Christian Siriano Succeeds In Normalizing "Tranny" As An Insult

Just a few weeks ago, I noted that Christian Siriano, the femmiest of the gay designers on "Project Runway," was pretty hypocritical to use "tranny" as an insult. And while it's his choice if he wants to try and be clever and outrageous, it's still really annoying to me.

See, when someone like Christian starts saying that, it makes it OK for, say, Amy Poehler to do it. So now she's gone and dressed up as Christian on "Saturday Night Live" and done a sketch which consists of little more than the words "hot tranny mess" and "fierce." Oh, how outrageous and daring and culturally incisive.

The next step will be frat boys imitating the sketch, followed by frat boys imitating the sketch while beating the living daylights out of the next transsexual they meet.

Now that's fierce.

Comments

[2BTru]

Thank you! I can't believe no one has said this yet. It's insulting, not cute, not *fierce* and it's detrimental to the GLBT community.

[oakling]

To be fair... "hot tranny mess" is deeply messed up, but Christian seems to use "trannies" itself as an alternative to "guys" and "ladies." My girlfriend pointed this out to me: instead of calling the men "ladies" and the women "guys," he addresses them all (particularly in the final episode) as "trannies." As someone who's trans, I totally love that; it acknowledges the cross-gendered way we use those words anyway, and normalizes the word "tranny" in a nice way. Also: if a frat guy is inclined to beat up a tranny, he is going to do it whether or not he hears someone say "hot tranny mess." Come on.

[melang]

i don't think Christian's "tranny" usage refers to transsexuals, but refers to tranvestites - who are notoriously over the top and "costumey" when dressed up. it really never crossed my mind that this would be considered offensive.

[cloudboy]

Are you really this stupid? Come ON, let's really think about this, and get all our brain cells in on the action.

#1 - You say using the term "tranny" as an insult is hypocritical. Why? Because he's gay? Your brilliant phrasing exposes what you really think about gays I guess. If you are gay, then I guess there's a little bit of self-loating going on? If you are straight, I'm honestly not surprised.

#2 - Your tree of logic (Christian, then Amy, then frat boys, then violence) is majorly flawed. I won't even get into since you probably don't care. Seek help! Or at least take a course or two in the evolution of language.

#3 - Finally, and the biggest whopper of it all - he means transvestite, not transexual you silly goose! HA!

Your headline on this post is clearly a desperate attempt to get hits. Fake journalism doesn't seem to suit you well. Time to job hunt!

[A Hot Tranny Mess]

Not only am I posting this just to once again reiterate that he means "transvestite" rather than "transsexual" or "transgender", but I'm also posting this to say that even if he did mean "transsexual", it still wouldn't be a problem. I'm an FTM and I actually think he's hysterical. It'd be great to get some exposure in the media that wasn't about MTFs "tricking" men into sleeping with them.