Last night my fiancee buffered the new episode of Family Guy, Quagmire's Dad, on Hulu. That is, he started the episode and paused it so the whole thing would be loaded before he started watching it. This morning he started watching it while I was engaged in my morning web-checking next to him on the couch. Eight minutes or so in to the episode, Dan Quagmire, the father of the recurring character Glen Quagmire, comes out as being transgendered and two minutes later is done with gender reassignment surgery. The remainder of the show is one trannie-bashing joke after another.

Now, I hold no illusions that transgendered folk are held in high regard by the majority of people, but this episode displayed marginally-better-than-the-worst of what transgendered people endure. That, in itself is OK, but at no time are the characters called to task for their behavior. Even when Stewie and Brian have a conversation, Stewie, who is usually written as if he were gay and therefore the most likely to identify with someone who is sexually off the norm, is unapologetically hostile toward transfolk and the idea of gender reassignment. I sat through most of the episode, becoming more and more upset as the seconds ticked past, waiting for the turn around. As vile and vitriolic as the episode was towards its transgendered character, I found myself expecting the big reveal that the way the Griffin Family and their friends were treating this woman was wrong. Turned out my expectations were not met.

When South Park took a swing at the LDS faith, they bashed the religion the entire way through the show only to have their Mormon character turn around and blast their entire argument to shreds with a few simple lines. This was some unexpected elegance in a show I haven't ever really enjoyed. Apparently I was wrong to look for a similar redeeming moment in a Seth MacFarlane show, even though the opportunities for such a moment were plentiful. Have Stewie call Brian out during their talk. Brian thought enough about the woman to take her to bed, instead of vomiting for thirty seconds after finding out she was transgendered, let him defend the woman he found charming the night before. Glen Quagmire, Ida's son, could have taken the Griffins to task over the way they treated his father and her cooking when they came to dinner. No, the best MacFarlane could do was a puke gag and a fight.

The sad thing is, even though I wasn't watching the episode directly, it upset me enough that I had to leave the room. I love getting to spend the morning with my fiancee before he heads to work, it's a great way to start the day. This was offensive enough to take that from me, and on the subject it tries to take a whole lot more. Because the Griffins are a family who've been on the air for eight seasons; because audiences have had that kind of time to identify with and and enjoy the company of these characters; because their collected reactions to, opinions on, and attitudes toward the transgendered character and to transgenderism in general are in complete harmony with one another; because of all this and because I am transgendered myself, my future interactions with fans of the series are diminished.

It could be argued that Ida Quagmire, being a decorated member of the US Navy as well as being an OK person for the minuscule amount of time she's on screen, displays that transgendered people are more or less normal people beyond one fairly large quirk. Transgendered people are more or less normal people when you set aside the issue of gender, but because her role is so incredibly understated in the shadow of such antics as a thirty second puke-take, it would be nigh impossible to show that the point came across. Beyond that thin representation I can't see how Seth MacFarlane can think that this episode might "... make the transsexual community very, very happy."

I want my happy morning with my fiance back. I want returned the three hours I've spent researching, writing, and revising this. I feel as though I've been robbed of what might have been a productive day researching, writing, or revising one of my works of fiction. I fear that this event on top of more stress at work might distract my fiance enough that he could be injured at his job working around trains all day. I fear that this event might be added to the list of things he has to deal with just because he fell in love with a girl whose gender doesn't match her genitalia. Most of all I fear that the ripples from this episode could do irreparable harm to an unknown number of individual lives within the transgendered community as their friends and family seize upon The Griffin's examples and redouble their efforts to talk them out of procedures organizations on the order of the AMA have deemed medically prudent.