As reported in a previous article, television show Pretty Little Liars recently revealed their big villain to be a 'crazy' murderous trans woman, in a trope that has been used to hurt the trans community for decades.
The people behind the show quickly came to their defence, stating that the character wasn't 'crazy' or 'evil' because they were trans, but that it was just something unconnected. A terrible fake response I know, but they believed their own bull, as did many of their fans.
But things may seem to be slightly worse for them now as the shows official Twitter released an image of the trans character Charlotte, along with the words 'He. She. It. Charlotte' and 'He's alive and he's coming for us. Isn't he?'
It's bad enough that they are using male pronouns such as he and him along with the photo of a character who is a trans woman, but 'it', well that's just one insult too far. and it would seem that I'm not the only one who thinks so as ABC were so inundated with criticism that they felt they needed to release a statement to address concerns.
A spokesperson said 'This tweet was in reference to lines Spencer and Hannah have said in previous episodes venting their frustrations about not knowing the identity or gender of their tormentor.'
'It was spoken by these characters a season before they found out that ‘A’ was a transgender character.'
'We updated the reference by including the name Charlotte because it was revealed that Charlotte is ‘A’,' the spokesperson added. 'Once it was tweeted we realised that it could be misinterpreted, and in no way wanted to offend anyone, so we immediately deleted the tweet.'
After the ABC spokesperson commented the shows executive producer Marlene King addressed the Tweet on Instagram. She wrote, 'The Pretty Little Liars official Instagram account is not run by the show’s creators, cast or crew. We too were upset by the post yesterday and were happy to see that it was removed. I encourage all people to be their true selves. And offer my support to the LGBT community.'
Personally, I'm calling bullshit on both apologies. So far Pretty Little Liars and the people who run the show/social media account have shown little to no regard for the trans community of how what they're doing may be harming us. They feel like they can say and do whatever they want, and then just say sorry when it blows up in their faces rather than taking the time to think about what they're doing.
The show is only in its mid-season break, but considering that much of the content of the upcoming second half of the s4eason will clearly focus on the new information that Charlotte is 'A', and transgender, I'm sure the show will be providing plenty more insults to the trans community soon.
Amy.
xx
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