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So woke: CBS special to spotlight the transgender youth overlooked in America's national conversation

Let’s assume you’re one of those cisgender Americans who wasn’t quite sure what to make of President Obama lighting the White House in rainbow colors to celebrate the Supreme Court’s ruling on same-sex marriage. The president thought it was “pretty cool” — why shouldn’t you?

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Heck, by the time the president had his Justice Department send a reminder to school districts that they were required to allow students to use whichever restroom and locker room matched their gender identity, you were so woke you didn’t even think twice about it.

You’re not quite woke, yet, though: CBS News has stepped up to remind Americans that there are young people going overlooked in the national conversation on transgender rights. A documentary premiering Monday night will remind the cisgender viewing audience that gender is a non-binary concept and goes well beyond identifying with one gender or another.

CBS News reports:

They are called non-binary. They use different pronouns than the rest of us. And they do not identify with being either a man or a woman. Rather, these individuals often choose to reject gender completely, blend aspects of both, or to fluctuate between masculinity and femininity on a day-to-day basis. Simply put, the type of transgender people the media portrays — the sort who transition from man to woman, or from woman to man — are just the tip of the iceberg.

Wow, the media really has failed the public in its reporting on transgender issues, focusing all the attention on the tip of the iceberg.

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https://twitter.com/TotesMcGotes/status/846443316933746688

People might feel that way now, but Dr. sj Miller, deputy director of NYU’s Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools and editor of the “Queering Teacher Education Across Contexts” book series, thinks that gender-fluid youth such as those featured in CBS’s documentary “are really on the cutting edge of pushing our sense of what gender or agender could mean.”

 

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