Last year a GLAAD delegation met with CBS Entertainment President Nina Tassler and shared concerns over CBS's history of problematic transgender representations.
Mike & Molly and 2 Broke Girls were consistently insisting on using transgender people as the butt of their humor...and CBS dramas used transgender characters only for sensationalism and exploitation.
Historically CBS was the first station to positively portray transgender people (The Education of Max Bickford, Picket Fences, Cold Case, Without a Trace). But then NCIS referred to a transgender woman as a "he/she" and joked about Tony kissing "him" and CSI went bonkers on the subject of transpeople. It's been downhill from there.
Using clips from CBS shows, GLAAD's Nick Adams tried to show how the transgender community was being represented by CBS.
Using several clips from recent CBS shows, he pointed out how anti-trans images in the media contribute to a culture that does not treat transgender people equally.
CBS has failed three of the last five Network Responsibility Index reports produced by GLAAD.
Apparently Tassler and CBS News have decided to display that they have received the message.
The CBS soap The Bold and the Beautiful has decided to out one of its characters as being a transgender woman of color. Maya Avant's sister behaved badly in the coming out scene, insisting Maya's "real name" is Myron and that Maya was "really" her brother.
As any transgender person would tell you, our "real names" are the names we use, not the ones we were assigned at birth. And he are not "really" the gender usually associated with our birth sex.
We'll have to see how that plays out...although I don't foresee that I will be watching the show. I mean, it's a soap, for Dog's sake.
Meanwhile CBS News did a good job with the issue of transgender military service.
Scott Pelley's piece is supplemented with the following:
I'm not sure how to recode the CBS videos to fix the display problem.