In recent years, the transgender and gender diverse (TGD) population has gained a stronger voice in the media. Although these voices are being heard, there are limits on the types of TGD representation displayed in media. The current study interviewed 27 TGD individuals. These interviews exposed how participants view the rise of TGD media representation. The main themes that emerged were TGD awareness and TGD identity discovery and role modeling. Clearly, there is a disconnect between transnormativity in the media and transnormativity in reality.

Individuals who identify as transgender and gender diverse (TGD) are presenting at mental health clinicians' offices with increasing frequency. Many TGD clients are seeking care related to affirming their gender identity but also may present with anxiety, depression, trauma, substance abuse, or other problems for which a clinician may commonly provide services. Some clinicians may hesitate to accept TGD clients into their practice if they have little specialized training to work with this population in an affirming manner, especially in more underserved areas where a generalist practice is the norm. Numerous professional associations and experts have developed guidelines for affirmative behavioral health care for TGD people. However, what is needed are community-informed recommendations to bridge from the official guidelines to clinicians' in-session activities. The Trans Collaborations Practice Adaptations for Psychological Interventions for Transgender and Gender Diverse Adults are derived from iterative interviews with TGD community members and affirming mental health clinicians in the Central United States. The 12 practice adaptations are intended to guide clinicians to adapt their usual treatment approach to be TGD affirming, especially in underserved and rural areas. The practice adaptations cover numerous aspects of practice including the office setting and paperwork, understanding gender identity and incorporating it into the case conceptualization, therapist's self-awareness, and referrals. The Trans Collaborations Practice Adaptations will help

For the first time ever during the Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games, the mascots for each game were introduced together. The Paralympic mascot, Mandeville, and the Olympic mascot, Wenlock, are similar in appearance and construction. However, their adventures, established through online movies, highlight striking differences between the mascots and the athletes they represent. As mascots portray physical representations of the ideologies of sporting teams and events, producing two mascots for two different sets of athletic competition creates a unique situation through which to compare normative constructions. Through the online-mediated representations of Mandeville and Wenlock, the present study used rhetorical analysis to examine how the two mascots' stories communicated specific messages to viewers about ability and disability. Within these films, those deemed as disabled are clearly otherized through injury, isolation, and displays of ability. The lens through which viewers learned about able-bodiedness and disability present a stereotypical representation of the body at best, but through the animated stories told about the two mascots, viewers' perceptions about disabled athletes being injured, being feminine, or being incapable of managing specific tasks may have developed or been reinforced.

Chaz Bono’s appearance on Dancing with the Stars (DWTS) marks one of the first primetime, network appearances of a postoperative transgender person. This article deconstructs the mediated gender subjectivities of Bono as constructed by the show itself via prerecorded segments, costume and song choices, dance partner interaction, and judges’ commentaries as well as those projected by Bono during the live, unscripted portions of the show. Combining notions of the normalization of taboo sexual subjectivities through mediated contexts with lens of gender performativity, we demonstrate how transgender subjectivities are presented to a mainstream audience via such mediated choices, but also how Bono welds some agency to resist such normalization through his live performances. Bono’s appearance on DWTS stands as an important step toward acceptance of transgendered persons in mainstream society, however through a neutered, sex-free rhetoric as projected by the mediated portions of the show, his appearance is not without controversy. Additionally, we posit that Bono represents a transnormativity of a White, upper-class postoperative heterosexual male, which others all transgendered persons who fall outside of those hegemonic parallels of safe subjectivities.

Although star athletes have been extremely successful on the American Broadcasting Company's (ABC) reality television dance competition Dancing with the Stars, the participation of U.S. National Soccer Team goalkeeper Hope Solo created a gender performance conundrum. Embodying both athleticism; a 'traditionally masculine' marker and the graceful 'femininity' associated with ballroom dancing, Solo's emersion into competitive ballroom dancing created a notable intersection of multiple gender performances. Referring to the work of Judith Butler and Judith Halberstam on gender and masculinity, this article examines ABC's mediated construction of a tomboy narrative in order to reshape Solo's athleticism as a sign of immaturity. Through the shows' mediated portrayal of Solo's gender roles, clear lessons of the construction of gender and its narrations and performance were presented to the audience of one of America's most watched television shows.