Op-ed: Dear Media and Fellow Trans Men, We Are More Than Our Bodies
The U.S. Army's first out trans soldier argues that media obsession with trans men's medical histories and traditional masculinity detracts from what we need to discuss most.

http://www.advocate.com/commentary/2015/05/21/op-ed-dear-media-and-fellow-trans-men-we-are-more-our-bodies

On Advocate.com
BY  Sgt. Shane Ortega   May 21 2015 4:00 AM ET

As the nation's media continues tracking down stories to satiate the current cultural curiosity about transgender Americans, we only rarely see trans men invited into the discussion. And when we do, we're most often invited to do one thing first: take off our shirts.

Currently, the media is only publishing and discussing "fluff" pieces about trans men — articles about conventionally attractive men or pieces with titles like "Look at This Trans Man, He's So Hot!" or "Gorgeous Men That You Would Never Know Are Trans."


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Read On - Sgt Ortega makes some very good points.

Another casualty of our community's inability or unwillingness to educate the world about who we are. If we don't do it, the media will, and the media will get it wrong. Because their job is not to educate. Their job is to get attention for their advertisers and to sign up subscribers. To expect anything else of the media is optimistic.

That's a great piece, and it's something we should all remember as we go about our lives -- even if we're not so public as to get into the media, if we're not 100% stealth, sometimes we're going to be in the position of speaking for trans men as a group or seen as representative of all trans men. We owe it to each other to be mindful when this happens, and to use such occasions as opportunities to fight the kind of stereotyping Sgt. Ortega talks about.