On M6, a debate on transience worries associations

“The life of trans people is not entertainment”.

I’m more than fifty associationsincluding We All and Family Planning, but also elected officials and activists who signed up to the Fransgender forum in response to the M6 ​​report that airs this Thursday 6 October and is already available on Salto.

Four years later a Reserved area on “transgender dilemma”Has M6 made progress in treating transience? Will he be able to escape the common voyeurism in this type of format? This time the report Trans – One of a kind is presented by Karine Le Marchand and focuses on Emma, ​​Aela and Zachthree trans people who have been followed in their daily life.

Good intentions, but persistent clichés about trans people

Mentions of the deadname (the name given at the birth of a trans person) that emphasize the passage before, comments like “born in the wrong body”attention to surgical interventions … despite the desire to demonstrate pedagogy, the report seems to reproduce itself the same clichés and favors individual trajectories, without being able to show a systemic transphobia.

Karine Le Marchand, already heavily criticized a few years ago for her grossophobic reporting Operation Rebirthdefends his position: ” We tried to understand, with the associations, where this bloc of radical militants could come from. They educated me on the subject! “

Among these associations, Accept twho talked about her participation in the relationship building process and expressed her disappointment:

“We hoped that in 2022 an approach to trans subjects could not be sensationalistic, not voyeuristic, that we could talk about transphobia and address the general public. We have no control over how we will be modified and distributed from production.

The choice of the “debate” set after the documentary shows that we were wrong and that nothing is going on: our rights are in question, the word is given to groups that promote conversion therapy. “

A very worrying debate and openly transphobic guests

Because it’s the second part of the evening M6 dedicated to transience and to the young trans who most worry associations. A debate presented by Karine Le Marchand and entitled Transgender child: what to do?of which no excerpts have yet been released, it will happen and portends the worst for the people concerned and their allies.

Will be present on the set Zach, one of the witnesses of the report, the psychoanalyst Serge Hefez, but also two people with openly transphobic positionsa mother who opposes trans child care and a podcast creator who describes herself as a “gender rebel” and committed to what she calls “transactivism”, a term created and used by anti-trans people “To give the impression that those who fight for the rights and dignity of trans people are a group of extremists separated from the entire trans community” according to the definition proposed by the collective Tous des femmes.

Fransgenre then issued a press release in order to alert about comments that could be made during this debate and which will therefore be legitimized:

“We invite M6 and all other media to address the issue of transience with respect and rigor, without giving a voice to activists whose sole purpose is to spread disinformation and hatred. To avoid systematically external gazes and interpretations of their experiences, trans people should be involved in the process of making documentaries about them. “

What will be the consequences of this debate for an uninformed and uninformed public on trans issues? What will its impact be on a trans teenager who is reluctant to come out to loved ones? By putting a young man like Zach face to face with two people who actively oppose her rights, M6 chooses to equate the experience of trans people and misinformation about what transition and child support are. trans.

In the current climate in which we can see transphobic discourse spreading in the media without contradictions (this was the subject of our latest MadPrime), will the associations’ call for vigilance be heard?