I’ve noticed that some maps and infographics claim that people in the American South consume disproportionately high levels of transgender-themed pornography. Whether or not those exact numbers are precise, it made me think about how this could shape perceptions.
For many conservative, religious Southerners, there may be little to no everyday exposure to transgender people as coworkers, friends, or neighbors—at least not openly. Without those lived relationships, their primary points of reference can end up being highly mediated images: drag performers on TV, or, more often, pornography. In that context, it makes sense that their idea of what it means to be transgender might be distorted.
If your only “knowledge” of transgender people comes through porn—or other entertainment that presents gender identity as performance or spectacle—then your understanding will inevitably be filtered through a sexualized lens. That would explain why so much of the rhetoric from these communities focuses on sexualization, danger, or moral panic: they’re projecting the only framework they have.
But the truth is that transgender people exist across every sphere of life—as parents, teachers, engineers, doctors, artists, neighbors. To see them primarily through pornography isn’t just inaccurate; it reduces their humanity to a sexual stereotype. And ironically, it suggests that the oversexualization isn’t coming from transgender people themselves, but from the cultural filters through which they’re being viewed.