How I Met Your Mother (HIMYM)

How I Met Your Mother (HIMYM) is an American sitcom on CBS that follows Ted Mosby’s trials and errors in the search of true love. He’s accompanied on his journey by his small group of friends as they navigate their late twenties and early thirties as working professionals in New York City. The show aired from September 19, 2005 through March 31, 2014, and is now available on Netflix, as well as other digital streaming platforms. HIMYM is famous for its progressive portrayal and support of gay rights and families, and was nominated for a GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Individual Episode. Unfortunately, while it claims to support LGBTQ+ rights, HIMYM continually fails transgender women. The casual transphobia in HIMYM results from the usage
of slurs, the continued invalidation of trans-women’s genders, and jokes at the expense of already deeply marginalized groups. This failure is intersectional. It stems from the hetero-patriarchal “assumption that sex and gender ‘naturally’ cohere,” (Koyama) misogyny, and queer-discrimination. The term ‘intersectionality’ was coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw in an effort to define the ways in which different forms of prejudice and discrimination collide, with the specific emphasis on black women’s experiences.
The term also works to address the problems specifically created when two or more forms of prejudice exist simultaneously, making neither one seem as valid or overarching. It rejects the “single axis framework” (Nash) used by race or gender specific scholars, favoring a multidimensional approach. Intersectionality can also be applied in order to analyze the multitude of factors that contribute to the transphobia and relative acceptance thereof in How I Met Your
Mother. Ted Mosby’s single, womanizing friend, Barney Stinson (played by the famously gay family man, Neil Patrick Harris) has an openly gay older brother (James) who enters the show occasionally, with his perfect husband in tow. Ted Mosby and his friends support and embrace Barney’s brother’s relationship, but despite their wholehearted inclusivity of masculine, cis, monogamous gay men, they consistently discriminate against and marginalize trans-women. Masculine, cisgender people are the recipients of both male privilege and cis privilege, regardless of their sexual orientation. Both James and Tom speak, dress, and behave according to the masculine ideal. Neither one exhibits any signs of queering his portrayal of masculinity, making their openly gay relationship more palatable to cishetero viewers of the sitcom. Despite Barney’s outspoken support for James, he openly disparages trans-women and perpetuates stereotypes. In Season 1, Episode 19, Barney hires a female escort for Ted. When Ted expresses his dismay at this arrangement, Barney tries to comfort him. He reassures Ted that he’s not “going to stick [him] with some toothless tra*ny from Port Authority,” and that the girl is both female and pretty. The idea of a toothless, unappealing, transgender prostitute plays into a multitude of intersections. The lack of teeth implies low socioeconomic status, and an inability or apathy towards personal grooming. The inability to take care of one’s teeth likely originates from mental illness, addiction, homelessness, or any combination thereof. Also, prostitutes have a significantly higher risk of homelessness, addiction, and mental illness! The stereotype of all trans-women as sex workers or deviants persists, despite statistics showing that only about 13% of the trans-community reports having participated in the sex industry. Several intersecting factors also contribute to this 13%. Transphobia and discrimination makes finding employment more difficult for trans-people, the lack of employment leads to poverty, and women living in poverty are more likely than middle class or wealthy women to work in the sex industry. Barney Stinson’s one-liner shoots for a laugh and ends up perpetuating stereotypes, dehumanizing trans-people, and indirectly contributing to the violence against trans sex workers. One of the more common jokes in HIMYM centers around Ted’s fear of accidentally dating a trans-woman.
In Season 2, Episode 9, Ted’s dating a girl named Cathy. None of his friends like her, but they refuse to tell him why. He has a brief series of day dreams about what Cathy’s flaw is. In the first one, he imagines that she lied about having sex with her High School English teacher and got him arrested, in the second one, he imagines that she volunteers at the animal shelter, kills the puppies, and makes bracelets out of the collars, and in the third one, Ted leaves to use the restroom and overhears Cathy say “I bet he's going to the urinal. Yeah, I remember when I had a penis,” after this last one, Ted gasps as the laugh track plays in the background. Both Cathy’s comment and Ted’s reaction are deeply problematic. Cathy’s reminiscence about her former male genitalia reinforces the idea that sex and gender are synonymous, while the scene makes light of the efforts by many trans-women to “prove their womanhood,” (Koyama). Cathy is already inherently disadvantaged as a person whose body is read as female, but that intersects queer-discrimination, when her sex at birth is discovered. Her queerness horrifies Ted because it means that he— a cishetero man— has been attracted to and “tricked” by a person who he now perceives as male, despite her own assertion of gender. This is exemplified by his moral equation of puppy killing to being a trans-woman on a date with a cishetero man.
He directly vilifies and dehumanizes trans-people, but the show, once again, plays the laugh track and calls it good. In the end, we discover that Cathy’s true flaw is not her propensity for puppy murder, nor her non binary gender identification, it is, in fact, that she talks too much. HIMYM’s consistent transphobia, coupled with its gay-inclusive storyline creates tension. It also illustrates the persistence of casual discrimination and acts as an example of an intersectional failure. By only supporting queer people who don’t act queer, and only supporting women whose gender and sex at birth are identical, HIMYM contributes to the violence against trans-people, falsely labels itself as progressive, and adds to the continuation of prejudice and casual transphobia present in society today.