ABC to Meet with LGBT Rights Groups Over ‘Work It’

GLAAD and HRC are setting up a meeting with ABC to discuss its plan to air a new sitcom “Work It,” which the organizations and other have criticized for promoting dangerous stereotypes about transgender people, On Top Magazine reports.

The show is about two unemployed men — played by Ben Koldyke (“How I Met Your Mother”) and Amaury Nolasco (“Prison Break”) — who dress as women to land jobs as pharmaceutical sales reps. While the characters are not meant to represent the transgender community, many are concerned that they will give the wrong idea to a public still struggling to understand gender identity.

“Transphobia is still all too prevalent in our society and this show will only contribute to it,” said Mike Thompson, GLAAD’s acting president. “It will reinforce the mistaken belief that transgender women are simply ‘men pretending to be women,’ and that their efforts to live their lives authentically as women are a form of lying or deception.”

That ABC greenlighted the show is especially disappointing given the network’s history of generally positive portrayals of LGBT people.

The Los Angeles Times adds:

In an open letter protesting the comedy, Kane wrote that transgender individuals find themselves in the “cultural crosshairs” these days, some 30 years after the sitcom “Bosom Buddies.”

“The timing couldn’t be worse for a show based on the notion that men dressed as women is inherently funny,” he said. “In fact, shows like this have the power to put the transgender community in an even more dangerous position.”

The letter notes that transgender people face double the rates of unemployment and disproportionately higher rates of violence, harassment, discrimination, poverty and homelessness.

No word yet from ABC on whether it will meet GLAAD’s request to kill the show.

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