Two recent episodes of Puerto Rico’s highly-rated gossip show “SuperXclusivo,” featured blatantly anti-LGBT messages, despite the show having made promises to respect the LGBT community in two separate instances in 2010.
On its April 10 episode, the show’s hosts-- Hector Travieso and ‘La Comay,’ a puppet played by show producer Kobbo Santarrosa,—made highly offensive remarks about transgender women in regards to the Miss Universe pageant’s decision to allow transgender women to compete. Co-host Hector Travieso opined that “This is setting a bad precedent because it’s a competition for women. [Jenna] has a right to have her sex changed, but this is harming a contest that was made for women.”
On its April 12 episode, in response to a story covered in local press about a man who was arrested for sexually harassing women in a mall bathroom, the show crossed the line by unnecessarily running footage from 2005 about the arrest of gay and bisexual men who were arrested in a mall bathroom for public sex—despite the fact that the story had nothing to do with gay or bisexual men—as though to deliberately instill unwarranted fear about LGBT people in a country where there has been a wave of anti-LGBT crimes for the past three years.
In 2010,GLAAD worked with Puerto Rico Para Tod@s (Puerto Rico for All), a San Juan-based LGBT organization, to call on the show’s network Wapa TV (which also airs in several U.S. media markets, including New York, Los Angeles, Florida, and others) to stop broadcasting defamatory content on the show.
In January 2011, GLAAD flew to Puerto Rico to meet with Wapa TV executives and to conduct media trainings to help talent and producers better understand issues of defamation and unfair representation. At that time, we were assured that the show would treat LGBT issues in a more respectful manner. This past week has made it clear that SuperXclusivo has broken its promise.
GLAAD will once again reach out to producers with the hope we can finally convince them of the harm this type of rhetoric causes.
