That time Tyra Banks did a (figurative) hate crime.

On intracommunity violence.

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As some of you may remember (but hopefully most of you have forgotten or never knew), Tyra Banks — the former model, the creator and host of America’s Next Top Model — used to have a talk show. The Tyra Banks Show (also known as The Tyra Show or simply Tyra) was, in many ways, typical afternoon talk show fare; but it distinguished itself through a series of stunts that purported to be pushing social commentary forward. Some were particularly grotesque (like the time Tyra donned a fat suit and went out in the world in order to “understand obesity”), but they were all generally… not great.

There’s one stunt that sticks out in my mind though, one I have never been able to forget. The stunt I am thinking about this morning comes from a 2009 episode titled “The Gay Kingdom.”

“The Gay Kingdom” was one of Tyra’s community roundtable episodes. I’m not sure how many she did — there was definitely one with sex workers that was also atrocious — but the generally format was fairly simple. Tyra’s team would select a diverse group of people representing multiple corners of a marginalized community, put them in a room together, and make them fight for outsiders’ entertainment.

You might think I’m joking about that last part but no, that was literally the whole deal. Roundtable members were asked probing questions intended to make them shittalk their fellow community members, they were also literally asked to rank each other to demonstrate who had more status within the community. I’m not sure how this was justified to the roundtable members — certainly, conversations about community drama and internal hierarchies and oppression are important to have, but on broadcast TV? Where the straights could see???

If you want a full rundown of the episode, there’s a contemporaneous Logo article that recaps the important beats (and, thankfully, pans it). But the crucial thing to know, as far as I’m concerned, is that 7 LGBTQ people enter a room, each with a preassigned label — "masculine gay man," "feminine gay man," "bisexual man," "drag queen," "transgendered woman," "butch lesbian," and "lipstick lesbian" — and they’re asked to choose who among them will be king, queen, pauper, jester, cook, villain, and concubine. After the roles have been assigned, things get even nastier as the participants are instructed to choose one member to “banish” from the “kingdom.”

Like I said, intracommunity violence for straight people’s entertainment.

It will probably not surprise you to learn that over the course of the panel, it’s the bisexual man (his name is Jasen) who fares the worst. In the first round, Jasen gets assigned the role of pauper (at least he’s not villain, I guess?); in the second, he gets banished for… not being gay enough, I think. When I watched clips from the episode back in 2009 (I think on Jezebel? It’s def a thing that they would have posted back then) I was disgusted by the biphobia and the cruelty of it all (not to mention the fact that any of these people thought it was a good idea to participate in this “experiment” in the first place). But more recently, when I looked up the details again, there was something else that struck me.

There’s no bi woman or trans man included at all!

It’s bizarre to me that a roundtable that made sure to distinguish masc gay men from fem ones, and fem gay men from drag queens, that made sure to include both butch and femme lesbians, somehow completely elided the fact that trans and bi people come in multiple genders. I suppose it’s not a shock that trans men were omitted from the panel — even in 2022, people just… forget… that trans men exist — but the lack of a bi woman just seems so odd.

I mean, to be clear, it’s not that I would have wanted to watch a bi woman be subjected to the nastiness of this panel. But the utter omission of bi women, period, still strikes me as strange. What are we to take from that choice? That the bisexual experience isn’t determined by gender? That bi women are too coddled and protected to warrant attention paid to our issues? That bi women… aren’t actually LGBTQ at all?

(Should also note of course that the reduction of trans people to gender alone, with no consider of the fact that straight or gay or bi trans people might have different experiences in the world, is also… telling and yet completely predictable.)

And it’s not that I would have expected Tyra to get it right — this is, again, a woman who donned someone else’s body as a costume in order to “understand obesity” — but the specific way in which she got it wrong is just so telling. “This is how the world sees your community,” Tyra (and Tyra) basically shouts. And it’s (cis) gay male culture that matters the most, followed by (cis) lesbians; with the trans folks and cis bisexuals consigned to the corner. (The trans woman, I should note, was awarded the title of “concubine,” which… again the fact that that was even an option just shows you what a fucking hate crime this episode was.)

I’d like to say that things have gotten better in the 13 years since Tyra aired this episode, but… honestly, there’s a part of me that could imagine this episode, or something like it, still winding up on the air today. Probably not broadcast, but tucked away in some weird little Netflix show or on YouTube or TikTok? Absolutely. And the language would be slightly updated and the parameters a little different and maybe a bi woman and a trans man would actually manage to be included. (Hey maybe this version would recognize that non-binary people exist too!) But the underlying sentiment, the points communicated? Yeah, I could imagine that still happening today.

But hey, that’s why I write this newsletter, isn’t it.

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