Pretty Little Liars Analysis

There is a long history of trans people being portrayed as psychopathic villains in movies and television due to being transgender. Since this is the harmful stereotype that media is feeding to the public, it leads to a lot of people associating real life trans people as being this way.
In the mid-season finale of the sixth season of Pretty Little Liars, it was revealed that the character Cece Drake is A, the person that has been tormenting the main characters of the show. It is also revealed that she is transgender. They tied Cece’s being transgender to mental illness and psychopathic behavior. Cece’s “gender confusion” was portrayed as being the reason she turned into the show’s antagonist.
Pretty Little Liars is one of the most popular shows
on television right now. Since they reach such a large audience, they hold a lot of power and social responsibility when it comes to how they portray trans people and other groups who suffer from systematic oppression. Using this harmful trope not only shows the creator’s ignorance, but also helps solidifying and spreading this ignorance even further into the mainstream.
There are very few trans characters on television as it is, and most of the time these characters are portrayed in a very harmful and unjustified way. This kind of representation does nothing good for the trans community. In movies and television trans people are being demonized and portrayed as psychopathic monsters, when in reality, it is far more common for trans people to be the victims of violence.
Showrunner Marlene King has claimed that she knew all along who was supposed to be A.
Either that was a lie and they just wrote the story as it went along, or if it was true that they had the entire story mapped out from the very beginning, and Cece was in fact supposed to be A and transgender, then why didn’t they cast an actual trans woman to play the part? Marlene has claimed that they were very careful when broaching the subject of introducing a trans character, so if they really were trying to be mindful and show respect to the trans community and give proper representation, it makes very little sense for them to not give that part to an actual trans woman. The story of trans people should not be told by cis people.
This does not mean that trans people should not have the opportunity to portray all different kinds of characters, including villains. It is okay for a character to be both trans and evil. However, the character’s motivation for being a villain should ideally not be based on the fact that said character is trans, since this might reinforce the harmful tropes relating to trans people.
Trans characters being portrayed as the villain wouldn’t be as problematic if it weren’t for the fact that there are so few positive portrayals of trans characters out
there.