The Transphobia is Out There

by S.S. smith
Published on February 5, 2016 at 12:56pm

https://bitchmedia.org/x-files-transphobia-transgender-character-weremonster-reboot

I'm really enjoying the X-Files reboot, to my pleasant surprise—it's campy, it's fun, it's deliciously spooky, and it's a constant send-up of itself. The latest episode, "Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster," was completely meta. The episode written by Darin Morgan and X-Files creator Chris Carter would have been delightful, except for a glaring problem: The transphobia.

Meh, I dunno, it was a campy episode, that exchange about changing sex/gender was fairly amusing. If the "trans/drag/sex worker" character had been the only "campy comic relief" in an otherwise serious episode it might have been completely different but as it was I don't think there was a single character from that episode who didn't come off as over the top camp, Mulder and Scully included.

Browser crashed so lost my long post but second go around.

I really liked the call back to the old mid season funny episode of X-Files (vampire with false teeth) and really liked Rhys Darby (Flight of the Conchords) character and the twist on Humans are the real monsters.

The trans character felt like it was written in the 90's to be played by a 6 foot 5 linebacker in bad drag and a five Oclock shadow but then was updated to try and be more trans knowledgable and to tie it into the transformation/ which one is the real person/monster theme. But was done clumsily.

A better plot would have been for Rhys's character to befriend a trans character or join a trans support group and play up his misunderstandings about transforming.