GLAAD Responds to Bilerico and The Cleveland Show

This morning, Bilerico blogged about the November 22 episode of The Cleveland Show, "A Brown Thanksgiving," and GLAAD’s perceived lack of a response to the episode. We had reached out to Fox and the show’s producers, prior to Bilerico’s blog, to schedule a meeting. 

This is part of an ongoing discussion that GLAAD is having with Fox regarding consistent homophobic and transphobic jokes in some of its animated programming. The problematic transgender episode Bilerico points to is one of several instances that the Entertainment Team will be discussing with them, as well as advocating for more fair LGBT inclusion.

You can view the episode here:

GLAAD posts snapshots on a weekly basis on the home page, where you can read about our transgender advocacy. Reporters, producers, and editors consistently get terminology wrong and our Programs team is working to educate and correct stories that run as well as proactively tell stories of the transgender community. Just last week GLAAD worked with a San Diego news station after a sensational transgender story. Some other recent examples:

Two weeks ago we advocated the Honolulu Star Bulletin correct a story about the transgender victim of a hate crime where they used problematic terminology. The same week we also posted several blog posts at glaadBLOG.org with leading trans advocates for Transgender Day of Remembrance and a video with Candis Cayne discussing the power in our visibility.

Earlier this month Seventeen magazine released a letter to readers after our Director of National News sat down with editors about their article “My BOYFRIEND turned out to be a girl.”

In just the last eight weeks, our Media Programs team have pitched a story on a transgender pianist to the New York Times which ran in their Sunday edition, helped draft and secure a mother’s story about her transgender daughter on The Grio (MSNBC’s African American site) and media trained Reverend David Weekly before an appearance on The Early Show.

In September the Entertainment team received an apology from Lil Mama, a judge on MTV’s America’s Best Dance Crew, after we received several incident reports about an anti-transgender critique.

GLAAD’s statements on MTV/Lil Mama’s remarks received widespread media coverage and the America’s Best Dance Crew statements called attention to transgender issues in mainstream press. We hope those interested in learning more will continue to check glaad.org and glaadBLOG for updates.