It’s a wonderMacFarlane didn’t say Brian throwing up was a nod towards the film The Crying Game…
Anyway, why is it so difficult for people to understand gender and orientation are two different things?
pounds head against wall

WowI always thought of Seth McFarland as being one of the better thinkers in charge of a prime-time series.   But this interview really shows there can definitely be “stupid heterosexuals” even amongst the most liberal.
I am homosexual, I’m also transgender.  (I’m also a member of Mensa, so I don’t think “stupid” really applies.)   My girlfriend, who doesn’t identify as lesbian, got upset at the episode, too… and she’s been on the side of disgust before.   While there were good points in the show, the bad greatly outnumbered them.   I just wish Seth would open his eyes to what he actually did.

It is just me…or are other people getting sidebar ads from “ladyboykisses.com” appearing on this page?   I know Pam or the other baristas don’t control what ads Google decides to put on the page, but I’m rather offended.

Good goshNothing like that here but I’m getting an ad from BP on the main page.  

UghShut up Seth McFarlane.
He’s being a stubborn ass (although this does prove what I have been saying all along, which is that he isn’t being unintentionally malicious, but rather he’s just woefully uninformed and dumb as a friggin’ post about this issue).
For the record, I am a gay man and I am not terrified or disgusted by vaginas.

OopsI meant to say intentionally malicious. I think he is being UNintentional.

It’s scaryThat he can think his portrayal of trans people is so great, and it could be so god-awful.
We’ve got a long way to go… =/

I was a bit skepticalat first, about the outrage over this family guy episode…but now that I have seen this interview, I can see why people are mad. He’s being downright insulting!

A Few Seasons Too Late To ComplainThere’s an episode from the 2nd or 3rd season called “Lethal Weapons” which pretty much does the same thing.  New Yorkers (AKA “leafers”) come to Quahog and there’s a scene at The Drunken Clam (the bar) in which Quagmire approaches what he thinks is a woman but turns out to be a trans.  He first freaks out then asks if she’s pre or post op, and when she says “pre-op”, Quagmire says “WHOA TRANSVESTITE!”.  
At least Lois whoops the asses of those 3 weirdos from “Superman 2″ and sends them flying back into space in that square thingie.  Totally makes up for the bad joke.

I know he thinks he’s helpingThat’s what sucks so much. I don’t think he even realizes how hurtful the episode was. The thing is, I’ve seen him interviewed about his gay activism on the show. He talked about how people would write about how funny Stewie was and then, in the same breath say “You have too much gay stuff on the show.” Supposedly he would respond by saying “You know your favorite character on the show? Yeah, he’s gay.”
It’s ignorance. Let’s hope he eventually realizes that he needs an attitude adjustment and some education about trans folks.

No.He has a long way to go.

I think the worst thing about itMight be the constant assumption that he gave us this nice gift we should be grateful for and that he’s deeply hurt by us not being grateful for.
I don’t want to minimize the fucked-up portrayal or treatment, but this weird movement where in not only we get the shit sandwich, but we get people who think we should treat it like a delicious deli lunch is kind of fucked up. We saw it in the “Ticked Off” movie and we see it with Seth.
If you want to trade on lowest common denominator “humor” that’s all about “they are a mostly unheard of minority community, aren’t they freaky” or repeating old unfunny Ace Ventura jokes, then own it, don’t turn around and try and tell us that the Trans community should be fellating you for this “glorious gift”.

It’s yet another example of the arrogance of the “artist”…
It reminds me of when the out GAY creator of the original, often otherwise great British Queer as Folk series years back defended all the condomless sex in it because he insisted he was an artist who had no social responsibility. And he got away with it.
He and McFarland have that attitude in common which makes them have something else in common: they’re both PIGS!
The only thing that will change McFarland is screaming long and loud at him; including pointing out that he would never dare portray someone white throwing up because he found out someone he’d had sex with was black but had appeared to be white. Biological wiring, my ass!
Such protest CAN work, even with some of the most bigoted as evidenced by last night’s So You Think You Can Dance during which its rabid homophobe creator Nigel, who got rightly pilloried a few years back for declaring that he didn’t want to seen “Brokeback Ballroom.” Last night, he so seamlessly played along with gay judge Adam Shankman’s joking marriage proposal [inspired by yesterday's court decision] that one would think he didn’t have a homophobic cell in his body. [The truth of what he's apparently really still like was in the looks of panic on the face of the talented asswipe sitting next to him, choreographer/judge/pig Tyce. At every point in the recurring "gay" banter he was looking up at Nigel like he was thinking, "OH MY GOD! His Alien teeth are going to fully push out, he's going to give a slobbering roar, and chomp everyone's head off starting with me!!!!"
And it remains in the forced comments by the hostess about how, of course, all the male dancers ARE STRAIGHT. But, for a few minutes last night on a show dominated by "hetero/gender-appropriate normalcy," marriage equality was expressed as a good/neutral thing. And another result of the protests has been the number of male-male pairings this season, even if, as in this one from last night, it's just SUPPOSED [wink wink] to be about one STRAIGHT friend betraying another.
Keep up the pressure and maybe McFarland will wake up. He’s obviously not going to change on his own. And maybe we’ll see an honest same gender routine on SYTYCD someday….or even one involving someone transgender. The show’s routines frequently deal with very strong emotions. I can imagine this choreographer, Travis, or Mia Michaels, doing such an authentic, moving routine about someone fighting to accept themselves, transitioning, and transforming into the beautiful person they were always meant to be.
Neil Kent Travis @ Yahoo! Video

Honestly, thoughHave any of you actually seen an episode of this show before?  Rude, immature and borderline offensive humor are the name of the game.  I haven’t seen the episode, but I’m not shocked.  If you want a sophisticated, nuanced portrayal of a transgendered individual, why are you looking to a show that consistently goes for the cheapest and easiest jokes imaginable?
I think you’re setting the bar a little high for a show that rises below vulgarity.

Variants

Look, Brian happens to be a white character, as I am. If I found out that I had slept with a gal who was Jewish, I might throw up in the same way that a gay guy looks at a vagina and goes, “Oh, my God, that’s disgusting.” It’s just the way we’re biologically wired. They should give that another look.

Look, Brian happens to be a white character, as I am. If I found out that I had slept with a gal who was high yella, I might throw up in the same way that a gay guy looks at a vagina and goes, “Oh, my God, that’s disgusting.” It’s just the way we’re biologically wired. They should give that another look.

So then we give them a pass? Nope, not doing that.I operate under two guidelines on stuff like this. The first is a Bayrard Rustin quote:

“[T]he job of the gay community is not to deal with extremists who would castigate us or put us on an island and drop an H-bomb on us. The fact of the matter is that there is a small percentage of people in America who understand the true nature of the homosexual community. There is another small percentage who will never understand us. Our job is not to get those people who dislike us to love us. Nor was our aim in the civil rights movement to get prejudiced white people to love us. Our aim was to try to create the kind of America, legislatively, morally, and psychologically, such that even though some whites continued to hate us, they could not openly manifest that hate. That’s our job today: to control the extent to which people can publicly manifest antigay sentiment.”

To his thought I add the concept of “antitrans sentiment.”
The second is based on Roz Kavaney’s Six Axioms Of Transgender Activism:

1.) Display solidarity with all our trans brothers and sisters.
2.) Build alliances by getting involved as ourselves in other areas of politics.
3.) Refuse to let journalistic and intellectual attacks on our community go unanswered – we can have and keep the moral high ground.
4.) Be creative, be smart, be ourselves, and don’t let anybody tell us who we are and what we do.
5.) Refuse the pathological model – we are not sick, just different.
6.) Refuse those politics – heterosexism, body fascism – that work against all of the above, but especially #1.

Axioms 3.) and 4.) apply in this case.
I don’t feel the answer to antitrans media behavior is to just let the transphobia go. Trans people need to counter the antitrans media, or trans people get to live with it as part of our own internalized transphobia.  

I think you miss my pointSeth MacFarlane’s work is trash, has always been trash, and will always be trash.  I have no desire to defend a show I can’t stand.  This isn’t a journalistic attack, so are you saying that anything on this show is any way “intellectual?”
But, honestly, a show built on rude un-PC humor was rude and un-PC?  Am I to look to Adam Sandler to lead the way on civil rights now?  Should I look for realistic portrayals of life on South Park?
Family Guy, South Park and Adam Sandler have something in common besides vulgarity.  All of them have gotten a lot of comic mileage out of using crude stereotypes to mock sexual minorities.  If I took every even somewhat offensive portrayal of gay men in comedy to heart I’d have steam coming out of my ears 24-7.  I do, however, differentiate between portraying yet another lisping hairdresser and say, portraying a gay man as dangerous and predatory.  The former I roll my eyes at.  It’s a cheap joke and thoroughly uncreative.  The latter is vile.
Anyway, doesn’t a character vomiting profusely at a trans woman say more about the character than it does about the trans woman?  Peter Griffin is consistently portrayed as a complete idiot.  He’s acting like an idiot here too. Is All In The Family offensive because of Archie Bunker’s bigoted views?  

*sigh*Did you read the comments in the Details Magazine article I highlighted? You said:

Anyway, doesn’t a character vomiting profusely at a trans woman say more about the character than it does about the trans woman?  Peter Griffin is consistently portrayed as a complete idiot.  He’s acting like an idiot here too. Is All In The Family offensive because of Archie Bunker’s bigoted views?

Seth MacFarlane stated his views in the article; MacFarlane said he would behave like Brian in his real life. Seth MacFarlane isn’t being Norman Lear here.
And to another point of yours, it’s not just journalistic attacks, it’s also “intellectual attacks.” And to that I’d add “media attacks.”
Basically, I’m in complete agreement with GLAAD in thinking The Clevland Show and Family Guy need to be addressed in public. And too, Fox saying they wouldn’t replay the episodes be replayed the episodes anyway needs to be addressed as well.
I know what my values are, and I’m going to act in accordance with my values. MacFarlane’s kind of media portrayal of trans people is the kind of media portrayals of trnas people I’m going to keep pointing out. And having MacFarlane calling trans people like me who are dissatisfied with his portrayals of trans people “stupic homosexuals” doesn’t sit well with me at all.
So of course too I’m going to say something when folk like MacFarlane call folk like me “stupid homosexuals” for objecting to episodes of his shows.

Stupid analogies can’t cover uphow stupid it is to get all hurt and whiney over a freakin’ CARTOON.
Silly tranny taliban, get over yourselves.
Everybody else gets made fun of in FG.  
You don’t want equality, you want to be worshiped.  
Sorry, not gonna happen.  Try working for something positive for a change.
Maybe you should all concentrate on how you are going to make being surgically sexually altered something that most Americans and heteros are going to be comfortable with.
It’s nice to be “accepted”, but are you being the least bit realistic ?
And if my comments upset you, too freakin’ bad.  Seriously, you don’t see how YOU are the problem here, and not the rest of the world ?
I mean, really, how the hell would McFarline know all your tranny surgery secrets ?  Instead of bemoaning how stupid and ignorant he is, maybe you should look at it as some indication of how far YOU have to go so far as making the world as tolerant as you claim you want it to be.

Once againYou say that you object to the portrayal of the trans character, but you’ve never explained what it was about the portrayal of the trans character was offensive.  It was another character’s reaction to the character that you object to.
As to MacFarlane’s comments, I believe he’s putting things rather indelicately, but he is correct that most heterosexually identified men would be grossed out by the idea of having sex with someone they didn’t view as a woman, and he’s being honest when he includes himself among their number.  As a gay man, I also find the idea of having sex with a woman similarly unappealing.  I wouldn’t vomit profusely, but that is an exaggeration for comic effect.  It’s crude humor, but that’s what MacFarlane does.
Once again, I don’t see anything negative about the portrayal of the trans character.  I see an obnoxious boob acting like an obnoxious boob, and his creator justifying it as being a legitimate artistic decision.
Autumn, I think you’re brilliant and I look forward to your entries.  I think you’re a genuine hero.  I think that in the realm of media, though, you have the tendency to jump at shadows.  This isn’t Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs or, to use an example outside the LGBT community, Mr. Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.  A rude joke at the expense of a straight man’s discomfort with trans-folk is not even close to the same level.  It would be another matter if it made the trans character look bad.

I’m probably wasting my time discussing this issue with you. ciaranmishima.There are lots of problems with the characters, and if you can’t see these without me explaining these to you, I’m probably wasting my time discussing this issue with you.
But, here are some of the problems, so :
- Both The Cleveland Show and the Family Guy portrayed the characters as really just gay men.
- The Cleveland Show character was shown as someone who lived as female not because of gender identity, and made it appear that one could easily become ex-transgender.
- Transition by the Family Guy character was completely unrealistic, and fed into the stereotype/false public belief that one can change sex on a whim.
- Played into the false stereotype that trans people are always heterosexual in their target sex.
- Transition was shown as easy and without real consiquence to one’s life experiences.
- Seth MacFarlane knows gay people, and gives his gay characters some depth, even when portraying the characters within community stereotypes. In other words, there’s some truth to the characters. MacFarline obviously doesn’t know any trans people, and did not give either of the two trans characters any real depth — There was no grounding in realities for either one of the trans characters, so there was no truth to the characters.
So, comment back if you must, ciaranmishima, but I’m not replying again. I’m not going to keep beating a dead horse for you.

Those were all far better pointsSo why didn’t you bring those up instead of this stupid vomiting thing?
Your response just caused me to lose an enormous amount of respect for you.  If you get so obviously agitated by someone who agrees with you 99% of the time, how do you ever hope to reach someone who is actually ignorant of transgender issues like, oh, say, Seth MacFarlane.
The points you made on this post actually point out what is offensive.  You’ve convinced me.  Unfortunately, your attitude is lousy.  How dare I ask you to back up your viewpoints?  Should I just accept that if you deem it offensive it therefore is?  Sorry, as an intelligent free-thinking person I don’t accept any stranger’s opinion as fact.  How do you hope to win anyone over if you’re going to be this obnoxious?

You really are an assand the kind of clueless dipshit that gives us all a bad name.
I’m formally revoking your gay card. Written notification will be received in 5-10 business days.

Sometimes the stupidest thing that gets said…I have no argument with the concept that this man is an idiot.
However, miraculously, he made a point worth thinking about.  One of the reasons that acceptance of trans-folk has so far to go is lack of visibility.  It’s stunning how little people know about the trans experience.  I’d like to think I’d be just as supportive of the trans community if I hadn’t had a trans woman move into my apartment building when I was 14, but who knows?
I tend to rant a bit against posts like this one, primarily because I’m against any sort of abridgment of free speech, but also because I don’t think it’s very effective.  The gay community didn’t stop Cruising, Catholics didn’t stop The Last Temptation of Christ, and we’re not going to get Family guy canceled.  What we really need to do is humanize the trans experience.  Most people don’t understand that trans-folk aren’t cross-dressers, or that transitioning is an incredibly long and difficult process.  But a few decades ago most straight people didn’t understand the humanity of gay people.  Go back a little further, and most white people didn’t understand the humanity of people of color.  Yeah, it’s a long road, but it’s the only path that gets any results.

So long as you can partially agreeWhile paying lip-service to the outraged, it’s fine with me.
Every point I made remains – if you want public perception to change, it’s up to YOU to do it.
If you don’t think the representation of trans people on FG is indicative of public perception, think again.
Seth is doing trans people a favor.
Now continue to be all outraged and self righteous.