Q&A with Jennifer Finley Boylan

Jennifer Finley Boylan is a transgender advocate and author of the bestselling memoir She’s Not There. She was recently cast as the leader of a transgender support group for an upcoming episode of ABC's daytime drama All My Children. GLAAD Media Programs Coordinator Tom Ogletree met with her on set and talked about being a part of this historic experience.

Q: Tell us a little bit about how you got involved with this episode of All My Children.

A: I am here because I wrote a book called She’s Not There, which is a pretty well known memoir of a transgender person, so it’s really very cool. You’ve probably heard this from other people, but what impresses me is that they’re trying to get the story right. As we all know, trans people have been presented in the wrong light again and again and again, and it seems as though people on various talk shows had carte blanche to tell the story the wrong way, in a disrespectful way, but finally, here we are, with a story being told – it’s still a daytime drama, so it’s got to do what it needs to do, but it’s really cool.

Q. Why do you think this particular episode is so important for transgender visibility?

A. I’ve always believed that it’s impossible to hate anyone whose story you know. And so here’s a chance for half a dozen transgender people to speak for themselves and tell their own stories. It’s really quite a risk they’re taking. They’re just going to turn on the cameras, and we’re all going to tell our stories, and it’s unscripted – we don’t even know what is going to happen. It’s very exciting. Most of all, what it means is that people are getting to speak for themselves and tell their stories, and I think that’s got to be a good thing for the viewership for this show because they’re going to get the message that transgender people are human, and that they have more in common with us, and the things they have in common with us are more important than the things that make us different.

Q. What has your experience been in terms of the evolving nature of transgender visibility and how we see more varied portraits of the transgender community in places like your book, on All My Children and now on shows like Ugly Betty?

A. Ultimately, what we should shoot for is the day when it is unimportant that a character is transgender. All My Children is doing a great job, but it’s still a character line, here’s a character who is going through transition. It’s still a storyline. Transamerica, the film, was also a film that did a very good job getting most of its facts right, but it was still a story about someone going through transition and all the broken hearts and the tears and the fears. Someday, transgender characters will be as mundane as gay characters or lesbian characters or straight people, and when that day comes, I will feel extremely happy. There’s an old line from a song about dreaming of a day when things we’ve never seen will seem familiar. That’s what I hope for, when people out there in television land or book land or radio land understand that this is something familiar, this is something that is another good way of being human.