The affordances of digitization have enabled more diverse representations of sexuality on television. By catering to niche audiences, offering fewer content restrictions, and connecting people globally through increased accessibility and distribution, subscriber-funded portals, like Netflix, allow creators to have more freedom to explore varied narratives without being constrained by traditional broadcast standards (Lotz, 2017). The advancing technologies and changing industries facilitate the introduction of transgender and other queer figures in a range of high-profile shows, birthing the concept of Trans TV in an attempt to understand the transformations of televisual content on streaming platforms (Goddard and Hogg, 2020). While representation accuracy and continued advocacy for inclusivity remain ongoing considerations in the media landscape, as stated by Goddard and Hogg, not “all Internet distributed television is aesthetically progressive, instead, these new models of television, with their appeals to every niche and activated users, at least allow for a potentially more queer manifestation of television,” as evidenced in Netflix’s series Sex Education (Goddard and Hogg, 2020).
Carving its own niche in the “teen-focused educational-dramedy sphere,” Sex Education goes beyond stereotypical queer representations, showcasing “true-to-life encounters” through characters such as Cal, Roman, and Abbi who share their own perspectives and lessons on the trans experience (Cugini, 2023). The fourth season starts with Cal recording the changes that their body is undergoing while on testosterone, expressing their emotions regarding gender-affirming care. With more than 8,000 young individuals on just London’s waiting list for specialist gender healthcare services, this is an important on-screen discussion, especially on a non-exclusive LGBTQIA+ show, as it depicts the harsh reality of the country’s trans youth and its detrimental effects on mental health to a mainstream audience (Jones, 2023). The show also casts trans actors to play Roman and Abbi, portraying a love story between two characters with very different lived experiences. While Roman has a supportive family, Abbi, who is trans-Christian, is not accepted by their family and is disowned. They both communicate differently and share a different relation with their “transness,” highlighting that “trans people are not a monolith (Crosara, 2023).” As asserted by Horvat, such TV shows collectively indicate a new era of queer television that not only broadens its inclusion of LGBTQIA+ characters but also participates in “queering the homonationalist traditions of portraying LGBTQIA+ identities (Goddard and Hogg, 2020).”
Sources:
Crosara, N. (2023). Sex Education’s final season celebrates T4T love. [online] diva-magazine.com. Available at: https://diva-magazine.com/2023/09/22/sex-education-trans-representation/ [Accessed 5 Nov. 2023].
Cugini, E. (2023). The Problem with Sex Education’s Trans Storylines. [online] Dazed. Available at: https://www.dazeddigital.com/film-tv/article/61056/1/the-problem-with-sex-education-season-four-and-its-trans-storylines [Accessed 5 Nov. 2023].
Goddard, M. and Hogg, C. (2020). Introduction: Trans TV dossier, III: Trans TV re-evaluated, Part 2. Critical Studies in Television: the International Journal of Television Studies, 15(3), pp.255–266. doi:https://doi.org/10.1177/1749602020937566.
Jones, C.T. (2023). ‘Sex Education’s’ Final Lesson Is Its Most Important. [online] Rolling Stone. Available at: https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-features/sex-education-season-4-transgender-rights-netflix-terf-uk-1234830399/ [Accessed 5 Nov. 2023].
Lotz, A.D. (2017). Portals : a Treatise on Internet-Distributed Television. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Maize Books, an Imprint of Michigan Publishing.
– Navya Gupta (33711097)
Digital Audiovisual Media Class Blog 
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