Ironically, the Simpsons *didn’t* do it

Lily's out here being a trans Simpson to make up for the show's failings, what an icon

Yes, I did say thirty decades in the first few minutes and somehow I missed this through all 3 editing passes. I meant to say three decades/thirty years but you can clearly see why I failed an English degree. I hope this doesnt effect anybodys enjoyment of the video or ability to listen to the essay.

There's such potential for a trans episode for the Simpsons, because we know that Springfield has tendencies to Puritanism, torch-wielding and fickle changes. The town could get het up about a trans bogeyman then realise it doesn't affect them and switch the chaos off in a flash.

I have a prominent adam's apple and I get transphobic comments about it even though I'm literally a cis woman (not that the comments would ever be justified, but I think it shows how deeply the transphobic paranoia goes). I assume these types of cheap jokes in shows like this are partially to blame

I kinda don't mind mcbabe, because she doesn't have a joke on her transness and she's just a hot woman who doesn't really like people knowing she's trans and would rather be seen as just a woman.

Some insight into who to blame: I've worked on two shows that had legacy hires from The Simpsons. There is a culture of 90's suburban dad garage comedy that never got weeded out. Anyone with a resume long enough to include old episodes of The Simpsons are the same artists and writers who get uncomfortable if you criticize the police or mention they/them pronouns. They stick around in the industry and the folks who make them uncomfortable get cut instead.

9:03 I don't get why this would even be called a "deep voice" - it's just one of the default female voices the Simpsons used for hundreds of background characters over the years.

I'm guessing the McBabe thing is a reference to Caroline Cossey, a trans model and actress who was in a Bond film before being outed by the Murdoch press. McBain is kind of a pastiche of a buch of film franchises, including Bond.

7:18 for trans gags, I remember a Golden Girls episode that had a trans gag (Strange Bedfellows). There was a character, married with kids, who was said to be having an affair with Blanche who Blanche only saw as a friend, and it was ruining his running for a political spot in local politics. Sophie had a feeling that "something is up with him" but she didnt know what. At the end of the episode, Blanche tells him to come clean about them not having an affair, and he does, but he also says hes trans and says his birth name (a little ehh but this is an episode from 1987). Theres no uproar about it, but Sophie says "I knew it" and the joke was "I knew he was Italian!" And that was it (besides Rose being Rose and asking how it worked, and how the penis wouldve been made for him) They dont misgender the guy, they dont deadname him after his birthname comes out. It wasnt too bad of representation for its time. Interesting to see, though, as he was likely the first openly trans character on TV in the USA

The messed up thing about the marriage ep is that we have no idea how Leslie identifies before their outing. Like, if they really were trans, then Marge would've spent the entire ep misgendering them before publicly outing and humiliating them in front of the entire town - acts of violence that are portrayed as valorous 🤦🏾‍♀️

I was 10 when the Judge Constance Harm episode aired and despite the other character's reactions, the nonchalant way she says it stuck with me. As a little egg who watched a ton of Judge Judy, I thought it was really cool that someone in a position of authority could be trans. Of course, looking back on it, it's clear the writers were just making fun of the real life person by making her trans, which sucks. But as a dumb kid, it meant something to me.

On the "who to blame" thing, it's not the definite answer, but Sam Simon specifically forbade women from writing for The Simpsons (Patty and Selma were conceived as caricatures of his own sisters-in-law), and there were no women with a writing credit* for almost a decade. Some writers would infamously hand in the first drafts of the scripts having completely forgotten to write in Lisa or Marge.

when i was 11 i watched the gay marriage episode with my siblings and while they thought the episode was funny, it always made me feel...odd. like i was being ridiculed. at the time i felt dumb for feeling uncomfortable about the episode, like "why does this make me upset? am i just homophobic? why does someone pretending to be the opposite gender to trick people make me so uncomfortable?".

If you do write the episode, please have Lisa learn by asking a trans person about something instead of having Lisa tell someone else.

The Simpsons may be bad in this respect, but at least they are not outwardly hostile, like The Big Bang Theory. The amount of “jokes” about LGBT people in there is insane.

I can’t wait for Homer to be like: “MERGE THERE’S TRANS PEOPLE ON MY IPAD MERGE!”, and then Marge is like,”Mmmmm Homie trans people Homie hmmmm…”

It's incredible that a kids show like Rocko Modern life sequel has better Trans representation than any 'adult' show which keep pushing the 'trans are tricking us!' narrative

They could have made the episode much better and not transphobic. What if, when Marge discovers Veronica's "secret", or perhaps when she reveals it in front of all the wedding attendees, we switch perspective? We get to learn how Veronica and Patty met each other. Veronica was Not masquerading as a woman to win at sports - she was performing as one, either in a drag show or something else, because she liked the thought of dressing and performing as a woman, for fun, and maybe get some money out of it. Meets Patty while dressed as a woman. They hit it off, they have great chemistry, they go out, it's great! Veronica feels loved. However, she knows Patty is a lesbian, and if she found out Veronica is a "man" she would dump her and hate her. Veronica is convinced she is not trans! It just feels nice to dress like this, and be seen like this, and it's nice to date Patty! As time goes on, she begins to doubt this, but she's not certain. Fast forward to the wedding. Marge outs Veronica. Everyone is shocked. Veronica feels exposed and humiliated - this is her worst nightmare. People begin to question her and she's not sure what to say. Due to all the pressure and hostility from the crowd, she says she is a man, and apologizes for "fooling" Patty. Says she still loves her, but Patty rejects her. Everyone claps. Veronica is devastated. She goes home, alone. Grieving, confused, hurt. Later, she gets ready in the morning. She goes to put on clothes - both her masculine and feminine clothes are out. She hesitates. The "ruse" is up. She's no longer with Patty. She doesn't have to "pretend" anymore. She puts on the feminine clothes. She realizes she likes looking like this. She likes being percieved as a woman. She likes thinking of herself as a woman. Even with Patty out of the picture! Veronica is not doing it for her anymore, she's doing it for herself! Later on, Patty and Veronica run into each other. Patty is surprised Veronica is still dressed as a woman. They start talking. Veronica ends up revealing all this to Patty, and thanks her for her role in helping Veronica find herself. Patty is touched. After this, either A: Patty asks if they can get back together or B: Patty happily accepts Veronica as a close female friend.

The marrying episode could have 100% of went with Veronica being a cis woman with just "masculine traits" and showing how transphobia affects cis women too

I feel like although this episode wasn't meant to be against trans individuals, the whole sub-plot about Veronica being a man didn't really have to exist at all. They could have just let Patty happily marry her girlfriend and end it with Marge accepting her for who she was. But I guess the writers love seeing Patty and Selma fail at love and marriage :/.

honestly Lilly I think you'd have to go back 25 to 30 years to get to a time when the Simpsons were "Americas favourite family". by 20 years ago, 2003, the show was already well passed it's prime.

the "new wood in the shop class" was actually sort of funny, its possible to make trans jokes without punching down, and i feel like if given the right team of writers the simpsons could make a trans episode that is, at the very least, non offensive

I think what's so wild about the lack of a trans character is that there's a REALLY obvious plot they could use. Lisa's had so many eposodes where she gets swept up about a personal or political philosophy, meets a respectable adult, and comes to an ephipany over it. What if after viewing an example of misogyny at school or elsewhere, she comes home to Bart being annoying, Homer being Typical Homer, and her hardworking and competent stay-at-home Mom managing things by herself, which all compounds into a frustration towards men as a whole. She's young, she's falling down the rabbithole of "a woman-only world would be so much more utopian," perhaps not in such blatant and unsubtle terms, and in the third act, she gets to know a trans character. Maybe a new classmate or teacher introduced in the first act. This character could be a trans man, nonbinary, genderfluid, I think there's a ton of ways to approach it. Someone who makes Lisa think about gender in a way she never has before. A trans man character could express to her how feminity felt suffocating, while a nonbinary or genderfluid character could reflect that the world isn't as black and white as she was beginning to believe. I think a trans woman character could work as well, but for this scenario, ideas that don't have tinges of transphobia struggle to come to mind. I wouldn't call this episode idea perfect by any means, and that is kind of intentional. I wanted to give an example of positive trans representation that could've aired at numerous times across the series' long run. It also leans heavy on like, "cisgender education," but that's sort of the theme of the show, a "normal family" learning things. My goal wasn't to write the best trans representation ever, but to point out how easily the Simpsons could have addressed this topic.

Oof I forgot how bad “there’s something about marrying” was 😬

But lily, you are a simpson.

Completely unrelated, but it would be nice to see a background character who shows up looking as their agab, but over the course of a season just starts looking more and more like their real gender, and looking happier and happier

One of the most upsetting themes in the Simpsons is a sometimes explicit hatred for the mentally disabled. The most upsetting episode for me is the one where Bart gets put in Special Ed where the Special Ed students are portrayed as goofy and childish and Bart expresses disgust and anguish over having to share a classroom with them. Even Lisa can't stand being around mentally disabled people and expresses disgust when Ralph, a mean-spirited stereotype of a mentally disabled child, shows romantic interest in her.

A very interesting look as dysphoria is in the recent Jumanji movies with Dwayne Johnson, due to Jack Black's character Shelley. A very feminine girl irl picks him as her character because she thinks Shelley is a woman, not realising that its short for Sheldon, and after initially being freaked out by being a short dumpy man all of a sudden, she quickly becomes comfortable as him. In real life she is still a cis girl, but by the second movie she's just as comfortable in shelleys body as she is in her own.

in between this video and the family guy one, i was able to finally start testosterone. i can't explain how reassuring it is to be able to watch content from people like me, especially about trans issues. thank you for all your wonderful content :)

I'm a trans person whos watched basically every episode of the simpsons excluding the newest seasons (its some sort of fixation for me lol) and all I remember of 'trans representation' is smithers buying estrogen which stood out as absurd

Whoa... I never even considered that the "There's Something About Marrying" episode could have, in an alternate universe, had a trans positive twist at the end. That really would have redeemed the episode.

I'm astonished by how fast you crank out this videos. For sure the hardest working woman on KZfaq.

2:10 TFW you forget Simpsons has been running since 1693, George Washington talked about his fondness for The Simpsons when growing up.

Here's a couple of groaners that have always stuck with me: in one old episode (I think from the 90's, and I can't really recall the context), there's like a TV ad for some get-rich-quick money guru on his bikini girl drenched yacht saying something like "I bought this yacht cheap at a government auction, and all these beautiful women? They used to be men!" That's always thrown me into a rage. In one treehouse of horror, a witch comes along when the whole town's in Halloween fancy dress in the town square, and transforms them all into the costumes they're wearing. Disco Stu proclaims "oh! Disco Stu wishes he'd gone as Marilyn McCoo!" I've actually always felt that was kinda sweet lol

I feel like a character who really doesn't get talked about in terms of that fourth category of representation is Ms. Secondopinionson (yes, that's her real name) from Moral Orel, which has been getting a lot of popularity as of late afaik. She has a very deep voice that she changes to be high to talk on the phone with and openly discusses not having children due to her infertility. It really isn't much representation from the show, and it really feels like scraps, but considering the time period the show came out in, her coding is refreshing to see and the characters (besides her little half brother because he's generally a shithead because spoilers) respect her for her voice and how she presents herself, especially her father. Queer portrayal in Moral Orel is honestly pretty ahead of its time, and the characters really feel human despite being made out of clay! Anyway, TL;DR: Ms. Secondopinionson is underappreciated for everything she does and she deserves better.

The Belchers and Tobins are way cooler families, ngl

Was "There's something about marrying" LITERALLY written by jk Rowling?!?! I literally gasped when I heard the ending

I had completely forgotten about the gay marriage episode, and I'm glad that I had. Just seeing that scene at the altar gave me terrible dysphoria. No responsible trans woman would ever let things get so far without having said something, and there is no cis man who would do that at all outside of a bad plot on a sitcom. Or maybe that idiot who played at being trans and got kicked out of multiple L.A. Fitness locations.

The major interest of The Simpsons these days is that it's pretty much the only franchise that's lasted so long in its original form that it's had to reckon with certain choices it made early on that are now looked at much more poorly with how society has changed. And somehow it still hasn't done anything with the trans issue.

The stuff with Smithers "becoming Wanda" reminds me of Matt Baume's video on the show "Soap", which had a character, Jodie Dallas, who was definitely gay, but also may or may not have been trans too? The show, from what I can tell, kind of treats being gay and being trans as the same thing, because the writers were mostly cishet, and cishet people sometimes conflate all forms of queerness as being the same thing. Again. Matt explains it way better in his video, but what "The Simpsons" does with Smithers sounds similar to what "Soap" did with Jodie. Edit: also, it's pronounced "Matt Graining", not "Groaning". ok, pet peeve time over lol.

33:10 heck, American Dad has loads of trans or trans-adjacent characters who get gender related stories etc. One of my favourite trans characters is a hooker that one of Stan's workmates falls in love with while fully aware of her being trans. They still make transphobic jokes, but they balance it surprisingly well against real, human moments and decent, grounded representation. And that's another fox product, so it just can't be Fox's fault just from that evidence alone.

Realizing watching the simpsons recently that Veronica was probably one of the characters that made me not realize i was trans was a hard pill to swallow but i'm glad you made this video!

Can't believe the Simpsons has been running for thirty decades already. Time really flies.

i had trans thoughts since early childhood, and i saw an episode about patty's marriage when i was a kid. it scared me so much, especially the wedding scene itself, and i was so ashamed about the fact i wanted to "pretend to be something that i'm not". i was sure that my feelings are basically the same as Veronica's (it was the only ""trans"" character that i ever saw) and after people will find out that i'm "tricking" them, they will deservingly hate me more than anything lol. for a very long time, people finding out that i'm not cis, was the biggest fear of my life lol

You talking about South Park is gonna look like the Pepe Silvia room.

I think it's worth mentioning how the episode title "something about marrying" is likely a reference to the disgustingly cruel reality show "There's something about Miriam", which I am sure you have all heard of

"To be clear, I do not like Ru Paul" Oh my God I'm so happy to not be alone on this

Found your channel recently, one of my new favorites.

Na sweetie. I need that South Park video quickly because we need to talk about how Garrison is literally every negative stereotype about LGBTQ people possible through the years and I whole heartedly believe they are a big reason for transphobia we see now.

The word "transgender" or trans and i think even "transition" is not used in any of the appearances of these trans "characters" in the Simpsons. It's always "used to be a dude", "i think his name is mama shabooboo now", "hormone injections", "she-males", "he-she" The concept of trans-ness doesnt really seem to be a thing. It's more an incorporation of some of the peripheral concepts of it into a kind of "gender-bend" gag repreated in several ways

do't forget that one episode where a side gag was abe simpson being locked out of the house while the family was on vacation and desperately crying out about his medication, and the episode ends with abe with long blonde hair and visible breasts and saying smething like "I TOLD you i needed my medication!" I have no idea where that falls into anything but it certain is SOMETHING

It's pretty obvious given the show runners over the years that this show was created & run by nerdy cis, heterosexual men who barely understand women, let alone gender. The common consensus seems to be that in the Simpsons Universe trans people don't really exist, as they're either devious men, or gay dudes who really like fashion. Will the show ever get more inclusive writing? Uh, well... what did the Simpsons fandom do when the show runners, producers & studio tried to correct the micro- & not-so-microaggressions concerning race & racism? Yeah, it turns out they prefer racism. Let's face it, it sadly doesn't make dollar sense to feature trans characters on this show in anything other than a punch line, or a way to elevate more "privileged" minorities. Tbh, this show has always failed at representation, and continues to do so. Much like John Waters, we're simply & sometimes literally window dressing & gags. We probably won't save you from ravenous reindeer with our kitschy toy robots and softball witticisms rife with gay stereotypes. Point of fact, most qu**rs I know couldn't be bothered & why blame us? But hey, we had to live off scraps then, but not now. Simpsons is very much a product of its time, in that it has generally failed the LGBTQIA+ communities.

The Simpsons constantly manages to do like 3 steps back for every good step, and every good step is in the very early seasons and then decimated in the later ones.

The most transphobic joke I remember from The Simpsons outside of the ones you talked about was that bit in "Thirty Minutes Over Tokyo" with the guy talking about "squeezing every penny". He brags about getting his suit cheap because someone died in it and his yacht cheap because it smells like cat pee, which the audience is impressed by, but the "punchline" is that the beautiful women around him in the photo are trans (phrased as "used to be men" of course) and the audience reacts in disgust. Glad to know you think we're grosser than corpse suits and piss yachts _The Simpsons..._

Love you pointing out the problem with headcanons near the start. As somneone who comes from an RP background (forum/message board RP, video game RP and TTRPG for the last 20+ years), I've definitely encounted it non stop. I understand the need for certain headcanons when it comes to seeking out representation in something that might not otherwise give you it, but the big problem for me stems- as you point out- from the fact that so often it plays into stereotypes. It's a problem overall when characters are coded specific ways to get around censors and the like, but when I hear "oh i headcanon he's gay because he's feminine and likes creative arts" or "she's definitely a lesbian because she's muscled/short hair/masculine" it's like... is this not just us playing into the stereotypes we're trying to shirk at this point? That is to say... headcanon what you wanna headcanon, but it does give me pause in my own thoughts sometimes.

"family guy represented trans people better than the simpsons" and PROVE IT thereafter as such is a miserable experience to watch, i cant imagine what it felt when you researched it

30:45 not only is that not a good representation of a trans woman, that isn't even a timeskip or a transwoman. That is from an episode where Bart meets his ,dopplegangers, and when coming across his adult doppleganger, he happens to be married to a woman who looks like Millhouse. That isn't even Millhouse, that is just a woman we never see again.

Lily referencing previous videos is literally "Simpson Did It"

I absolutely hate that episode where the woman Patty was about to marry turned out to be a straight man. Big TERF energy.

Verônica's episode always made me so sad as a kid to watch, and it took me until adulthood to understand why. I can't even imagine being a trans kid/teen and watch it. The Simpsons is the oldest show of its format on TV, it's a bit shocking that they never ever ever had a single episode about a trans person, especially after an episode like "Homer's Phobia".

The gym teacher will be back as a man "next year," but the Simpsons _will never have a next year._ Bart has been a 10 year old since the 1980s. There is no next year in this universe. And any other trans character exists in a flash forward to some possible future, meaning the Simpsons will accept trans people "some day," but, importantly, _never today._

Great video! One you missed was Helen Lovejoy. Another throw away joke where someone says “I remember when she was Helen Shwarzbound, matter of fact I remember when she was Harold Shwarzbound”

One thing I want to know is --- did the Simpsons ever get around to someone taking the cherries out of chocolate-covered cherries and replacing them with mayonaise?

Regarding the Ms/Mr Pommelhorst bit, it's such a small thing, but the joke Nelson makes is actually funny and not overtly transphobic? Like, as a trans guy, it's the kinda joke my trans friends and I would make about each other if one of us got phalloplasty. We could argue that it's insensitive for Nelson to make such a joke about one of his teachers, but the joke doesn't rely on dehumanizing or belittling the coach in any way, it simply acknowledges the reality of (what the writers assume) Pommelhorst will be doing during their leave of absence. Again, it's a really small thing, but I can appreciate it.

The stereotype of trans people being stern is I think in part rooted in the way that a lot of cis folk's first experience actually with someone trans is being told off after we did something shitty, and it being exaggerated out into what 'they're all' like

Great video, I knew it would talk about the lesbian episode. The thing is, from what I've heard, the "man pretending to be a woman" was actually referencing an actual trans woman athlete so... That episode stings even more imo 😢

We're a punchline for them. That's it. (says the person who is old enough to have watched the Simpsons at the beginning, but stopped years ago.)

I can't believe it. We've done it. We've found the one episode The Simpsons hasn't done yet!

Just wanted to mention; Helen Lovejoy is actually also one of those "trans but mentioned just once and not brought up again" characters herself. It was mentioned in the season 20 episode that becomes a weird movie parody of Saw. Just thought I'd bring that up since you called the character cis

I thought the Simpsons staff writers had more or less outed themselves as white, straight libertarians after the "The Problem with Apu" movie and their oddball non-apology? Regardless, the show was propping up the status quo at least as far back as when I stopped watching around 1996.

I remember another inconsequential one-off joke, being in episode 16 of season 20 (yes I looked up which season just to make sure) where Moe goes to get his height surgically reduced, and right before going under, Dr. Nick says something like "When you wake up, you'll be a whole new woman", followed by the music teacher walking in, way shorter than before, and angry, implying that Nick got the procedures mixed up and that the music teacher is trans

The fact that they’re even referencing “There’s Something About Miriam”, a reality dating show about a trans woman looking for love with a bunch of men who don’t know her “secret” and how much they exploited her just says so much about The Simpsons’ attitude toward trans people

i had a hyperfixation on the simpsons during lockdown and these bits always seemed strange.. i identify as genderfluid now and yeah..

Look if nintendo could hire someone who's last name is bowser, surely they can have someone who's last name is simpson

This is such a great series of videos. Very clear and comprehensive.

So! Just mentioning, Helen Lovejoy herself has a joke about how a friend of Timothy "remembers when she was Harold" arguably making her the best trans rep... depressingly enough. Also, that's not Bart and Milhouse, they're dopplegangers that come up in Double Double Boy in Trouble. That aside this is still a great video. Canonically dubious as it may be, the McBabe card was news to me. A lot of those cards on side characters keep being more interesting than anything they get on the show. Does suck how badly they handle trans issues though. I mean, there's not only a few canon queer characters but a lot that could definitely be interpreted as at least "not entirely straight" like Chief Wiggum, Barney, Burns, Homer, Helen and a *lot* of others. Then again, outside of Lisa, Marge and Shauna (a oversexualized teen *and* a predator, gross all around) they can't even help being shitty to the *cis* girls and women, so trans women probably stand no chance... Also even fanworks fall flat. Almost never see any of those future-headcanon drawings make Martin trans. Cowards tbh.

There is one more episode you missed from what I can remember. It was a in the episode "Revenge is a Dish Best Served Three Times", where Bart is Batman and all the Simpsons chracters are playing characters in the Batman story. I haven't seen it since I was a kid, but I remember that it was a short gag about Lenny, who was thought to be Poison Ivy (I think), and was attcked for that reason, but it was then revealed that Lenny wasn't Poison Ivy, but, and I quote, "a transvestite".

Oh Christ I forgot how much I repressed that gay marriage episode 😭

I think there could be one way they could do a trans episode (if they excluded the whole Veronica plot). What if they did an episode where one close friend or family member of the Simpsons reveals they are in a hetero relationship with someone who is really transgender? One of the Simpsons family members (maybe Homer or Marge) judge by stereotypical gender traits and try to stop the wedding between them because they think they are *"tricking them"* into marriage. But then, the character reveals that they *do know* that they are transgender and obviously they still love them, regardless of what they are. The character who tried to stop the wedding starts to feel bad because of what they did and accepts the character and their transgender lover to be happy together as husband and wife.

There was another throw away joke where during the "Thirty Minutes Over Tokyo" episode where the Mega-Savings Seminar where the joke was the models were cheaper because they were trans and you hear disgusted moans from the audience. Or, when Krusty the Clown was running for office and when talking about paying a prostitute Burns mentioned that Krusty could write it off as a fact finding mission and Krusty said he found out the prostitute was a man. Both awful

I noticed you said Mass Effect and had to throw my two cents in. Yes, you might say Asari are 'no they aren't really gay', but you do have to look at the greater context. Bioware has been putting queer characters in their games before it was cool, or even really acceptable, and fought an uphill battle doing so. So if you're going to bring up Mass Effect, please look into the other bioware games as well. Such as KOTOR, or even Dragon Age. Thank you for reading.

I think what also needs to be said is that by not including a trans person outside of a shitty gag that they cannot even commit to, The Simpsons is saying it doesn't condone or want to show trans people. It it's been this long, it's intentional. Transphobia was clearly kind of baked into the show early and since Matt has shown little growth in how he considers trans people across his creations, I think we can say in some way that The Simpsons is transphobic, or unwilling to acknowledge the humanity of a whole group of people outside of a bad joke.

So... Can this video be considered as a Simpson dissing other Simpsons?

Also, i think classic era marge would never be this biggoted, or vindictive, (especially for her sisters whom she vehemently defends almost too a fault) We see in Homersphobia how much she defends John, and how downright progressive her and lis are especially compared to homer. But even in the sake of Homers Enemy they changed homers ideology for the sake of the plot and that worked as homer havung homophobic views and being vindictive works well for his character as he us very prone to jealousy and toxicity. But homer has also been very okay with other gay characters prior too Homers phobia. But I think marge being that vindictive and homophobic and transphobic is insane too me. Its also insane for a show that is fairly progressive for the 90s (especially on Fox) covering topics like Vegetarianism, homosexuality, and gun violence and Matt Groening being more socialist leaning

Whoa I wasn't expecting this to be ready yet! I hope you're not still dealing with too much tooth pain.

finally someone talks about the blatant transphobia in "There's Something About Marrying!" I wanted to add my own episode that I see as trans-adjacent: "Girls Just Want to Have Sums." it's basically the same level of "wow, there is nothing remotely trans about this character, and yet they use this to be incredibly transphobic." the t-slur and the h/s slur are both used during the episode (wonderful...) and it relies heavily on the gender binary, what with the kids being sorted into separate boys' and girls' schools. plus, it is really heavy on the gender essentialism of "oh boys tough and girls soft" to the point that Lisa, being in drag to get a better education from the boys' school, finds herself becoming accidentally violent. it is reminiscent of the TERF talking point that "little girls are being transed to get ahead in life!!!" and I feel like it was *trying* to be like "girls can do anything boys can do!" but. the math class at the girls' school was about "what do numbers feel like to you?" rather than a standard math class, which was found at the boys' school. which clearly shows that they think that being a boy will get you further in STEM subjects. it's a very...interesting one for sure! oh, and a funny little tidbit from the same episode (I hope I didn't get my directions mixed up in remembering this): Principal Skinner divides the school into "girls on the left, boys on the right" at an assembly. but they arrange themselves as girls on STAGE left and boys on STAGE right. meaning, from the kids' perspective, all the girls go to the boys' side and the boys go to the girls'. if I didn't get my left and right mixed up and this really did happen, it was just an animation error, but my non-binary self found it funny upon rewatch. the kids in Springfield say fuck your gender binary

Always excited when a new video is posted. This one is just as well thought out, researched, and constructed as the others. Thank you for your insights.

Should include the good place (Janet) the Orville for the alien/robots/supernatural beings in this future video.

kinda funny calling simpsons the "wholesome family show / positive cartoon" when it was originally made to be the exact opposite

I never watched the Simpsons until recently, so I had no idea about "There's Something About Marrying." There's so many ways they could have made it NOT transphobic, at the bare minimum giving Marge a moment to learn and be better, but instead she was seen as the hero for saving her sister from marrying a man. They've had nearly 18 years since then to provide trans representation that was more than just a gag and yet they have nothing to show for it. It's extremely disappointing to say the least, having to grasp at hints or look for confirmation outside of the actual show instead of just...portraying it within said show is still a problem.

4:10 I KNEW this was about Mass Effect before you even ended that sentence, and I'm ecstatic; I have a _LOT_ of thoughts about the Asari and would love to hear your take.

16:43 lol, this joke went totally over the Latin Spanish dub :(( because she says "it reminds me of when I was little", I was always confused on why Snake asked that or why Homer and Marge looked at each other, now I understand why Dx what a shame...

My family and I often watch the Simpsons together. One night I was home with my little sister, watching the Simpsons and the 'Something About Marriage' (aka the transphobia episode) came. At first I was like "Oh cool, gay people" but man was I wrong. As a trans guy it just made me really uncomfortable the way trans people were portrayed in a show my family and I watched so often. Still waiting for a trans Simpson's episode.

the milhouse one isnt even a time skip its a double ganger sit 😭

It occurs to me that Brunella Pommelhorst could've been a funny character if our initial assumption as the audience was that she was a trans *woman,* and the show then poked fun at us, the audience, for leaping to conclusions or being ignorant and confused about the difference between trans men and trans women. As it is, yeah, the joke unfortunately invokes a current-day TERF trope to an uncomfy degree. Humor is indeed about inverted or violated expectations, but can we just once make fun of the people who hamstrung themselves by having small-minded or silly expectations in the first place, and not the people who are violating those other people's expectations by just innocently living their lives?

Came for the Twin Peaks video and have been watching everything since. Someone probably suggested this, but you should look at Cowboy Bebop someday. As far as animes go, I thought it was very ahead of its time with trans representation. 🖤🖤

The idea of transing Smithers, just reeks of them only wanting one or two queer characters in the show. They could have done that with any other character, why did it have to be the one gay man?

Ah, lovely to listen to your takes whilst I am definitely working and in no way distracted by one of my favourite KZfaqrs. Kinda a depressing topic as always, but i appreciate the positivity you do include! Also loving the head cannon conversion, I think it can be hard at times because of how trans people talk about themselves, passing culture etc. It's not impossible, but it requires more effort than just saying person X has a boyfriend or wife against cishet expectation.

I’m glad someone is finally talking about this! I didn’t watch the Simpsons when I was growing up (for some reason a lot of conservative fundie parents thought it was inappropriate for children), but I started watching it on Disney+. I started transitioning about a year before this, so every little trans gag was very noticeable to me, I was wondering why no one else was talking about it, so I’m hoping this video can help start that conversation.