what kind of response I would get.

I was floored when more than 30 people – many whom I didn’t even know – wanted to create exhibits and performances. They ranged from the whimsical (ex. a gingerbread scale replica of Stonewall) to the meticulously researched (ex. a talk about and performance of the works of composer Jean-Baptiste Lully). A curator and artist named Buzz Slutzky stepped up to co-curate the show, and dozens of other people volunteered to help install the works.

Our one-night engagement was scheduled for the evening of Jan. 14, 2011. It was freezing cold that evening, but more than 300 people showed up for the show –- including 14 police offers, who shut us down for fire concerns shortly after midnight. They also gave me a ticket for disturbing the peace when I refused to let them into the apartment without a warrant. I guess it wouldn’t be a real queer historical event without a police raid…

Even as the cops were forcing us out of the building, people were asking when the next museum would pop-up. Queer people were hungry for our history, told by our community and to our community. Buzz and I quickly realized that this wasn’t a one-time event, but rather the beginning of an organization. Creating a nonprofit was different from creating a one-night show, however, and we needed help. Graham Bridgeman joined us as our development expert, and the three of us formed the nucleus of the organizing group that has created the Pop-Up Museum of Queer History as it exists now -– along with dozens upon dozens of volunteers, artists, historians, archivists, and committed community members, without whom we could not exist.

What different components does the show incorporate?
"On the (Queer) Waterfront: Brooklyn Histories" is a scatter-site-specific investigation of the queer histories of the beloved borough where the museum got its start. Our kick-off event, on Oct. 5, was a queer history block party, which had music, performances, tabling by queer community organizations and archives, walking tours of the queer history of Dumbo and Brooklyn Heights, and workshops on how to archive your things at home, and how to make queer art out of queer history.

Throughout the rest of the month, we will also offer a night of experimental films produced in or about Brooklyn (co-hosted by MIX NYC and Union Docs), a panel discussion on queer communities and gentrification (co-hosted by the Brooklyn Community Pride Center), an open discussion between Circus Amok founder Jennifer Miller and queer sideshow impresario Ward Hall, and the premier of a new work by playwright and nightlife star Justin Sayre, based on the life of Hart Crane.

October is LGBT and Queer History month -- what do you hope this show contributes to the way we know and understand LGBT history?
It is our hope that this show will contribute to an understanding of Brooklyn as a place with a queer past. We are not merely interlopers newly washed up on Park Slope’s shores, but queer communities and people have flourished in these neighborhoods for as long as queer identities have existed.

But more than that, our goal for every Pop-Up is threefold: To show queer people as a valid public, worthy of speaking to; a valid subject, worthy of speaking about; and a valid authority, worthy of speaking on our own terms. What makes Pop-Up unique among the many fantastic queer history projects that have sprung up in the last few years is that we put a focus on our community teaching each other, which is why we offer workshops on how to “do” queer history on your own. We believe that when and where queer history has been preserved, it has been preserved by queer people ourselves, and this is a strength to be celebrated. Instead of one dominant, top-down narrative of our history, which would leave out the things that are awkward or hard or just simply commonplace. We have a million strains of history passed down from queer elders – and we celebrate that.

Where does the inspiration and overarching philosophy for the show come from? Is it a collaborative effort? Who all is involved?
Pop-Up is a volunteer, collaborative, non-hierarchical labor of queer love. Our organizing committee is permeable, but has a core of five members who have all been working on Pop-Up for at least a year. We dream of some day being able to pay our staff. After our first two shows, we set an organizational priority of always "stipending" our artists, even if only a little bit, as part of our commitment to strengthening the community of people interested in queer history. We use an intersectional model of queer history that is deeply indebted to and concerned with feminist studies, anti-colonial studies, critical race theory, without going to a purely theoretical and academic place that could turn off many viewers. We believe that history is exciting and beautiful and liberatory.

My Remarks At Visual AIDS "(Re)Presenting AIDS" Forum

Transcribed by Visual AIDS, September 2, 2013. Read the original here.

On August 22, 2013, Visual AIDS along with the Pop Up Museum of Queer History and the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies, held a public forum entitled, (re)Presenting AIDS: Culture and Accountability. The event was recorded and transcribed. Panelists we invited to present a short statement about their work related to AIDS, art, and representation. Below,Hugh Ryan talks about the New York Times op-ed he wrote about the New York Historical Society's AIDS exhibition, and shares his thoughts about the power of history.

Hi, I'm Hugh Ryan. I’m the founding director of the Pop Up Museum of Queer History. And I just wanted to start by saying—thank you to everyone for being here because one of my biggest answers to the questions is engagement. I think we have to engage with each other, we have to engage with the generations before us, the generations after us, the institutions that support us, the institutions that scare us. It’s about engagement. It’s only when we’re talking to each other, sharing our stories, and sharing what we know and have experienced that we actually can move forward with any of this.

I recently wrote an editorial about the New York Historical Society’s show, and I was very critical. And I regret that the one thing that I did not say was: please go. I want everyone to see that show. I want everyone to see every one of the shows that we’re talking about and to talk about what is good, and what isn't good, or what we did like, or didn't like, or did understand, or didn't understand because we don't really move forward without doing that.

The Pop Up Museum of Queer History works around the country with organizations to create community-sourced displays on queer history. What I think differentiates us, or what we try to accentuate in our model is, we believe when and where queer history has been kept, it’s been kept by queer people ourselves. And this is a virtue; it’s not a problem. It’s not something we need to solve.

It’s not to say that we don't believe in authorities or in experience and in learning but, you don’t need, necessarily, to go through some institutional practice to have that and that, by valuing the authority that we have in the room and by sharing it we actually learn from each other. What we, as a museum, try to do is to work with individuals to create exhibits. So, our shows will have 30 exhibits created by 30 different people, some of whom may consider themselves artists, some of whom may consider themselves historians, many of whom have never thought about making an exhibit for a museum before. Our shows tend to be over lapping, they tend to be a little messy because of it. We believe that interplay is where we really learn the most, so we believe that one of the most important things in terms of how should AIDS be represented, is that we should all be representing it ourselves.

History is a tool we all have access to and we’re in this really odd moment right now, around queer history specifically, where it’s going from a “for us / by us” model of history to one that is more concerned with mainstream recognition and straight audiences. We’re suddenly interesting to people. And that’s not a bad thing. And that’s not something to be afraid of, but it’s something to note and something to remember when we engage, we shouldn’t give up what we had before. And what we had before was a model of history where we kept our history because no one was going to give it to us. And when we had it, no one could take it from us.

Download the full transcript at: (re)Presenting AIDS transcript

As James Pritzker becomes Jennifer, here's what's next

First published in Crain's Chicago Business, August 27, 2013. Read the original here.

In a recent memo to her staff, Chicago CEO Jennifer Natalya Pritzker (formerly known as James) came out as transgender. In doing so, the retired Army lieutenant colonel joined a small group of high-profile transgender ex-military service members, which includes Army Private Chelsea Manning, Navy Seal Kristin Beck and Airborne Ranger Diane Schroer.

Earlier this year, Col. Pritzker's Tawani Foundation gave $1.35 million to launch the Palm Center's Transgender Military Service Initiative — the only previous public indication of the reclusive billionaire's private identity. It's not hard to understand her desire for privacy; transitioning genders is difficult enough without the world watching. Coming out is a deeply personal act that can be motivated by many factors, and every coming-out process is unique. However, here are some of the hurdles and joys Jennifer Pritzker is likely to face, drawn from the experiences of other courageous transgender public individuals.

• The chance to be herself. All too often, coming out as trans is portrayed as a dreary, dangerous and sad process. There's no denying that it comes with many potential difficulties; however, coming out also can be a deeply liberating and joyful occasion – as former People magazine Editor Janet Mock shared in this essay on love and identity, originally published on XOJane.com.

• Her identity will always be news. Even in reporting on completely unrelated matters, years after her coming out, it is likely that Col. Pritzker's transgender identity will be mentioned (positively, negatively, or just as fact) in all news stories about her from now on. In 1995, University of Illinois professor and economist Deidre McCloskey came out as trans — a fact to which this 2012 article on her thoughts about capitalism and income inequality devotes its first two paragraphs.

• The media will get it wrong. Whether it be editorial directive, simple confusion or willful disregard of her identity, it's likely that some members of the media will have a hard time using female pronouns (or the correct name) for Col. Pritzker. Even in reporting a recent story about Chelsea Manning's transgender identity, the New York Times blog Taking Note continued to use male pronouns and the wrong name, as per their official style guide.

• Her body will be treated as a legitimate subject for rumor-mongering and speculation. From our legal system to our gossip columns, we spend a lot of time thinking about, commenting on and regulating the bodies of transgender people. Indeed, it's hard to think of another identity whose mere mention causes instantaneous jokes about and conjecture on the state of a person's genitals, as movie director Lana Wachowski found out after she came out.

• Her family always will be brought up. If your last name usually is printed in bold, chances are any story about your transgender identity will perforce include your family's reaction. Even if you go out of your way to avoid mentioning them, they'll likely be brought up regardless – as the U.K.'s Daily Mail did in this article about Stephen Beatty.

• Some will demonize her. There are few groups in America today whose mere presence on television, in public office or in front of children is seen as morally dangerous or spiritually destructive. Unfortunately, this is a reaction transgender people often deal with – as Fox News demonstrated in this pseudo-scientific, transphobic rant about Chaz Bono appearing on TV's "Dancing With the Stars."

• And some will laud her. Voluntarily coming out while in the public eye is still an act of great courage, even if you're a billionaire. When veteran politician Stu Rasmussen decided to run for mayor of Silverton, Ore., as an out transgender individual, the outpouring of support — both in the town and in the local media — was more than enough to drown out the few who came to heckle.

It's hard to know what the next few years hold for Jennifer Natalya Pritzker, but hopefully, as the cisgendered world learns more about transgendered people, the negative truisms above will become less true with every year.

The Crucifixion of Aaryn Gries

First published in The Daily Beast on August 25, 2013. Read the original (entitled "Real Racism: What Aaryn Gries Reveals about Reality TV") here.

Aaryn Gries is a racist.

If you’ve watched CBS this summer, this isn’t new information about the twenty-two-year old Big Brother contestant. From saying that Korean-American houseguest Helen Kim should “go make some rice,” to flipping over the bed of African-American houseguest Candice Stewart, Gries has offended half the house—and country—with her sweet-faced, mean girl racism. Her actions have prompted CBS, for the first time ever, to publically address offensive statements made on the show (though they declined to comment for this article).

As a result, Gries has been dropped by her modeling agency and protested at her college. But far from exposing racism on Big Brother, the maelstrom surrounding Gries (and to a lesser extent, fellow houseguest GinaMarie Zimmerman), has had the ironic effect of hiding other, more systemic forms of racism that exist on Big Brother—and in reality television as a whole.

“On the televised show, absolutely, Aaryn was the martyr,” says blogger Jun Song, who is the only person of color to win BB in fourteen seasons. But, she continues, “there is such a disparity between what is actually going on in the house and what is televised.”

To know what’s really going on you have to watch the live feeds, BB’s saving grace. The feeds give (mostly) unfettered access to the houseguests around the clock, allowing obsessive fans to chronicle their every butt scratch and rape joke. It also allows for fascinating insight into the disparity between reality-TV-as-it-is-experienced-by-the-contestants and reality-TV-as-it-is-edited-for-the-viewer.

Gems caught on camera this season include:

• Saying Puerto Ricans smell funny and don’t shower;
• Suggesting that Nazi medical experiments were ultimately beneficial;
• Warning a biracial contestant that her “black side” was coming out; and
• Calling welfare “n***er insurance.”

But these statements, respectively, were made by contestants Amanda, Spencer, Kaitlyn & GinaMarie—not Aaryn. (The men have also made so many disgusting misogynistic statements that there’s no room to get into them here.)

In many ways, Gries is an easy target for anti-racist anger. She’s pretty, blond, and Southern. Her first name is an anagram for Aryan. But she’s far from the sole racist in the house.

“CBS, if you’re going to show one racist, you need to show all the racists,” says Sistah K, one of the hosts of a popular series of TV podcasts collectively called “Sistah Speak.” Sistah Speak began in 2007, when Sistah K and Sistah J were moved by their love of television—and their frustration with the overwhelmingly white male punditocracy that discussed TV in the media—to address “the need for a Black woman’s perception and honest analysis about certain shows and movies.”

“This goes on on other shows too,” says Sistah J, “but they don’t show it overtly like Big Brother because there are no live feeds.” In other words, they don’t show it because no one can call them out when they don’t.

The idea that by dealing with Gries we will “deal” with racism on reality television is ridiculous.

“Racism exists on reality television,” explains Song, “because it’s a reality in life. And therefore, it has to be a reality in every sliver of our lives.”

But how that racism is portrayed on TV is the decision of producers. It’s less uncomfortable for a majority white audience to believe that there’s simply one bad apple, one racist spoiling the bunch, than to see racism as part of our everyday existence. This not only excuses the other houseguests, it hides the racism inherent in the genre itself, which is particularly obvious in one area: casting.

“Reality television programs are produced to maximize audiences at a comparatively inexpensive price,” says Dr. Bryan Denham, Professor of Communications Studies at Clemson University and co-author of a 2008 academic paper about reality TV called Survival of the Stereotypical. “They do so,” he explains, “by reproducing social stereotypes.”

In essence, reality shows don’t cast (or televise) people, they cast broad stereotypes to get us watching. “They choose very extreme personalities to make for a big summer,” agrees Song, who believes this tendency has gotten worse over the years. This pursuit of extremes is particularly troubling in combination with another reality TV truth: the paucity of contestants of color.

“It’s the same scenario every single season,” says Sistah J. “You’ve got one or two people of color and they get voted out first.” The Bachelor, she points out, has never had a person of color in the title role—a fact they were sued over in 2012.

This point was backed up by Dr. Denham’s research, with an interesting caveat. On shows that involve being “the best” (Big Brother, Survivor) or succeeding in a business (The Apprentice, Top Chef) few contestants of color ever make it to TV. But if the show is about being an entertainer (American Idol, America’s Next Top Model), you see more people of color. Why?

“Having black people succeed as entertainers does not threaten white people in the business world,” Dr. Denham states unequivocally.

When shows like Big Brother cast extreme personalities to fulfill stereotypical roles, and only one or two are people of color, what’s the effect? Those characters are cast to fulfill pre-existing racial stereotypes. Whereas white people might be typecast as a “brain,” a “Southerner,” or a “jock,” people of color are always cast as the “angry black girl,” or the “Asian tiger mom.” The stereotype is always racialized, which isolates contestants of color and makes them even less likely to win. Not only are there always fewer contestants of color, they’re handicapped from the start.

Dr. Denham doesn’t believe this happens on purpose, rather, he points out that the show runners, judges, and network executives are most likely white people with the same pre-existing assumptions. These ideas about races are so ingrained they might not even notice what they are doing. But some viewers have pointed out that it’s quite a coincidence that contestants with extreme racial viewpoints just happen to be on one of the few seasons of BB to feature three contestants of color. Certainly, the controversy has created more buzz around this season of BB than any in recent memory, giving a big boost to ratings—though Song and the Sistahs have stopped watching in disappointment, and it’s not hard to imagine other people of color have done similarly. But has the controversy actually done anything about racism? Not really.

Aaryn Gries deserves the fallout for what she’s said and done. But the idea that by dealing with Gries we will “deal” with racism on reality television is ridiculous. She becomes a sacrifice whose very punishment is the thing that allows us, the mainstream audience, to continue watching, snug and smug inside our own non-racist self-conceptions. Turning racism into a story with a villain—instead of an underlying force of our existence—guarantees that any resulting conversation will go nowhere, mean nothing, and quickly be forgotten. Indeed, despite the anger at Gries inside and outside the house, all of the contestants of color have been sent home, while she remains. Given the chance to put someone up for elimination, America has repeatedly chosen other houseguests.

The problem with crucifying someone is that they rise again. All Gries had to do was keep her head down and play well, let other “scandals” happen inside the house, and leave the rest to the producers. Already, conversations about race and racism have receded into the background. In a Very Special Episode on August 18th, we watched GinaMarie (BB’s “other racist”) befriend houseguest Helen Kim, giving us a nice hint of a Hollywood movie ending, where getting to know a person of color instantly erases centuries of racism. But even if GinaMarie’s mind changed at all in that conversation (which I doubt), that’s just a personal growth moment for a white person, and all the contestants of color are still gone.

Aaryn Gries is racist. But calling her out on her racism while ignoring our own? That’s racist too.

HuffPost Live Discussion: Quist App Curates History of GLTBQs In America

Originally aired on HuffPost Live on August 6, 2013.

I was invited to be part of a discussion about queer history on HuffPost Live, convened by the creators of the queer history app, Quist. Watch the full segment on their site.

How to Whitewash a Plague

First published in The New York Times, August 3, 2013. Read the original here.

THE New-York Historical Society’s current exhibition “AIDS in New York: The First Five Years” accomplishes a neat trick: it takes a black mark in New York City’s history — its homophobic, apathetic response to the early days of AIDS in the early 1980s — and transforms it into a moment of civic pride, when New Yorkers of all stripes came together to fight the disease. It’s a lovely story, if only it were true.

To judge from the opening animation — a short video titled “What is AIDS?” — this show is aimed at AIDS neophytes, and as an informational vehicle it succeeds. Many of the images and ephemera are powerful testaments. But such details sit against an apologist backdrop that sees the city through rose-tinted glasses.

The medical community is handled with an especially light touch. While the show rightfully praises those who worked tirelessly to find a cure and provide palliative care to the dying, someone without prior knowledge of the epidemic could easily leave without understanding the bitter, hard-fought battles that activists waged to gain treatment.

If any group comes in for censure here, it’s AIDS patients themselves. While doctors sought valiantly for a cure, “Scared, angry people,” one text in the exhibit reads, “were often willing to try untested remedies, some of them potentially toxic, without waiting for official sanction.” This feels uncomfortably like victim blaming: those angry AIDS patients, why couldn’t they just wait? The same text excuses the medical establishment’s general inactivity under the blanket rationale that “research can be slow.”

Though more than 850 New Yorkers had died by the end of 1983, Mayor Edward I. Koch’s administration had spent only a cumulative $24,500 on AIDS. Research, apparently, wasn’t the only thing that was slow. After seeing this show, a newcomer to this history would be hard pressed to understand the rise of the street-activist group Act Up, the takeover of the Food and Drug Administration headquarters by protesters or the legacy of mistrust between the medical-industrial complex and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

That’s not the only time the exhibition boosts the city at the expense of its queer residents. Here is how it explains the glacial pace of the government’s response to the crisis: “The number of New York voters committed to fight for gay causes was insufficient to form a political bloc strong enough to successfully demand public funds for research, housing, and social services. This was in part because so many gay citizens feared that embracing advocacy would reveal their sexual identities.”

Here, grammar is put through the ringer to avoid blaming homophobic, apathetic New Yorkers for their inaction. But the queer community’s own supposed failings are easy to read.

Meanwhile, religious institutions, though often quick to care for the dying, frequently preached a conservative morality that discouraged the use of condoms, promoted heterosexuals as immune and obfuscated AIDS-as-a-disease in favor of AIDS-as-a-punishment. It was Cardinal John O’Connor, New York City’s archbishop at the time, who opened the 1989 Vatican conference on AIDS by declaring: “The truth is not in condoms or clean needles. These are lies,” adding, “good morality is good medicine.”

Statements like this were not uncommon at the time. But the exhibit merely says: “Since many religious groups felt homosexual activity was unnatural and prohibited by the tenets of their faiths, churches, synagogues, and individual religious groups responded to the AIDS crisis in different ways. Some were quick to judge and preached caution.” Caution? That’s one word for it. Others might say fear, misinformation or hate.

When homophobia is directly addressed in the show, it’s often situated as a nebulous force separate from actual people or institutions. “Discrimination, fear and prejudice were forces that had to be countered by education and, when necessary, legal action,” one text reads. “Although the response was certainly not universal, many New Yorkers, gay and straight, began to use their resources to confront ignorance, call attention to injustice and assist in fulfilling basic needs.”

Although not strictly untrue, this is certainly the most forgiving phrasing possible. The unfortunate side effect of this continual soft-pedaling of homophobia is that the queer community — our anger, our mistrust, our fear — is rendered incomprehensible to the viewer. If everyone else behaved so well, why were (and are) we so angry?

The Historical Society deserves some praise for tackling this topic at all, having failed up to now to address queer issues in any way. And yet, precisely because of this background, Jean Ashton, the exhibition’s curator and the museum’s senior director for resources and programs, should have worked harder to include the insight of those already active in chronicling AIDS and its legacy.

The funding for the exhibition came from upstanding sources like the Ford Foundation, and the programming and collections drew on resources from local academic institutions. It’s obvious there was scholarly input in the exhibit’s development, but it is not evident from the museum floor.

Bad history has consequences. I’m not afraid we will forget AIDS; I am afraid we will remember it and it will mean nothing. If we cannot face the root issue — that we let people die because we did not like them — AIDS will become a blip on our moral radar, and this cycle will repeat every time we connect an unpopular group with something that scares us.

A few months ago, I watched a man agonize over the prospect of sitting next to a couple who appeared Middle Eastern on the subway; 30 years ago, that look of fear and hate could easily have been directed at my boyfriend and me.

New Yorkers are strong; we do not need to be protected from our past. Instead, we should learn from the hard truths and bad choices it contains. It is not enough to mourn the dead or memorialize the survivors; we must confront history in all its painful, guilt-inducing glory and use it as a guidepost for our behavior today.

The Historical Society has taken an important first step toward addressing this difficult moment in our collective history. Here’s hoping future portrayals will be less celebratory and more investigatory.

TV’s Transformative Moment

First published in Newsweek, July 17, 2013. Read the original here.

Orange Is the New Black, Netflix’s original series that debuted on July 11, is no women’s prison TV show by way of Victoria’s Secret. Created by Jenji Kohan (the mind behind Weeds), the dramedy portrays with nuance its diverse cast of characters, from prisoners to lesbians of color, poor people, and even WASPs. And, most shockingly, a transgender woman of color—played by a transgender woman of color.

For the first time in TV history, a transgender character is at the forefront of a show and being portrayed by a black transgender woman. (Transgender is an umbrella term that also includes transsexuals.) Laverne Cox plays Sophia Burset, a former firefighter sent to prison for using credit cards stolen from the wreckage of fires she helped put out. In prison, she acts as a hairdresser, friend, and political conscience for the other prisoners, while also trying to ensure access to the female hormones she needs, and repairing her relationship with her wife and son. There has only ever been one other recurring, substantive transgender TV role held by a transgender actor: Dirty Sexy Money’s Carmelita, played by Candis Cayne, who is a staple in small transgender roles, including turns on Nip/Tuck, Drop Dead Diva, Necessary Roughness, and CSI: NY.

“Sophia’s the role I’ve dreamed about, prepared for, trained for,” says Cox, who has been acting for over a decade in shows like Law & Order and Bored to Death, and independent films like The Exhibitionists. Born in Alabama , Cox made her way to Marymount Manhattan College in New York City in the late ‘90s (Cox demurs on her age), where she would come out as transgender and begin her transition. Almost immediately, she began being cast in shows in the theater department, even though she was a dance major. But despite her talent and interest, acting never seemed a viable career path. “I just didn’t think I could have a career as an actor because I’m trans,” Cox says.

Indeed, on television, audiences generally encounter transpeople not as actors, but via some form of reality programming—all too often through exploitative daytime talk shows, for instance The Jerry Springer Show’s 1997 episode “My Boyfriend Is a Girl” (the show aired numerous iterations of the same topic over the years). But modern reality competitions have begun to show transpeople in a more nuanced light. The most obvious example is RuPaul’s Drag Race, but trans contestants have also appeared on America’s Next Top Model (Isis King) and Dancing with the Stars (Chaz Bono). Cox herself had her breakout moment as a contestant on the first season of VH1’s I Want to Work for Diddy in 2008. She parlayed that experience into her own VH1 show, 2010’s TRANSform Me, a touching reality series in which Cox and two other transgender women gave physical and emotional makeovers to cysgendered women.

Still, scripted roles for transgender actors are few and far between. More often than not they are limited to bit parts where they deliver a single sassy line, solicit someone for sex in a sordid alley, or die brutally during the opening credits of a police procedural. Cox is all to familiar with these roles, having played them before, as deeply and richly as their problematic scripts would allow.

“As an actor, it’s not my job to judge characters,” she says, “but to infuse them with as much multidimensionality as I can. I’ve known transwomen who’ve been in the sex industry, and their stories deserve to be told in a human way. I would rather see a transperson playing that character than a cysgendered male actor in a wig.”

Knowing what Cox would face as an actress, her first acting teacher, Actor’s Studio life member Susan Batson told her “it would be my job to bring truth and rawness” to these stereotypical, two-dimensional roles, Cox recalls. In other words, to act—something that network executives and casting directors all too often believe transpeople are incapable of doing.

“The wisdom has been that trans actors can’t or won’t go deep,” says Cox, “because, and a lot of this is because of how we’ve been represented, people think that our identities are not real. We are fake women.” At the GLAAD awards one year, a well-known director told Cox that “all she could do was glamour.”.

This same logic keeps transgender actors from being put forward for non-trans-specific roles. In her talks with casting executives and agents, Cox has been told routinely that this idea is a non-starter. (Cox has gotten roles that weren’t specifically written for transpeople, such as her turn as Blithe Stargazer in 2012’s The Exhibitionist, but only when the director has specifically requested her.) Yet the reverse is commonplace. When substantive transgender characters are written (which happens more in film than in television), cysgendered actors are typically cast—even when it’s a queer film made by a queer director. From Hillary Swank’s Oscar-winning performance in 1999’s Boys Don’t Cry, by Kimberly Peirce, to Felicity Huffman as the transwoman lead in 2005’s Transamerica, written and directed by Duncan Tucker, well-meaning LGB people often write trans narratives without employing actual transpeople. In the current TV landscape, there’s one recurring trans character on network television (Glee’s Unique) and one on cable (Degrassi: The Next Generation’s Adam Torres), according to a GLAAD report; both are played by actors who identify as cysgendered.

Moreover, complex trans characters are almost always written as white. “Black families like the Bursets, going through a transition, with a wife, with a child? I don’t think I’ve ever seen that on TV,” says Cox. “Ever.”

It helps, of course, that Orange Is the New Black is a Netflix original, and thus able to circumvent the scrutiny of advertisers on network and cable television. And Kohan has often shown herself to be more than willing to buck received wisdom and make complex choices.

There are signs that the industry is evolving. Transgender actress Harmony Santana was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in the 2011 festival-circuit movie Gun Hill Road, making her the first transgender actor to be acknowledged by a major acting award in the United States. Last November, the Sundance Channel greenlit the TV series “T,” which the network described as a “deeply personal look at Terrence, a transgender male who has recently undergone gender reassignment surgery and is beginning to live life as a man.” Casting for Terrence has yet to be announced, but here’s to hoping a transperson will get the role.

But casting choices won’t matter until there’s good material to be cast in and great actors to cast. And that takes vision and time, says Cox, who is ultimately optimistic.

“I believe in the creatives. When the creatives begin to do it, the casting directors will come along.”

Steve Grand’s ‘All-American Boy’ and the End of the Gay-Panic Defense.

First published in The Daily Beast, July 10, 2013. Read the original (with comments) here.

Just in time for July Fourth, Steve Grand—a singer-songwriter who hopes to become the first gay male country icon—released his debut video on YouTube. “All-American Boy” is a paean to everything country: bonfires, whisky, pickup trucks, the American flag, skinny-dipping, and trying to make out with your best friend as soon as the girls are gone. In just a week it’s already racked up nearly a half million views on YouTube. Not bad for a 23-year-old kid from Chicago with no label, no agent, and no management.

Grand has the voice to make it, not to mention the face and the abs (especially the abs). But is country music ready for him? Who knows? Artists like k.d. lang and Chely Wright have proven that the world is ready for lesbian country singers, at least in a limited capacity; after all, neither of them is (or aspires to be) Miley Cyrus or Carrie Underwood. A true gay country star in his prime still seems as far away as a gay leading man. But even if Grand is just a sexy flash in the pan, the video for “All-American Boy” is still noteworthy.

In the video, we watch as Grand’s puppy-dog eyes stare longingly at his best friend across the campfire, in a pickup truck, and, finally, while splashing in the local swimming hole. As the music climaxes, he kisses his friend full on the mouth while they both tread water naked. For a long moment, everything is suspended as we wonder what will happen next. Is “All-American Boy” in the spirit of a “gay is good” mid-’90s independent film, where the rules of fantasy dictate that love can overcome all obstacles, even good-old-boy heterosexuality? Or are we about to watch the sort of brutal smackdown that’s all too common in both film and real life?

As it turns out, neither. The boy pulls away and returns to the party, as does Grand. The vibe between the two is unchanged. Sure, tomorrow at the rodeo there might be a few awkward moments, but you get the sense that that’s it. Grand gets to be disappointed without being disparaged, disowned, or disemboweled. And somehow, like nearly every living woman on earth, Grand’s love interest is able to handle a man’s unwanted advance without going ape shit and killing him. Astonishing, right?

The tradition of killing a man because he hits on you is so enshrined in our culture, it even has a name: the gay-panic defense (see: Matthew Shepard, Richard Barrett, Scott Amedure, etc., ad nauseum—very nauseum). “All-American Boy” is a sign that perhaps, just perhaps, the fragile flower of American masculinity has finally toughened the fuck up. Not that I don’t cherish my supposed ability to drive men crazy, but I’d like the crazy in question to be a little more metaphorical and a little less murder-y.

If there is a sea change in the making, it’s good news for straight guys as well as us predatory homosexuals. Just this June, the American Bar Association’s Criminal Justice Section announced a proposal to urge the banning of the gay-panic defense in criminal proceedings, which will hopefully pass at its national meeting in August. The relevant text of the agenda for the meeting reads:

The Criminal Justice Section ... urges ... governments to take legislative action to curtail the availability and effectiveness of the “gay panic” and “trans panic” defenses, which seek to partially or completely excuse crimes on the grounds that the victim’s sexual orientation or gender identity is to blame for the defendant’s violent reaction.

In recent years, the gay-panic defense has rarely carried the day in court, making this move somewhat symbolic. But homophobes, consider this a warning: very soon, you may have one less excuse in your arsenal. (Or maybe not very soon, considering the state of Congress at the moment.)

This change isn’t happening in a vacuum. Just a decade ago, the Supreme Court’s rulings on the Defense of Marriage Act and Proposition 8 would have been unimaginable, in large part due to arguments that same-sex marriage would, in some ineffable way, damage straight marriages—or perhaps the very institution of marriage itself, not to mention the family, masculinity, femininity, religion, America, puppies, and apple pie. Today one need only Google around for a few seconds to find any number of amusing essays about what a ridiculous idea this is, many of them written by straight, married people.

Of course, these changes are all well and good in paper and pixels, but the real test will come when the rubber hits the road, or in this case, when the boy hits on the boy. And it should be noted that while the bar association urges banning the “trans panic defense” as well, according to the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Program’s 2012 report, transgender people are 167 percent more likely to experience anti-LGBTQ hate violence than their gender-normative LGB counterparts. In fact, in 2012, 54 percent of all anti-LGBTQ homicide victims were transgender. In many states, anti-transgender discrimination in housing, employment, and other matters is still legal. Though the ABA’s resolution is a step in the right direction, given the magnitude of the problem, it is tantamount to putting a Band-Aid on a flesh wound. The lack of transgender legal protections in this country should be criminal, and it seems depressingly unlikely that the vast apparatus of anti-anti-marriage campaigns will transform any time soon into a broader movement for social justice for all LGBTQ individuals.

But still, I can’t watch “All-American Boy” without smiling, even if the boy doesn’t get the boy in the end. Unrequited longing is the essence of youth. Indeed, without it, Taylor Swift would have no career, and Twilight would have no audience. “All-American Boy” welcomes gay boys into the club.