So transgendered people are nothing more than 'the real sex story du jour'? Leave it to the mainstream media to sexualize, fetishize and exoticize gender identity and trivialize the lives of transgendered people. And while drag queens and drag kings are (in my view) a welcome part of the transgender community, that community also includes transsexuals, crossdressers, genderqueers, and many other types of gender-variant people, most of whom do not regularly lip-synch on stage for fun or money. For most of us, our gender identity is not just a performance that we put on for the amusement of non-transgendered people, much as the oh-so-liberal mainstream media might mischaracterize transgender as a phenomenon.
The breezy tone & the mix-'n'-match way Neumaier throws transgender identity, film and television depictions, and drag venues into the same pot in this Daily News piece is really off-putting. To the unsophisticated eye of a tabloid pseudo-journalist, these may all look like the same thing, but there's a very big difference between an exploitative reality show like "He's a Lady" and a the sensitive portrayal of a transsexual transition in "TransAmerica" or the real-life stories of real transgendered youth in "TransGeneration."

This article in the Daily News is accompanied by a photo of Felicity Huffman in "TransAmerica" and the News reporter even quotes from Huffman's eloquent speech accepting Golden Globe award for Best Actress in a drama. But even while Neumaier quotes Huffman, he simply doesn't absorb the message that she sent to the Globe audience, saluting people "who brave ostracism, alienation and a life lived on the margins to become who they really are." Kudos to Felicity for understanding what the mainstream media -- including this Daily News reporter -- do not. Transgender is not some chic lower Manhattan kinky sex trend, but an emerging community of real people living really difficult lives as they attempt to actualize their identities in the face of a still largely hostile society and uncomprehending and not all that liberal media.

If major media outlets such as the New York Daily News were really all that 'liberal,' this would be a piece of advocacy that delves into the reality of transgender lives, which includes pervasive discrimination and violence. Instead, the piece is accompanied by a sidebar on four venues (two clubs and two restaurants) in Manhattan that feature drag performers.

One of these is Lucky Cheng's, a restaurant in the East Village that features drag hostesses serving rather bad Chinese food. Being a transgendered Asian woman, I would be a prime candidate for a job there, but when I visited the restaurant, I felt very much like an animal in a zoo being stared at by the clientele, mostly non-transgendered straight white tourists and suburbanites who come to gawk at the exotic trannies. While I appreciate the fact that Lucky Cheng's provides much-needed employment for transgendered women, many of whom have few alternatives other than sex work, the 'feel' of the place is anything but 'community.' The fact that this sidebar ("Cross-dressing all across town" by Heather Fletcher) is attached to the longer piece on transgender media visibility shows just how unserious the Daily News is about coverage of transgender issues.

True, the News reporter did contact both the National Center for Transgender Equality (Mara Keisling, NCTE's executive director, is quoted briefly) and the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (Cindi Creager, GLAAD's director of national news is also quoted). But Neumaier also felt compelled to get a quote from the Concerned Women of America, presumably for 'balance.' When do reporters ever come to transgender advocacy organizations for quotes to balance news stories about the religious right?

Not long ago, a male-to-female transsexual incarcerated in a prison upstate sued the State of New York to cover the cost of his/her sex reassignment surgery. I got calls at the office of the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy from as far away as Kansas City. What I was wondering was why the papers that shamelessly sensationalized the case -- including both the New York Daily News and the New York Post -- never call the NYAGRA office to interview me about discrimination or violence against transgendered people. If the mainstream media were as 'liberal' as the Rush Limbaughs and Sean Hannitys of this world keep on telling us they are, mainstream media coverage of transgender issues would be far different from what it is now, a sensationlizing but ultimately marginalizing and exoticizing trivialization of transgendered people and transgender lives.