One of the best known and most respected publications in science and technology chose to run a sexualized, transmisogynistic photo for its cover this week, and when the editor was challenged on twitter for pandering to the male gaze, he responded that he thought it would be interesting what would happen when those males “find out.”
While the focus of Science magazine’s July 11 issue on combating HIV and AIDS worldwide is laudable, the editors unfortunately chose the route of crude sensationalism to present that story to the public. The magazine cover features a dehumanizing image of trans women sex workers in Jakarta that focuses on their bodies, crops out their faces and primarily centers on their exposed thighs. The text accompanying that picture says, “Staying a step ahead of HIV/AIDS,” as if trans sex workers are somehow an image that is naturally synonymous with this disease.
And while, yes, trans women globally, on average, do face significantly elevated risks, could you imagine the outraged response if the same cover text accompanied an image of two men in a sexual embrace, and further only showed them from the neck down?
It has also been pointed out that apparently Science has never run any similar cover image that focuses on sexualizing parts of human bodies before. What’s more, the online text that appears below the cover image states:
This “key affected population” has high HIV prevalence but is largely ignored by government efforts.
Yet, when you click on the linked cover story, it doesn’t actually mention trans people at all.
However, when one of the Science editors was challenged on twitter over this image, the situation worsened quickly. When several people challenged Jim Austin, Science Careers Editor, about the blatant sexism on the cover, Austin responded by saying, “You realize they are transgender? Does it matter? That at least colors things, no?” as if crudely sexualizing women suddenly becomes okay as long as they’re trans.
https://twitter.com/LSU_FISH/status/489505604218933248
https://twitter.com/JacquelynGill/status/489519288626077697
@JacquelynGill @LSU_FISH @AAASmember You realize they are transgender? Does it matter? That at least colors things, no?
— Jim Austin (@_JimAustin) July 16, 2014
When @JacquelynGill challenged the idea that sexually dehumanizing trans women is okay by saying the image was just another “male gazey image,” Austin responded, “Interesting to consider how those gazey males will feel when they find out.”
https://twitter.com/JacquelynGill/status/489520079126548481
@JacquelynGill @LSU_FISH @AAASmember To me it defies the obvious stereotypes, problemetizes responses in interesting ways.
— Jim Austin (@_JimAustin) July 16, 2014
https://twitter.com/JacquelynGill/status/489522077632708612
https://twitter.com/SciCareerEditor/status/489522658455715842
Here Austin has gone far beyond the line and is starting to play into violently anti-trans woman ‘deception’ tropes. The fact is that this type of rhetoric has been used for years to promote victim-blaming myths against trans women, and has even been used in court cases to reduce sentences or free cis men from culpability for murdering trans women (even in cases where the men in question actually knew the woman was trans all along). These statements, particularly when taken in conjunction with an image catering to the male gaze, also buy into the idea that trans women’s bodies are somehow public domain. And above all, they buy into the utterly stupid, unscientific idea that cis males somehow have some kind of “right” to not be attracted to trans women.
If a man is uncomfortable with his own sexual attractions, that is not a public issue; that is his own problem that he needs to sort out for himself. And the recent spate of often brutal murders against trans women of color across the U.S. emphasize that the priority in this conversation must be the safety of women, not the hand-wringing of men who lack the personal integrity to make sense of their own sexual desires in a healthy, reasonable way.
