For people saying that Bones said pelvic not pubic, okay I can see that now but also I'm gonna still claim it cos damn is that Pel-Vick poorly enunciated
Hey, Lily, I see all the individual comments telling you about "pelvic bone" but your comment here doesn't have anyone replying to it, so: Pelvic bone.
Lol, it makes sense that you would hear “pubbic”, Lily, because your a New Zealander; and as we all know New Zealand English has only one vowel, "uh". (It's how you differentiate you from Australians, whose only vowel is "ee" - fun fact.)
That she wasn't a sex worker, wasn't killed *for being* trans, and that she was liked by some people in life, was enough for me to like this episode as a teen... That was how low my bar was for representation.
yeah, sadly "the dead trans character didn't fall into some of the other common stereotypes" was fairly good by the standards of when this came out, and unfortunately standards are still not that much higher
I mean, being a sex worker isn’t bad but since it was viewed as such at the time (and still is by many) and was frequently conflated with trans people as a stereotype, I see why it was an issue.
@@legometaworld2728 yeah, there's absolutely nothing wrong with sex work, but as a little closeted trans teen, TV seemed to be telling me that sex work was the only existence I'd be able to have if I ever came out.
as a kid, I didn't have representation, I found trans sex workers and they helped be with my homework because they were scared why I was in spaces they could be found
Angela is not a psychologist, she's a computer expert and artist. She usually reconstructs faces, but she's also known as the most emotionally intelligent as well as romantic one and also the expert on LGBTQ+ things because she's bisexual herself.
I responded to another post on this, I mixed her up with someone else cos of what she was doing in this episode. I stand by the magical powers line though
@JuMixBoox To be fair, the show had a crossover with Sleepy Hollow, which has all sorts of supernatural shit. So canonically that stuff DOES exist in the world of Bones.
Pointing out cis people have gender-affirming care too, and can access it far more easily than us, is both a good point, and not one you see very often !
I recently watched Philosophy Tube's essay about sending 131 (iirc) emails to the UK medical system, and she makes tons of incredible points but this one was a major highlight for me and was a way I hadn't really thought of things before. Highly recommended video and channel overall, if anyone who sees this isn't already familiar!
Just wait until people dig into news articles about parents forcing their under 18 year old children into getting gender-affirming care but in the same breath, screech how if it's for trans people then it's immoral and unethical.
And the whole saying of "Redemption through Transformation" would be a whole lot better as a title with the new context after watching the show. I'm really sad they missed that
@@Stafarns While I agree with you, all Bones episodes have a name like "The [Thing 1] in [Thing 2]". It's just their naming convention. It's sort of like how all Friends episodes are named "The One Where...". Though honestly, even calling it "The She in He" would have been better, since that would at least imply who she really was on the inside vs what society saw her originally.
The funny thing is that they could’ve saved the title just by dropping the S down to lower case “The He in she.” Would imply that the capitalized “He” is God n thus be a pun about this being an MtF person who managed to hold on to their religious values while dropping all the hate n bigotry associated with those values in the modern day. Cuz right now it just says “Hey, everyone, this one is probably about a hate crime, does that make u wanna tune in?”
@@genderenderEspecially in that scene where Booth was so quick to say he'd love Bones as a man, but Bones couldn't love him as a woman ... I'm glad the trans rep was generally not bad here, but that was a bit of a gut punch to being fem in general.
So having marathonned Bones, some details to highlight: 1. Brennan was a Foster kid, and easily can be passed off as undiagnosed autistic in the show 2. Booth is known for his definite blunders, and has social shortcomings 3. Angela is a queer POC 4. Both bosses who have been in Cam's position were Black people, Cam obviously being the 2nd 5. They did have a character become overtly physically disabled towards the end of the series with him not being able to walk again at all 6. Brennan is among top 5 best written moms in fiction 7. They do actually tackle.trauma with tact and grace, so they don't do total erasure, thankfully 8. The interns are a widely colourful cast
Damn, I remember watching the show quite frequently growing up and I'm glad it was better than most cop shows of the time. Also the realization I had gender envy for Brennan.
Re number 5, he does learn to walk again. [edit 2: I was wrong about this, blame my brain fog and subsequent terrible memory. I stand by the rest of my rant to follow though!] And he's also just such a massive dick to his partner about the whole thing for quite a while. It is truly unpleasant to watch. It's the same thing that happened on Grey's with Arizona where she was just such a dick to her partner while coming to terms with being disabled. And like I came to terms with being disabled without being mean and unpleasant to the people around me for the most part. I'm sure I got annoyed and upset occasionally but that's also just a human thing. The fact that these shows think that being disabled is just so the worst thing ever that you just are a massive asshole to the people around you for a while is just so,, eugh I know on Grey's it was more complicated because yeah yeah Callie gave the okay for them to cut her leg even though she promised she wouldn't and everything but also like they're writers and they can just write different storylines about disabled people. Or just more storylines and then the ones where we are assholes won't matter because there will just be so many other disabled characters to choose from and different types of storylines. (this is how I think all representation should work because I don't think that just one character is enough to encompass any human experience) Edit 1: I agree with all your other points to be clear and I do like the show, it used to be a special interest (I really related to Brennan for absolutely no reason at all /sarcasm)
we all need to make our tombstone quotes metal as shit. I'll go first, mine is "you cease to be human." because it's the only thing I've said that has made even a lick of sense since The Incident
Yeah Sweets was consistently a very supportive guy, he also was seen a couple of times talking to a trans woman in therapy about transitioning over the course of the show.
@@xx-el9gl The real reason they killed him off is actually worse than that. The actor had a scheduling conflict, and rather than temporarily write him out of the show until said conflict was over, they just killed him off entirely. It's beyond bullshit, and I'm still angry over it.
Tbh i'm shocked by how well this episode turned out compared to the show's episode with a Japanese x-gendered guest that Angela molests to identify their sex.
That's is the episode that I thought this video was going to be about! That was the absolute pits and i remember being horrified even at the time. I'd forgotten that this not-great-but-not-horrendous episode existed too.
I used love Bones, but when I was watching it recently, I couldn't help but notice how problematic it is now. There's another trans episode with a non-binary character in which the characters spend the whole time trying to find out whether they were male or female. Watch the episode because the way they find out the characters had a dick or not is absolutely foul. It's called The Girl in the Mask, season 4 episode 23.
I mean they literally get sexually assaulted at work by a coworker. It is kinda beyond the pale of unacceptable and is just actual criminal assault, battery, and a literal sex crime.@@Scarygothgirl
I remember seeing that at my friends’ house that I lived at after my foster parent threw me out. They didn’t have cable so they bought DVDs for all the shows they liked.
Honestly as a baby trans when I first saw this I really liked it, they treated Patricia with a lot more dignity than I saw from a lot of other media at the time and her son’s reaction was so sweet. Seeing a trans woman being embraced by her community just hit me right in the feels. I have such a strong love/hate relationship with Bones but this is definitely one of the better episodes.
Booth saying the breast implants are his department is because of the serial number on breast implants that he as the FBI can trace. As an avid Bones fan honestly this episode is only like number 5 in Top Booth Offensive Moments. The time he said f@ggot is seared in my brain.
So, fun fact, the series Bones had a crossover episode with the series Sleepy Hollow. Sleepy Hollow is another case of the week show, but what set it about was that it involed a soldier who was fighting in the revolutionary war and came to the present day through magical time travel. So it is entirely possible that Angela has magical powers without it breaking the lore of the show.
I'm reminded of the Hard Drive article about how Law & Order made a step forward for trans representation by having a trans woman be both a dead sex worker and serial killer
And first large scale television representation of being asexual was on House. House ofc cured asexuality because "its not natural human instinct" The happy asexual couple was composed of a person with a curable disease and a person who pretended they didn't want sex to make their partner happy. In the end they were cured and went on to bang
I’m 50. Most trans people I know, at least the ones my age and older many who transitioned in the 90s, used names very close to their dead name. I think it might be an older generation thing.
(Late to the party but I only just had this in my recommendations today) I'm 25 and one of my mates in college (6th Form UK) did the same thing. I would have chosen a name similar to my birthname, but chose against it because I really dislike my own name, much to my parents' distaste. Definitely a generational thing as well, but also an individual thing. Some people gel with their birthnames, and some don't.
I also did that... That's a bit of an oofer. I had a different preferred name when I was younger, but by about 27 I went with an r63 name. Bit rough to be denied because she wants to tally an extra Cinema Sin
Have a older coworker who just turned 70 and her chosen name is Stephanie, I also kept the same first letter of my name, but my younger sibling's is completely different than their old name
Right? Why is it okay to treat depression but not gender dysphoria? (who am I kidding, a lot of phobes don't support any mental health or science in general, for that matter)
There are literally verses in the Bible about Jesus doing miracles and healing blind people, lame people, etc., the Bible makes it pretty explicitly clear that just because you don't like the body you were born with doesn't mean God make a mistake. Who am I kidding tho, transphobic Christians wouldn't ever read the Bible, that'd be crazy
I choose to interpret said line of logic as "being trans means God made a mistake in allowing transphobia to exist" because that is exactly the kind of thing that would piss off hyper-religious bigots by turning their hate speech and intolerance back on them.
16:55 no what’s even funnier about this bit is that angela ISNT A PSYCHOLOGIST she’s an artist. she’s just the neurotypical woman of the cast who understands emotions properly unlike the whole lab (this is my autism show i screamed when i saw this video :33)
10:44 "the pelvis is this shape, so that corpse was a man!" "but the corpse has this body part, and that's a woman's vagina!" I get that this is very "baby's first steps about transgender people existing", but this shite is also intersexphobic as well. even if it gets revealed that this was, indeed, a trans woman, the amount of these arguments ending up in "oh, this person was just born/operated on by doctors at birth like that" is not unsubstantial.
Involuntary intersex “corrective” surgery on infants is some fucked up shit. Really telling that all these Christofascists and cryptofascists (read TERFs) pushing these anti-trans healthcare bans always make a point of carving out exceptions for these surgeries to continue to be carried out. Goes to show their priority isn't protecting children, but enforcing control and conformity.
Also, take it from someone who actually is going into this field, you cannot fully identify a body based on bones. There are SOME sexually dimorphic characteristics in humans, but they're not as drastic as you'd think, and the modern technology of c-sections allowing births that bypass the pelvis entirely are making those characteristics even less notable.
@@AeonKnigh432 THIS! The differences in the bones overlap more than they differ. It can be figured out in *some* circumstances, but even then, it's a guess based on overlapping curves of "standard" measurements.
Seriously. They eventually land on "Well they're intersex in some way", but like, these aren't laymen??? They're literally top of their field medical experts. I know Nigel's whole thing was being crassly wrong and coming off as incompetent and making an ass of himself sometimes so other characters could teach him these lessons, to show he is indeed a student, but then the response shouldn't have been "But she has a vagina!" it should've been "Pelvic bone shape doesn't always line up with a subject's sex or gender, there are any number of intersex conditions that can lead to someone having male presenting features but being otherwise female, including run of the mill individual development. All we know about the gender is we have a patient with implants, wearing feminine clothes, and living by all accounts as a woman. Her hips are no justification to assume otherwise. Don't disrespect patients when they've done nothing but die."
There’s actually another episode that has a trans subplot. It’s actually s4 episode 23, the girl in the mask. There’s a side character that is non binary named Dr. Haru Tanaka. However, this one admittedly a lot yikes than the episode you reviewed. A good handful characters spend the subplot speculating on Dr. Tanaka’s gender. As in, they try to place Dr. Tanaka into a binary box. And unfortunately by the end of the episode, they do. The only real points I can give it is Bones and Sweets state there’s a lot of cultures that have a third, or even multiple genders. Which honestly didn’t fully expect them to point that out on rewatch. Bones is my childhood comfort show so that episode was so painful to sit through as a non-binary person. But I’m glad this episode was a lot less painful
This is the ep i thought this video is going to be about when I saw “bones trans ep” even tho obviously the doctor was not trans but non binary .that one was very very yikes
@@Nehelenia3000not trans but nonbinary? But nonbinary IS trans, enby people are under the transgender umbrella, since they weren't assigned "gender nonbinary" at birth, were they?
@@alexbennet4195 aehm no, if your gender is nonbinary (and there are many forms to be that), your body is nonbinary, simple as that. we dont mean any functions and if they are trans(itioned) it is different anyway. only exception if they identify as enby femme/masc.
@@alexbennet4195 Lets see - if you are man, your genital are typical male. now if you suddenly wake up with a vagina, you would still be male, as you would still identify as a man. See? very easy. And of course there are people of all kind of genders and sex charasteric mixes. many cultures dont even have a gender binary. gender is in the brain, so it beats the rest everytime and hence only thing matter unless it comes to genital preferences in s*x or procreation, and thats none of other peoples business anyway if they are not involved. plus you cant know whats in their pants unless you are a creep. I am a trans woman and no matter what you think, you cant know whats in my pants unless I tell you. Could be pre-op/non-op ("male", though if on hrt, pretty much different), post-op (no difference anyway), i could be any variety of intersex. It does not matter for my gender, which isnt even woman. And especially doesnt matter what a doctor forceably assigns at birth as cishet society is obsessed with genitals. You see, it is impossible for you to invalidate people's existence on that basis.
Anohni (a trans singer) was featured in the soundtrack, if no one has said that yet. Mobile makes it a pain to check if this has already been mentioned, so i apologize if I'm repeating earlier responses. The song at the end of the episode is River of Sorrow, written by Anohni, performed by her group (which went by Antony and the Johnsons at the time the episode aired.)
The sad song featured at the end is River of Sorrow by Anohni and the Johnsons (then Anthony and the Johnsons). Anohni has an incredible voice, and her lyricism is poignant and deeply moving. She was the first openly transgender performer to be nominated for an Academy Award. Whoever made the song selection for the scene knew what they were doing, and I think it shows that this episode was important to at least some of the people involved in telling and bringing the story to audiences.
My favorite aspect of bones is how many times supernatural things happen in this show, like a shockingly amount of ghosts help them solve cases and they continue to never accept or believe in spirits
Still to this day, my favorite episode is the one where we experience the investigation through the eyes of a spirit who has attached to his corpse's skull. Just like. It was really sad. But also it was a fun way to tell the story
@@neonpinkqueen1403yes! honestly that shit felt ahead of its time, I loved that episode! I feel like that really wasn't something you got from tv back then, before black mirror and how's like that that really pushed the envelope.
Angela's Deal: -Vaguely pretty progressive for the time -Spiritual and kinda religious -"Womanly intuition", empathetic, high emotional intelligence. -Literally Magic... She's- She's literally magic. She does magic.
I always find the “anthropologists can always tell” claim funny because I’ve heard anthropologists admitting that the bone structure guesses aren’t perfect and often more skeletons are falsely guessed as male. I’m AFAB with broad shoulders and hip bones much narrower than them, I don’t expect I would be identified as female if all left of me was a skeleton.
Mostly it's transphobes who like to say that. Most actual doctors say they can only vaguely guess the sex of bones. There's too much actual overlap to really be certain except in the outliers.
Hey hot news from the archeology department : skeletons' sex is usually determined on a scale of 1 to 5 by using *three* different parts of the body. Just the pelvis isn't really a good way of doing it. (the scale is 1 Female, 5 Male)
I was thinking just that, one of the common reasons why c-sections are needed is that around 1/5 of pregnant people have pelvic that's much more align with what your high school biology book would label as "male pelvis", so even if we exclude trans women from possibilities, the lab guy should not be this confused by that. But I get it, it's an episode of a show, we do need some simplified explanations and expositions. And as for the argument about arechlogist.... they usually tell by the type of attire/jewelry/objects found in the grave and stuff like that. That's why we probably miss many graves of transgender people, which is a shame from he cultural research point of view. Like I guess the trans person wold be happy they just registered their remains as let say male if they identify as a male, but to us knowing that in that society trans people were respected enough to be buried according to the rituals associated with the gender they identify as is an important information.
@@Here_is_Waldo Best case scenario if you want to sex a skeleton: The pelvis has a fracture that is commonly seen after giving birth. But the thing is, "Commonly" is the key word here. As in there are other reasons a fracture like that can happen.
@@Gamer_G33k that isn't even a sure fire way either if they have given birth or not. Look at the actual case of Julie Doe. The mummified unidentified remains of a trans woman found in 1988. When is was originally discovered they thought she was a cis woman. One of the reasons why was because of her pelvic bone had changed due to HRT which is similar changes that happen when someone gives birth thinking that she had given birth. So even "commonly" isn't actually even accurate. And like you said changes to the pelvic bone can be caused by other factors.
Angela was an artist with magic powers iirc. She could basically do anything, much like most of the cast, but her powers were less hardcore science and more artsy
Yeah, she's a computer scientist/artist who managed to invent basically a supercomputer that can reconstruct faces from bones. Which is a thing, but it can't be done well by computers and also AI is canonically real and functional in this world so how impressive is that really?
This definitely makes me feel a bit better about Bones, though I will never forget the episode where they have a non-binary intern from Japan who is striving for (and meeting) andogyny, featuring an entire B-plot among the regular lab techs and is "resolved" by the magic psychologist grabbing their crotch.
Lily, "Why do trans people in TV shows always choose a name so derivative of their dead names. Real trans people are more creative then that!" Me, "...😶..."
In my defense... I've never hated my birthname. There's a fun story about why my parents chose it, & I see is as gender neutral because angels are beyond gender. Plus it's pronounced totally different "Mi-kay-la" vs "Mike-el"
I think it's only a problem because they ALWAYS handle it like that. There are plenty of trans people who do it that way, but it's also pretty common for a trans person to actively avoid the obvious approach and pick a name like Snowball or something. And then there are people who ask their parents what name they would have picked if they had been assigned their proper gender at birth and then go with that. Depicting it one specific way every time gives people the impression that that's the only way to do it.
"And then Booth immediately tanks any goodwill by immediately saying all this shit..." is a pretty accurate description of his character throughout the show. A few years ago I tried to rewatch the whole series and he just got too frustrating to watch consistently with how he never had to grow as a person. Which sucks because I loved/still love so many of the other characters. It's one of his better episodes treating people who are different with him defending her gender. He rarely has to unlearn his biases or shitty treatment of others, save for it dulling down a bit towards main characters, even when he is obviously wrong. Even when he gets therapy for his anger issues and "learns and grows", his shit towards anyone not like him is just A LOT ALL THE TIME.
4:33 The bone that Bones needed to "figure out" the "sex of the bones" was the "pelvic bone", that's the line in the show. Why she didn't just say "pelvis" is beyond me, it's equally acceptable terminology.
It's different things. "The pubis is one of the three main bones that make up the pelvis. It's also called the pubic bone or the pelvic girdle. The pelvis is a structure located between the abdomen and thighs." She'd be looking at the pubic arch, but occasionally the iliac crest. So she'd probably be referring to the public arch. Honestly, the pelvis isn't always the greatest indicator of sex, but we're veering into anthropology territory here... and going into things such as the cranium and the indicators of the pelvis would be too much. I had to say, though, that occasionally, the show screwed up on the science jargon and after taking anthropology I'd want to kick it.
I feel like this episode is less of a "mixed bag" as you make it out to be before reaching the end. From the clips you shared it seems to me that they used Booth as a stand in for the somewhat default level ignorant cis audience. Especially considering the times. Because Booth does make a lot of statements that are kinda understandable for an early 2000's ignorant person to make. But those takes are obviously shit. And than the show goes ahead and shoots down Booth's shit takes. And while it can be jarring, I think it's surprisingly progressive. To not just be "Trans people, yeah!", but to have someone being shitty and have that person being shut down. Like a lot of subversions onstereotypes that did, or even still do, exist. Even the victim being trans is a subversion, because obviously the audience will think her transnes has something to do with the murder. But like you also said, it didn't!
Yeah, especially the "except for the 'real woman' slip" line. I was like, wow, he's actually getting directly called out for something pretty much any other show at the time would had treated as normal. I was surprised Lily didn't directly comment on that
Yes!! I agree completely. I think a lot of people fail to see that sometimes, especially in shows with good writing teams, a character like Booth is used to kind of bridge that gap in knowledge, and be a stand in for the audience who isn't going to know the nuance around transness or whatever other message the episode is trying to get across. I thought it worked well for his character too, he is not inherently hateful, he is just set in his ways and needs things shown to him in a way that makes sense before he can wrap his head around it. I also love that instead of leaving it up to the audience to catch his shit takes, they directly had multiple characters call him out on his hypocrisy and ignorance. I'm not trying to shit on anyone or call anyone dumb, but I get the feeling that a lot of people haven't even watched Bones and that also a lot of people aren't fully getting that characters are just characters, and can be be used to represent a larger group on certain episodes.
Ok I'm a trans male studying to become a forensic anthropologist so I just wanted to say I am very much enjoying this video, Lily :) You're one of my favorite youtubers and idk it just makes me happy you're doing a video involving forensic anthropology, my special interests are merging!! Ok now time to infodump bc I'm also neurodivergent and bones/forensics are, as mentioned, my special interests and I cannot go longer than a day without talking about one or the other. I'm gonna try to make it related to the video tho lol. Don't feel obligated to read lmao it's a lot. - It actually was important to make that distinction that the lower half was missing bc it was sawed off. It's very common for animals n stuff to scavenge a corpse and oftentimes the bones are scattered around everywhere. As my forensic science professor has so elegantly put it; "we're all giant nutrient sacks trying to keep our nutrients together and take nutrients from where we can!" It's not uncommon to find a fingerbone in a rat's nest or smthn. I have a cool story semi-related to this but idk if it's too gruesome for a RUclips comment lol. - *Technically* there are other ways to sex a skeleton besides the pubic bone, BUT research has shown that these differences are caused not by chromosome count but by estrogen/testosterone level. Another fun fact about this bc I've heard a lot of transphobes say 'iN A hunDREd yEArS fROM nOw ARchAEologISTS arE GOnnA FINd yOUr bONEs aNd sAY yoU're (assigned gender)' - that's actually untrue. Bones are constantly restructuring themselves based on what you do and what chemical shit is going on in your body. That includes taking HRT. So one's skeletal structure will become more and more masculine/feminine depending on the HRT they're taking. Take that transphobes!! An anthropologist would be able to see what the original structure was but it would still be very clear that this person did not agree with what their pelvis was saying. - As an aside to my last point, due to the uptick in trans scientists such as myself there have been a lot of very interesting medical studies on the real effects of sex hormones on the body as well as the details of puberty n' stuff, since HRT causes basically a second puberty and all. A lot of the things we thought were a chromosome thing... *aren't.* I haven't been able to look into it myself since I don't know where to start, but my forensics professor recommends looking through it and she has good taste. I hope that when I get to start my own hormonal transition I can document it and add to these discoveries. - Also, if it helps about the forensic bias thing, modern classes really slam into your head from the beginning how important it is to recognize your own biases and that your judgement is NOT the end all be all. At least the FEPAC accredited degree courses (FEPAC being the Forensic Science Education Programs Accreditation Commission, run by the American Academy of Forensic Sciences). With how young the field is I can't promise all other courses have the same care put into them, but hopefully in the future forensics will improve with this self-awareness :) - This is fairly common knowledge now, but living bones are usually pink, but can also be many other colors depending on what medicines you're taking. I hope mine are green, that would be pretty cool - If anyone ever wants to keep a cool bone you found, *do not boil it or bleach it*. Both will destroy the bone's structural integrity and make it really, really easy to break! Boiling it also adds the risk of bringing the fat up to the surface and making it stick there basically forever, unless you give it a looooooooooooooooot of hot dish soap baths, which will eventually make it smell. On that note, always make sure to degrease a bone you want to keep, to prevent the smelliness. Hot dish soap baths, again, will work for that. Also hydrogen peroxide is the best way to whiten bones (for most), since it'll get the same visual result as bleach without making them as fragile as porcelain. I'd go into the details of both processes but this comment is already turning into an essay omg ok there's my rant bye
So the character of Angela Montenegro is not a psychologist, she’s a forensic artist. Usually she does facial reconstructions or aging… there’s a really nice episode where she does facial reconstruction drawings from the skeletal victims of enslaved Africans who died during their transport on slave ships and reads their names at the presentation. I think the reason why they made her able to tell from the photographs that “he knows” because she’s also shown to be the most emotionally intelligent of everyone in the institute because she’s like… the least formally educated, which is a trope I don’t love but I think she’s still a very nice character because she’s not stupid or anything, she’s just very real.
The psychologist lady (Angela iirc) is actually an artist, like she draws interpretations of people’s face when just have the skull and draws a lot of other things as well, also she has some weird 3d technology at one point. She’s also often portrayed as the one that knows a lot about people, which where the psychologist vibe probably comes from.
When you stated that the suspect was married, I knew it was going to turn out to be the wife, and that was a welcome subversion of the expected motive. I teared up when you talked about the ending, as my father was the son of a pastor and had a similar rejection of the bigoted, conservative church. When he was in his 50s, he actually ended up becoming a Unitarian Universalist reverend himself, now referring to himself as the "Commie Preacher"
@@TheCyberQuaker communism is not consistent with mainstream religious beliefs so if you have a call me Pastor then there's some contradiction there and additionally I said that you shouldn't conflate religion and or conservatism with bigotry there's a lot of Truth and goodness behind conservative and Traditional Values
@@CP-yd7lpthe overlap between religion, conservative and bigotry is very clear. It’s not a huge leap to say majority of at least conservative people are bigoted. That’s kind of the basis of being a conservative. Traditional values. Close minded. Not open to change. That’s literally the point of being a conservative. Religion is a mixed bag, but anybody who is bigoted and religious, does tend to use says religion to defend their bigotry. As for OP, they were sharing their own experience. Their experience just happened to be related to a pastor who’s also a conservative.
Someone mentioned this episode in your previous video and I watched it and... I liked it (I am easily impressed). FOR A SHOW WITH A TRANS CORPSE made in 2008 I thought it was really nice. Ngl, I like how the detectives are looking for information about this mystery woman and trying to figure out why she doesn't have a past... and it turns out she's trans and moved. That's genuinely a clever and original explanation for a identity mystery. They assume she's in witness protection or something "Officially she didn't exist before 5 years ago". Because she's trans! Clever use of a trans character! And the characters in the show are... surprisingly good?... in context/the time I guess? They jumble with the pronouns but they're trying their best (I know some people get annoyed, I like those moments of confused adjustment in some cases) Multiple people get angry and defend her whenever someone says "not a real woman", They assume the murder is transphobically motivated, but nope, it's not! Woo. I don't think anyone's aggressively transphobic except for the wife who's in one scene? Well the interrogation is transphobic but it could be acting. In the wider trans context it sucks she's dead, but in the show's context it's a murder show, there's not many ways to have a prominent guest character without them being a corpse. In this scenario the trans character isn't treated any differently than a cis corpse. So equality. The episode's themes are more about how televangelists suck and small pastors who welcome everyone are nice than about being trans. FOR A TRANS MURDER VICTIM this episode was actually really nice. It was awkward and clunky (as many people are) but it was genuine and nice. 💙💗🤍💗💙
The scene with the lower half a corpse on a table is some of the most horrific body horror made worse by the investigators. I would rather my murder go unsolved than have strangers examine my exposed genitals and bones while debating my gender, which is irrelevant to the case.
...I would like to think they are looking for the sex, as in what was the person's birth certificate registered at, or however this works, so they can be sure who the person is, their name (which may or may not be subject to change later on in someone's life), then their circumstance and eventually who the murderer was, so that person can get punished. If a criminal did harm to you (murdered you) would you not want them to figure out who the victim (you) was, to make sure the culprit is found and cannot do anything like that again? The misgendering is personally harmful, but they need to start somewhere. Identifying the sex is tricky enough on just a skeleton, there is no fault in not "seeing" the gender and/or personal identity and needing more than the body itself to figure out their label. The science does not see the person, it is merely the starting point, and it has to go through the scientific process (statistical likelihoods first) before, hopefully, finding enough clues to get the full picture. While this is fiction and the process depicted in a more TV worthy sensational manner, it it a process and one that tries to be as factual as possible (boiling down to the fact that humans are at their bones not so different in regards to sex, race or religion, but differ individually) yet involving a lot of guess-work and circumstance and context reliant (a problem archeologists face as well all the time). The entirety of the field,of autopsy is highly invasive on a personal level, but the body is dead and cause sometimes has to be found nonetheless. The scene, while body horror if you imagine this to be your or someone (a person's, an individual's) body, is actually a good presentation of the struggle the people looking at it go through, who are usually professional (or detached, both good and bad) to not view the body as a sexual object, they might as well look at a machine. The emotional body horror felt could not be further removed from such a situation for those (living) involved.
Forensics is moving in the right direction these days (despite what this episode makes it look like). There has been a lot of discussion of discrimination, bias, and treating people with diverse gender identities and sexes in after death care. This year at the NAME (national association of medical examiners) annual meeting, there was a presentation about how to write proper autopsy reports for those who are nonbinary/trans. The field has definitely become a lot more aware of stuff like the difference between sex and gender, and how to respect gender identity forensically. So, please don't hold this episode as an actual representation of how the field is at present. You don't have to be burned to avoid being misgendered (unless you want cremation), since the field is definitely better than it was portrayed here.
There was also an episode where a Japanese doctor came to work with them and they were very androgynous to the point where there was an entire subplot of trying to figure out if they were a man or a woman that was concluded by Angela hugging them and deducing they were a man cause "it moved".
she/her/idgaf 😂 I was questioning as a teen, but I simply have neither gender dysphoria nor gender euphoria, regardless of whether I try to present more male or female. I think my questioning and rejection of traditional femininity came more from the fact that my grandparents tried to put me into a very narrow box of what a girl should be. At this point, being closer to 30 than 20, I am fairly certain that I am cis, but gender-nonconforming.
bones is one of my fave shows, i grew up watching it with my dad and i remember as a kid this show basically taught me what bisexuality was (both w angela and because everyone on the show is super hot). there are many aspects of it that have aged poorly, and parts of this ep def have but i rewatched it recently and idk, makes me feel fuzzy in its better aspects ^-^ edit: just finished the video, and im really happy you liked this episode! :)
The one where identical twin boys are born but the doctor screws up one of the circumcisions so they raise one of them as a girl. If I remember correctly, one of the plot points is that the kid gets estrogen pills
@@andrewdunn8778 That episode lives rent free in my head, I think they said something like "It's easier to make a hole than a pole" super uncomfortable sentence
Wow, I forget how many twists and turns police procedurals often take. There were, like, 8-10 "Ah but this is actually the case!"s throughout a 45-minute episode.
Angela is an artist who has trained to be able to reconstruct the features of a dead person with input from bones who marks those flesh points and facial features. Her thing is being able to make someone out of nothing.
My really good friend went from Alexandra to Alexander. Or just simply Alex. Sometimes keeping it simple makes it easier for the transitioner as well as for the people in their circle to not get confused or accidently call them by their dead name. I admit i have made that mistake both misgendering and dead naming my friend during the first week I found out of his transition. Man did I ever feel terrible when i made that slip up.
Actually, Angela is not a psychologist, she’s a dark arch-wizard plotting a ritual known as the “Awakened Blood-Agony-Sphere Emergence” and she needs a bunch of fragments of different bones to conduct it so she’s posing as a forensics expert to steal bone shards. If she is allowed to succeed she will bring Armageddon to the material plane. Hope this cleared things up for you!!
friendly reminder not to forget that sweets, AKA John Francis Daily wrote spiderman homecoming. edit: angela aka who you call the psychologist lady is actually the tech character/ sketch artist, I'm pretty sure she's not like an actual psychologist though she's just emotionally intelligent and is often called in as the "Human" character hence why she reads the images so well and stuff, being more grounded, expressive, relatable, etc. also fun fact Angela did have a same sex relationship later on in the series which i wish lasted longer, though Hodgins and her are good for eachother.
Last month I didn't even know what the show bones was, and now I saw two video essays about it, both regarding lgbt representation on the show. Was there some event that put the show back on the zeitgeist?
The emotional ending song is by the band Anohoni and the Johnsons which is a very cool english band lead by a trans woman. The band was formerly called Antony and the Johnsons. Side note, she is an older generation where i think a lot of trans woman had "matching' names. Like my aunt went from mark to mary
Have you watched the trans Psych episode? I remember hating most of it but there was a monologue near the end that had me literally weeping it was so good!
The point about name changes, I've seen quite a few people use similar names, often to go by a neutral nickname that makes it easier, like Patrick - Pat - Patricia or Samuel - Sam - Samantha or Eliot page went with a similar name to make it easier to correct yourself half way through. But honestly, I will say it's refreshing to see that there are others who believe that trans people can still lead churches, and find supportive communities.
I like the idea of transitioning as a metaphor for metaphysical transformation. Making radical choices to make yourself into a truer version of yourself is a hero's journey all on its own - while also making a trans story a universal story. That's good writing!
Did they make Angela a psychiatrist? Cause I'm pretty sure her deal was supposed to be the "artistic emotional core" that digitally reconstructed faces...
Speaking of John Francis Daly from Freaks and Geeks (and Yo Gabba Gabba) - any thoughts of discussing the intersex episode of F&G? It was only a B plot, but it was pretty fucking impressive for 1999. And while the subject is a person being born with ambiguous genitalia, not socially and/or medically transitioning, Amy does hint at the importance of a person's own identity, when she clarifies that it worked out in the end because she's a girl after all.
And also because of Ken's journey questioning what it meant that he liked her - questioning whether he's gay, finally realizing hello, she's a girl, and finally coming around to realizing it's not about him - that how Amy got to where she is doesn't matter, just that she's Amy. And they live happily ever after (...by default at least, the show was cancelled a week later).
I think maybe my favorite Angela moment was when they found a slave trade shop that had crashed, it was a whole thing but at the end she had drawn the faces of the 200 kidnapped people to give them at least their faces back because so many names were unknown. I only catch pieces of Bones but thats stuck with me.
this episode traumatised a very young closeted trans me and gave me brand new dysphoria that i still have to this day. i cannot watch this episode but i'm very glad you made a video about it!
28:44 As someone who uses "they," "she" and "it" interchangeably, I understand this power and it feels amazing. P.S. I'm pretty sure that in the final scene of this episode, the person singing is the transfem artist Anohni, which is a genuinely nice touch. I am pleasantly surprised.
I came into this a bit guarded and ready to defend the first show with a main character who I related to, and found myself laughing and agreeing with you on many points. This show isn’t perfect and many episodes haven’t aged well, but it will always hold a special place for me, and I really appreciated your thorough analysis. (Also, had to pause and slow clap when I noticed the section titles followed the format. That detail made me laugh.) For reference, I’m cis bi/pan (once considered myself possibly gender fluid before I understood my sexuality fully and realized I didn’t have to be/become more masculine in order to love or be attracted to feminine people or vice versa). I was raised in a hateful church like the one shown here and heavily relate to the transformation of spirituality and personality explored in this episode. Great video, hun! I’ll definitely be checking out your other content! :)
Angela is an artist, not a psychologist of any kind (she does however have a certain way with people and a better understanding of "alternative lifestyles" than the rest of the cast ) The denotation about the spine being severed was a way of indicating violence as opposed to accidental, chopped vs decayed away I very much loved this show, it helps think of booth as like.. your Archie Bunker character meant to highlight the standard buffoonery of the average man(and average government stooge) and while he's not horrible we're NOT meant to think his takes are good
7:00 Kathy Reichs, one of the the show's producers and author of the book series the show was based on, is actually a forensic anthropologist and made sure all the science-y jargon actually meant something.
this is one of my guilty pleasure shows and the end of this episode always makes me cry. the combination of my own religious upbringing and my experience as a trans person hits me very hard every time i watch it
i remember this being one of the first positive trans stories i saw in high school. i used to watch bones with my parents and this episode made me cry when i first watched it even though i didn't know i was trans yet. i didn't remember much about it so i'm glad to see it still holds up well
This episode does actually point out why the whole “yOuR bOnEs aRe sTiLL” male/female argument is ridiculous. Skeletal remains are often misgendered. For most of my life one of my parents was considered missing and I’ve spent a bit of my life looking through Doe sites. Something I learned was things like gender and race are often just a best guess. And as someone with a TBI pronouns trip me up (along with most words) at times and I greatly appreciate anyone who just gets more powerful with any and all of them! ❤
You and Willie Muse doing Bones episodes in rapid succession is a real treat. My folks and I watched the whole series during its original run. I have a real soft spot for it and its occasionally excellent writing.
I hope you do an analysis of Cold Case's trans episodes one day! There's arguably two: "Daniela" and "Boy Problems". "Daniela" is 100% a trans episode, but in "Boy Problems" is not so clear if the character is trans or not.
This uh video made me cry as religious trans person I have a family that’s amazingly accepting of my true self and everything but having grown up in the south and in the southern Baptist church and in particular a part of the Texan southern baptist church that’s culty. I have always grown up with a secret feeling of guilt and weight of being me. Even if I’m surrounded by love the culture is there. And that ending line of redemption through transformation did genuinely make me 🥹. I was kind of awful prior to being myself and accepting myself. And that sort of self discovery allowing for a growth and I just 🥲 Idk if you’ll ever see this video is kinda old but this video means a lot to me I needed that kind of ending
I haven't watched all of Bones, so I was convinced this video was actually about the episode with a gender-ambiguous Japanese character that the main characters argued about behind their back. They somehow managed to be transphobic, enbyphobic, and anti-Asian with a single one-off character. But perhaps I'll see that episode get mentioned when I finish the video.
I see some people disliked this episode in the comments. Fair enough, still I wanted to share my thoughts. I grew up watching bones. This episode always stuck with me. When I was really young, like 11 or 12, before watching this episode, I took the stance of “I don’t understand it and glad it’s not me” around the trans community. This episode was really the first time I changed that opinion. The first conversation between booth and the son really impacted me. I saw how her child responded, with grace and regret at not getting to know her verse how stilted and confused booth was throughout the episode and it was clear who I wanted to be. And as a Christian I think I resonated with those characters more, seeing that made me made me realize I should never aim for tolerance. Instead, aim for true acceptance and welcome all. I won’t say this episode alone brought me to where I am now, but it got me to stand up to some kids bullying the girl who just transitioned in our class in high school. I really appreciate that it also showed a spectrum of religious individuals opinions and reactions to it. And that they weren’t all terrible. It was nice to see other Christian representation that end up on the side of supporting the LGBTQ+ community. I know many have been and are still being hurt by the church, and I’m so sorry for that. Not all Christians feel that way and I know I will stand along side lgbtq+ people any day in their fight for equality, respect, and unfortunately where we are now: basic rights. Also yes, Angela’s job was literally do impossible things with technology and art because the plot needed it. Rewatching I can never get past how insane what they have her do is.
Love your videos, really enjoyed this one as usual! (Big fan of that skeleton in the back). You should look into 9-1-1 Lone Star, it has a trans man (Paul) in the main cast, and he's one of the focuses in S2E6 'Everyone and their brother'. Had some thoughts on it as a trans dude myself, but found it to be a really strong episode! Paul is actually played by a trans man!
this is the first video the algorithm served me of yours, and i loved it. i remember this episode, but it's been a long time so i didn't remember how well they handled it. After your review, i recalled that it gave me a lot of hope.
Wonder if you'll cover any of the trans episodes from SVU? I remember ones from the early season to the newer. I think (excuse my bad memory) first one being a trans woman who killed someone out of fear of her being trans revealed. Season being a black boy killing a trans girl out of peer pressure/ it being a accident.
Yes Booth saying that stuff was on purpose, because you can tell a lot about a person by WHAT PART of something they get angry about and how they respond. The fact he got angry about how Booth was reffering to her rather than the insinuations about his own sexuality makes him a less likely suspect and even in the event it did wind up he was the killer that his motive was not related to her gender identity. On the other hand If he had gotten angry about the insinuation it might have made him snap and inculpate himself or give further clues they could have pursued.
Exactly he picked the most extreme path to get an extreme and honest reaction from JP. He was eather going to agree or be p!ssed. The seen with Patricia's EX wife was Booth playing good cop to Brannon's bad cop. For me the most likable thing about Booth is his willingness to step out of his comfort zone and at least try to understand the things and people he was taught by his religion where bad. Being Catholic and his faith is a large part of who he is but he does his best to not let it stop him from growing.
There is a trans episode of NCIS called Dead Man Talking. It is where a "man" pretends to be a woman in order to hide from the police because they're a murder. Several characters are disgusted by the thought of a trans person existing. To say that it is not the best representation is an understatement.
Damn that Bones intro music brings me back. I also remember one of my Christian friends wasn’t allowed to watch Bones anymore after one character was implied to be a lesbian or something.
NOOOOOO QUE LINDO IMMA CRY I will never forget this proverb. "God blessed us with the trans experience for the same reason god gave us wine, to experience the joy and love of creation, transformation."
![ARGENTINA vs. PERÚ [1-0] | RESUMEN | ELIMINATORIAS SUDAMERICANAS | FECHA 12](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/xtI25ENDDSY/mqdefault.jpg)
For people saying that Bones said pelvic not pubic, okay I can see that now but also I'm gonna still claim it cos damn is that Pel-Vick poorly enunciated
Hey, Lily, I see all the individual comments telling you about "pelvic bone" but your comment here doesn't have anyone replying to it, so: Pelvic bone.
big of you to do that, always knew you had it in you
pelvic bone
Could you make a video about the Trans characters from Wentworth? Maxine from season 2 and Reb from season 8.
Lol, it makes sense that you would hear “pubbic”, Lily, because your a New Zealander; and as we all know New Zealand English has only one vowel, "uh". (It's how you differentiate you from Australians, whose only vowel is "ee" - fun fact.)
That she wasn't a sex worker, wasn't killed *for being* trans, and that she was liked by some people in life, was enough for me to like this episode as a teen... That was how low my bar was for representation.
yeah, sadly "the dead trans character didn't fall into some of the other common stereotypes" was fairly good by the standards of when this came out, and unfortunately standards are still not that much higher
I mean, being a sex worker isn’t bad but since it was viewed as such at the time (and still is by many) and was frequently conflated with trans people as a stereotype, I see why it was an issue.
@@legometaworld2728 yeah, there's absolutely nothing wrong with sex work, but as a little closeted trans teen, TV seemed to be telling me that sex work was the only existence I'd be able to have if I ever came out.
as a kid, I didn't have representation, I found trans sex workers and they helped be with my homework because they were scared why I was in spaces they could be found
@@apocrypha5363 as an adult who can't get work after transitioning, I'm afraid they were kinda right about that.
Angela is not a psychologist, she's a computer expert and artist. She usually reconstructs faces, but she's also known as the most emotionally intelligent as well as romantic one and also the expert on LGBTQ+ things because she's bisexual herself.
I responded to another post on this, I mixed her up with someone else cos of what she was doing in this episode. I stand by the magical powers line though
You were absolutely right that her character trait is "having the magical skill necessary to advance the plot".
Also probably true. She has a psychic and it is sometimes implied that there is magic in a sort of "I guess we'll never know"-way.
@JuMixBoox To be fair, the show had a crossover with Sleepy Hollow, which has all sorts of supernatural shit. So canonically that stuff DOES exist in the world of Bones.
I mean, technically magic IS canon in the show, so...
Pointing out cis people have gender-affirming care too, and can access it far more easily than us, is both a good point, and not one you see very often !
I recently watched Philosophy Tube's essay about sending 131 (iirc) emails to the UK medical system, and she makes tons of incredible points but this one was a major highlight for me and was a way I hadn't really thought of things before. Highly recommended video and channel overall, if anyone who sees this isn't already familiar!
Just wait until people dig into news articles about parents forcing their under 18 year old children into getting gender-affirming care but in the same breath, screech how if it's for trans people then it's immoral and unethical.
The dramatic irony of an episode with such a poignant, well-thought-out message being called "The He in She"
And the whole saying of "Redemption through Transformation" would be a whole lot better as a title with the new context after watching the show. I'm really sad they missed that
@@Stafarns While I agree with you, all Bones episodes have a name like "The [Thing 1] in [Thing 2]". It's just their naming convention. It's sort of like how all Friends episodes are named "The One Where...".
Though honestly, even calling it "The She in He" would have been better, since that would at least imply who she really was on the inside vs what society saw her originally.
I kinda think its supposed to be like..."misdirection" and "he" is actually referring to "god" instead. Might be a longshot but idk
The funny thing is that they could’ve saved the title just by dropping the S down to lower case “The He in she.” Would imply that the capitalized “He” is God n thus be a pun about this being an MtF person who managed to hold on to their religious values while dropping all the hate n bigotry associated with those values in the modern day. Cuz right now it just says “Hey, everyone, this one is probably about a hate crime, does that make u wanna tune in?”
@@trashkitty8736 Ooo, I like this take!
"She wasn't killed because of her identity as trans, she was killed because of her identity as a woman"
Me: LETS GOOOOO! 🎉🎉🎉
A win is a win 🎉
LEZGO 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉
**Mission failed successfully**
trans inclusionary misogyny win
@@genderenderEspecially in that scene where Booth was so quick to say he'd love Bones as a man, but Bones couldn't love him as a woman ... I'm glad the trans rep was generally not bad here, but that was a bit of a gut punch to being fem in general.
So having marathonned Bones, some details to highlight:
1. Brennan was a Foster kid, and easily can be passed off as undiagnosed autistic in the show
2. Booth is known for his definite blunders, and has social shortcomings
3. Angela is a queer POC
4. Both bosses who have been in Cam's position were Black people, Cam obviously being the 2nd
5. They did have a character become overtly physically disabled towards the end of the series with him not being able to walk again at all
6. Brennan is among top 5 best written moms in fiction
7. They do actually tackle.trauma with tact and grace, so they don't do total erasure, thankfully
8. The interns are a widely colourful cast
Take this with a grain a salt, but apparently the character Temperance Brennan in the Kathy Reich's books was based off her autistic friend
Damn, I remember watching the show quite frequently growing up and I'm glad it was better than most cop shows of the time. Also the realization I had gender envy for Brennan.
Re number 5, he does learn to walk again. [edit 2: I was wrong about this, blame my brain fog and subsequent terrible memory. I stand by the rest of my rant to follow though!]
And he's also just such a massive dick to his partner about the whole thing for quite a while. It is truly unpleasant to watch.
It's the same thing that happened on Grey's with Arizona where she was just such a dick to her partner while coming to terms with being disabled.
And like I came to terms with being disabled without being mean and unpleasant to the people around me for the most part. I'm sure I got annoyed and upset occasionally but that's also just a human thing.
The fact that these shows think that being disabled is just so the worst thing ever that you just are a massive asshole to the people around you for a while is just so,, eugh
I know on Grey's it was more complicated because yeah yeah Callie gave the okay for them to cut her leg even though she promised she wouldn't and everything but also like they're writers and they can just write different storylines about disabled people.
Or just more storylines and then the ones where we are assholes won't matter because there will just be so many other disabled characters to choose from and different types of storylines.
(this is how I think all representation should work because I don't think that just one character is enough to encompass any human experience)
Edit 1: I agree with all your other points to be clear and I do like the show, it used to be a special interest (I really related to Brennan for absolutely no reason at all /sarcasm)
@@fx2thegoldenwarriorTemperance, damn no wonder they gave her a nickname.
@@oli_kate Jack Hodgins never learn to walk again, he is permanently paraplegic at the end of the show.
"Good luck misgendering a pile of ash, you dickwads" is the perfect tombstone quote.
I felt this in my bones. Pun intended.
we all need to make our tombstone quotes metal as shit.
I'll go first, mine is "you cease to be human." because it's the only thing I've said that has made even a lick of sense since The Incident
@@Wanettepoems I can't feel it in my bones, because I'm a pile of ash.
@@chocomelo454 "Banned in multiple countries" is probably gonna be on mine
I do like how Sweets calls out Booth on his transphobia
Sweets was the best. RIP Sweets.
Yeah Sweets was consistently a very supportive guy, he also was seen a couple of times talking to a trans woman in therapy about transitioning over the course of the show.
@@caranookand that's why they had to kill him off
@@xx-el9glRAHH I hate that sm
@@xx-el9gl The real reason they killed him off is actually worse than that.
The actor had a scheduling conflict, and rather than temporarily write him out of the show until said conflict was over, they just killed him off entirely. It's beyond bullshit, and I'm still angry over it.
Tbh i'm shocked by how well this episode turned out compared to the show's episode with a Japanese x-gendered guest that Angela molests to identify their sex.
OH…
Excuse me what?
yeah i remember that one....a huge fkn yikes for sure
That's is the episode that I thought this video was going to be about! That was the absolute pits and i remember being horrified even at the time. I'd forgotten that this not-great-but-not-horrendous episode existed too.
Yea as much as I hate that episode i hope she covers it
I used love Bones, but when I was watching it recently, I couldn't help but notice how problematic it is now. There's another trans episode with a non-binary character in which the characters spend the whole time trying to find out whether they were male or female. Watch the episode because the way they find out the characters had a dick or not is absolutely foul. It's called The Girl in the Mask, season 4 episode 23.
i assumed that episode was what this was gonna be about, that episode ALWAYS rubbed me the wrong way
Both trans episodes are in season 4? The writers must have had us on their mind or something.
Yeah I was going to comment about that. One of the first non-binary representations I saw on TV, and it was so uncomfortable.
I mean they literally get sexually assaulted at work by a coworker. It is kinda beyond the pale of unacceptable and is just actual criminal assault, battery, and a literal sex crime.@@Scarygothgirl
I remember seeing that at my friends’ house that I lived at after my foster parent threw me out. They didn’t have cable so they bought DVDs for all the shows they liked.
Honestly as a baby trans when I first saw this I really liked it, they treated Patricia with a lot more dignity than I saw from a lot of other media at the time and her son’s reaction was so sweet. Seeing a trans woman being embraced by her community just hit me right in the feels. I have such a strong love/hate relationship with Bones but this is definitely one of the better episodes.
Booth saying the breast implants are his department is because of the serial number on breast implants that he as the FBI can trace. As an avid Bones fan honestly this episode is only like number 5 in Top Booth Offensive Moments. The time he said f@ggot is seared in my brain.
What episode does Booth say that in? I know he says some insane shit but I don't remember that 😂 Bones is 100% my favorite guilty pleasure show
What episode does he say that!?!?! Holy shit!
Wait they aired an episode with slurs in it!? Haven’t seen this since I was like 8 but definitely didn’t think this was the vibe of the show
@lindensalter6713 I'm not surprised shows used the F slur, they were horrible for LGBT folks back in the day.
So, fun fact, the series Bones had a crossover episode with the series Sleepy Hollow. Sleepy Hollow is another case of the week show, but what set it about was that it involed a soldier who was fighting in the revolutionary war and came to the present day through magical time travel. So it is entirely possible that Angela has magical powers without it breaking the lore of the show.
Oh I love this so much
I'm reminded of the Hard Drive article about how Law & Order made a step forward for trans representation by having a trans woman be both a dead sex worker and serial killer
Geez.....💀
Really progressive and positive, wow.
And first large scale television representation of being asexual was on House. House ofc cured asexuality because "its not natural human instinct" The happy asexual couple was composed of a person with a curable disease and a person who pretended they didn't want sex to make their partner happy. In the end they were cured and went on to bang
@@FroggyGizmoI remember that one! I'm not ace and had never heard of ace people at the time, but even I thought that was stupid
That article was completely /s, am I right?
I’m 50. Most trans people I know, at least the ones my age and older many who transitioned in the 90s, used names very close to their dead name. I think it might be an older generation thing.
(Late to the party but I only just had this in my recommendations today)
I'm 25 and one of my mates in college (6th Form UK) did the same thing. I would have chosen a name similar to my birthname, but chose against it because I really dislike my own name, much to my parents' distaste. Definitely a generational thing as well, but also an individual thing. Some people gel with their birthnames, and some don't.
I also did that... That's a bit of an oofer. I had a different preferred name when I was younger, but by about 27 I went with an r63 name. Bit rough to be denied because she wants to tally an extra Cinema Sin
Mainly, from my understanding was, they weren't really changing who they were. Like Kim Petras
Im pretty young, but i kept my first initial so i could look at old stuff with my initials on it without thinking about my deadname
Have a older coworker who just turned 70 and her chosen name is Stephanie, I also kept the same first letter of my name, but my younger sibling's is completely different than their old name
I love the "being trans means god made a mistake somewhere" line of logic. Often said by people who had braces or glasses
Right? Why is it okay to treat depression but not gender dysphoria? (who am I kidding, a lot of phobes don't support any mental health or science in general, for that matter)
There are literally verses in the Bible about Jesus doing miracles and healing blind people, lame people, etc., the Bible makes it pretty explicitly clear that just because you don't like the body you were born with doesn't mean God make a mistake. Who am I kidding tho, transphobic Christians wouldn't ever read the Bible, that'd be crazy
I choose to interpret said line of logic as "being trans means God made a mistake in allowing transphobia to exist" because that is exactly the kind of thing that would piss off hyper-religious bigots by turning their hate speech and intolerance back on them.
16:55 no what’s even funnier about this bit is that angela ISNT A PSYCHOLOGIST she’s an artist. she’s just the neurotypical woman of the cast who understands emotions properly unlike the whole lab (this is my autism show i screamed when i saw this video :33)
Calling her neurotypical is pushing it 😅
@@dr.jackbright963the most socially adept squint might be a better fit
The fact her dad is a member of ZZ Top is really just icing on her cake 😍
@@beautyandgrace7997there you go
Lol no one on that show is NT
10:44 "the pelvis is this shape, so that corpse was a man!" "but the corpse has this body part, and that's a woman's vagina!" I get that this is very "baby's first steps about transgender people existing", but this shite is also intersexphobic as well. even if it gets revealed that this was, indeed, a trans woman, the amount of these arguments ending up in "oh, this person was just born/operated on by doctors at birth like that" is not unsubstantial.
Involuntary intersex “corrective” surgery on infants is some fucked up shit.
Really telling that all these Christofascists and cryptofascists (read TERFs) pushing these anti-trans healthcare bans always make a point of carving out exceptions for these surgeries to continue to be carried out. Goes to show their priority isn't protecting children, but enforcing control and conformity.
Also, take it from someone who actually is going into this field, you cannot fully identify a body based on bones. There are SOME sexually dimorphic characteristics in humans, but they're not as drastic as you'd think, and the modern technology of c-sections allowing births that bypass the pelvis entirely are making those characteristics even less notable.
@@AeonKnigh432 THIS! The differences in the bones overlap more than they differ. It can be figured out in *some* circumstances, but even then, it's a guess based on overlapping curves of "standard" measurements.
Seriously. They eventually land on "Well they're intersex in some way", but like, these aren't laymen??? They're literally top of their field medical experts. I know Nigel's whole thing was being crassly wrong and coming off as incompetent and making an ass of himself sometimes so other characters could teach him these lessons, to show he is indeed a student, but then the response shouldn't have been "But she has a vagina!" it should've been "Pelvic bone shape doesn't always line up with a subject's sex or gender, there are any number of intersex conditions that can lead to someone having male presenting features but being otherwise female, including run of the mill individual development. All we know about the gender is we have a patient with implants, wearing feminine clothes, and living by all accounts as a woman. Her hips are no justification to assume otherwise. Don't disrespect patients when they've done nothing but die."
@@AeonKnigh432 thank you for confirming that, it irritated me so much because I was fairly sure that’s not how bones work. I
You have me cackling over here! "My pronouns are any/all. I'll take anything you got. It just makes me more powerful!" 🤣🤣🤣
Best line ever
As a fellow any/all, I am so using that line.
My bones are staying unburned after death, so I can be a strong member of the future trans skeleton army
same. we gotta remember to pull their hair up, but not out.
There’s actually another episode that has a trans subplot. It’s actually s4 episode 23, the girl in the mask. There’s a side character that is non binary named Dr. Haru Tanaka. However, this one admittedly a lot yikes than the episode you reviewed. A good handful characters spend the subplot speculating on Dr. Tanaka’s gender. As in, they try to place Dr. Tanaka into a binary box. And unfortunately by the end of the episode, they do. The only real points I can give it is Bones and Sweets state there’s a lot of cultures that have a third, or even multiple genders. Which honestly didn’t fully expect them to point that out on rewatch. Bones is my childhood comfort show so that episode was so painful to sit through as a non-binary person. But I’m glad this episode was a lot less painful
This is the ep i thought this video is going to be about when I saw “bones trans ep” even tho obviously the doctor was not trans but non binary .that one was very very yikes
oh yeah i remember that one. it was yikes. but at least we got this one as well.
@@Nehelenia3000not trans but nonbinary? But nonbinary IS trans, enby people are under the transgender umbrella, since they weren't assigned "gender nonbinary" at birth, were they?
@@alexbennet4195 aehm no, if your gender is nonbinary (and there are many forms to be that), your body is nonbinary, simple as that.
we dont mean any functions and if they are trans(itioned) it is different anyway.
only exception if they identify as enby femme/masc.
@@alexbennet4195 Lets see - if you are man, your genital are typical male.
now if you suddenly wake up with a vagina, you would still be male, as you would still identify as a man.
See? very easy.
And of course there are people of all kind of genders and sex charasteric mixes.
many cultures dont even have a gender binary.
gender is in the brain, so it beats the rest everytime and hence only thing matter unless it comes to genital preferences in s*x or procreation, and thats none of other peoples business anyway if they are not involved.
plus you cant know whats in their pants unless you are a creep.
I am a trans woman and no matter what you think, you cant know whats in my pants unless I tell you. Could be pre-op/non-op ("male", though if on hrt, pretty much different), post-op (no difference anyway), i could be any variety of intersex.
It does not matter for my gender, which isnt even woman.
And especially doesnt matter what a doctor forceably assigns at birth as cishet society is obsessed with genitals.
You see, it is impossible for you to invalidate people's existence on that basis.
Anohni (a trans singer) was featured in the soundtrack, if no one has said that yet. Mobile makes it a pain to check if this has already been mentioned, so i apologize if I'm repeating earlier responses. The song at the end of the episode is River of Sorrow, written by Anohni, performed by her group (which went by Antony and the Johnsons at the time the episode aired.)
The sad song featured at the end is River of Sorrow by Anohni and the Johnsons (then Anthony and the Johnsons). Anohni has an incredible voice, and her lyricism is poignant and deeply moving. She was the first openly transgender performer to be nominated for an Academy Award. Whoever made the song selection for the scene knew what they were doing, and I think it shows that this episode was important to at least some of the people involved in telling and bringing the story to audiences.
My favorite aspect of bones is how many times supernatural things happen in this show, like a shockingly amount of ghosts help them solve cases and they continue to never accept or believe in spirits
Still to this day, my favorite episode is the one where we experience the investigation through the eyes of a spirit who has attached to his corpse's skull.
Just like. It was really sad. But also it was a fun way to tell the story
@@neonpinkqueen1403yes! honestly that shit felt ahead of its time, I loved that episode! I feel like that really wasn't something you got from tv back then, before black mirror and how's like that that really pushed the envelope.
The also had a at least two crossover episodes with a supernatural show, "The Finder" and "Sleepy Hollow".
Reminds me of Family Guy's Brian literally meeting Jesus and God multiple times in the show but still being an atheist 😂
Angela's Deal:
-Vaguely pretty progressive for the time
-Spiritual and kinda religious
-"Womanly intuition", empathetic, high emotional intelligence.
-Literally Magic... She's- She's literally magic. She does magic.
yeah but also extremely annoying and thinks she knows everything about everyone.
Showing kind of some ADHD traits as well I would say.
@@ZectifinI think the call is coming from inside the house babe, because why the hell did Angela upset you😂😂
Obviously she works with angel
I always find the “anthropologists can always tell” claim funny because I’ve heard anthropologists admitting that the bone structure guesses aren’t perfect and often more skeletons are falsely guessed as male. I’m AFAB with broad shoulders and hip bones much narrower than them, I don’t expect I would be identified as female if all left of me was a skeleton.
Mostly it's transphobes who like to say that. Most actual doctors say they can only vaguely guess the sex of bones. There's too much actual overlap to really be certain except in the outliers.
Hey hot news from the archeology department : skeletons' sex is usually determined on a scale of 1 to 5 by using *three* different parts of the body. Just the pelvis isn't really a good way of doing it. (the scale is 1 Female, 5 Male)
I was thinking just that, one of the common reasons why c-sections are needed is that around 1/5 of pregnant people have pelvic that's much more align with what your high school biology book would label as "male pelvis", so even if we exclude trans women from possibilities, the lab guy should not be this confused by that. But I get it, it's an episode of a show, we do need some simplified explanations and expositions.
And as for the argument about arechlogist.... they usually tell by the type of attire/jewelry/objects found in the grave and stuff like that. That's why we probably miss many graves of transgender people, which is a shame from he cultural research point of view. Like I guess the trans person wold be happy they just registered their remains as let say male if they identify as a male, but to us knowing that in that society trans people were respected enough to be buried according to the rituals associated with the gender they identify as is an important information.
@@Here_is_Waldo Best case scenario if you want to sex a skeleton: The pelvis has a fracture that is commonly seen after giving birth. But the thing is, "Commonly" is the key word here. As in there are other reasons a fracture like that can happen.
@@Gamer_G33k that isn't even a sure fire way either if they have given birth or not.
Look at the actual case of Julie Doe. The mummified unidentified remains of a trans woman found in 1988. When is was originally discovered they thought she was a cis woman. One of the reasons why was because of her pelvic bone had changed due to HRT which is similar changes that happen when someone gives birth thinking that she had given birth.
So even "commonly" isn't actually even accurate. And like you said changes to the pelvic bone can be caused by other factors.
Angela was an artist with magic powers iirc. She could basically do anything, much like most of the cast, but her powers were less hardcore science and more artsy
Yeah, she's a computer scientist/artist who managed to invent basically a supercomputer that can reconstruct faces from bones. Which is a thing, but it can't be done well by computers and also AI is canonically real and functional in this world so how impressive is that really?
wasn't there an episode where she acurately reconstructs a tattoo from just a quarter of it?
This definitely makes me feel a bit better about Bones, though I will never forget the episode where they have a non-binary intern from Japan who is striving for (and meeting) andogyny, featuring an entire B-plot among the regular lab techs and is "resolved" by the magic psychologist grabbing their crotch.
Oh that's a full course of yikes
Is that a Steins;Gate reference?
O________O
She hugged them and said she felt it move
and Angela is supposed to be this woo woo nice lady who always knows how to talk to people about their emotions. shes so annoying as a character.
Lily, "Why do trans people in TV shows always choose a name so derivative of their dead names. Real trans people are more creative then that!"
Me, "...😶..."
In my defense... I've never hated my birthname. There's a fun story about why my parents chose it, & I see is as gender neutral because angels are beyond gender. Plus it's pronounced totally different "Mi-kay-la" vs "Mike-el"
… me too. Why change the whole name when I can just trade in 2 vowels for 1 consonant.
I just wanted it changed, didn’t really care to what. 😅
I think it's only a problem because they ALWAYS handle it like that. There are plenty of trans people who do it that way, but it's also pretty common for a trans person to actively avoid the obvious approach and pick a name like Snowball or something. And then there are people who ask their parents what name they would have picked if they had been assigned their proper gender at birth and then go with that. Depicting it one specific way every time gives people the impression that that's the only way to do it.
yeah Gabe Dunn from justbetweenus changed like 2 letters in his name. Plenty of people do it.
@@Michaela_ZCtwo comments about not changing birthnames too much, both Michael to Mikayla. neat.
"And then Booth immediately tanks any goodwill by immediately saying all this shit..." is a pretty accurate description of his character throughout the show. A few years ago I tried to rewatch the whole series and he just got too frustrating to watch consistently with how he never had to grow as a person. Which sucks because I loved/still love so many of the other characters. It's one of his better episodes treating people who are different with him defending her gender. He rarely has to unlearn his biases or shitty treatment of others, save for it dulling down a bit towards main characters, even when he is obviously wrong. Even when he gets therapy for his anger issues and "learns and grows", his shit towards anyone not like him is just A LOT ALL THE TIME.
4:33 The bone that Bones needed to "figure out" the "sex of the bones" was the "pelvic bone", that's the line in the show. Why she didn't just say "pelvis" is beyond me, it's equally acceptable terminology.
It's different things. "The pubis is one of the three main bones that make up the pelvis. It's also called the pubic bone or the pelvic girdle. The pelvis is a structure located between the abdomen and thighs." She'd be looking at the pubic arch, but occasionally the iliac crest. So she'd probably be referring to the public arch.
Honestly, the pelvis isn't always the greatest indicator of sex, but we're veering into anthropology territory here... and going into things such as the cranium and the indicators of the pelvis would be too much. I had to say, though, that occasionally, the show screwed up on the science jargon and after taking anthropology I'd want to kick it.
I feel like this episode is less of a "mixed bag" as you make it out to be before reaching the end.
From the clips you shared it seems to me that they used Booth as a stand in for the somewhat default level ignorant cis audience. Especially considering the times.
Because Booth does make a lot of statements that are kinda understandable for an early 2000's ignorant person to make. But those takes are obviously shit. And than the show goes ahead and shoots down Booth's shit takes. And while it can be jarring, I think it's surprisingly progressive. To not just be "Trans people, yeah!", but to have someone being shitty and have that person being shut down. Like a lot of subversions onstereotypes that did, or even still do, exist. Even the victim being trans is a subversion, because obviously the audience will think her transnes has something to do with the murder. But like you also said, it didn't!
Yeah, especially the "except for the 'real woman' slip" line. I was like, wow, he's actually getting directly called out for something pretty much any other show at the time would had treated as normal. I was surprised Lily didn't directly comment on that
Yes!! I agree completely. I think a lot of people fail to see that sometimes, especially in shows with good writing teams, a character like Booth is used to kind of bridge that gap in knowledge, and be a stand in for the audience who isn't going to know the nuance around transness or whatever other message the episode is trying to get across. I thought it worked well for his character too, he is not inherently hateful, he is just set in his ways and needs things shown to him in a way that makes sense before he can wrap his head around it. I also love that instead of leaving it up to the audience to catch his shit takes, they directly had multiple characters call him out on his hypocrisy and ignorance. I'm not trying to shit on anyone or call anyone dumb, but I get the feeling that a lot of people haven't even watched Bones and that also a lot of people aren't fully getting that characters are just characters, and can be be used to represent a larger group on certain episodes.
Ok I'm a trans male studying to become a forensic anthropologist so I just wanted to say I am very much enjoying this video, Lily :) You're one of my favorite youtubers and idk it just makes me happy you're doing a video involving forensic anthropology, my special interests are merging!!
Ok now time to infodump bc I'm also neurodivergent and bones/forensics are, as mentioned, my special interests and I cannot go longer than a day without talking about one or the other. I'm gonna try to make it related to the video tho lol. Don't feel obligated to read lmao it's a lot.
- It actually was important to make that distinction that the lower half was missing bc it was sawed off. It's very common for animals n stuff to scavenge a corpse and oftentimes the bones are scattered around everywhere. As my forensic science professor has so elegantly put it; "we're all giant nutrient sacks trying to keep our nutrients together and take nutrients from where we can!" It's not uncommon to find a fingerbone in a rat's nest or smthn. I have a cool story semi-related to this but idk if it's too gruesome for a RUclips comment lol.
- *Technically* there are other ways to sex a skeleton besides the pubic bone, BUT research has shown that these differences are caused not by chromosome count but by estrogen/testosterone level. Another fun fact about this bc I've heard a lot of transphobes say 'iN A hunDREd yEArS fROM nOw ARchAEologISTS arE GOnnA FINd yOUr bONEs aNd sAY yoU're (assigned gender)' - that's actually untrue. Bones are constantly restructuring themselves based on what you do and what chemical shit is going on in your body. That includes taking HRT. So one's skeletal structure will become more and more masculine/feminine depending on the HRT they're taking. Take that transphobes!! An anthropologist would be able to see what the original structure was but it would still be very clear that this person did not agree with what their pelvis was saying.
- As an aside to my last point, due to the uptick in trans scientists such as myself there have been a lot of very interesting medical studies on the real effects of sex hormones on the body as well as the details of puberty n' stuff, since HRT causes basically a second puberty and all. A lot of the things we thought were a chromosome thing... *aren't.* I haven't been able to look into it myself since I don't know where to start, but my forensics professor recommends looking through it and she has good taste. I hope that when I get to start my own hormonal transition I can document it and add to these discoveries.
- Also, if it helps about the forensic bias thing, modern classes really slam into your head from the beginning how important it is to recognize your own biases and that your judgement is NOT the end all be all. At least the FEPAC accredited degree courses (FEPAC being the Forensic Science Education Programs Accreditation Commission, run by the American Academy of Forensic Sciences). With how young the field is I can't promise all other courses have the same care put into them, but hopefully in the future forensics will improve with this self-awareness :)
- This is fairly common knowledge now, but living bones are usually pink, but can also be many other colors depending on what medicines you're taking. I hope mine are green, that would be pretty cool
- If anyone ever wants to keep a cool bone you found, *do not boil it or bleach it*. Both will destroy the bone's structural integrity and make it really, really easy to break! Boiling it also adds the risk of bringing the fat up to the surface and making it stick there basically forever, unless you give it a looooooooooooooooot of hot dish soap baths, which will eventually make it smell. On that note, always make sure to degrease a bone you want to keep, to prevent the smelliness. Hot dish soap baths, again, will work for that. Also hydrogen peroxide is the best way to whiten bones (for most), since it'll get the same visual result as bleach without making them as fragile as porcelain. I'd go into the details of both processes but this comment is already turning into an essay omg
ok there's my rant bye
"It could have been chewed off", has been my immediate comment as well 😂
@@idonotknow8503 yeah lol, marrow's pretty tasty to scavengers!
Thanks for the info dump, very interesting!
/genuine
@@sturmklinge9642 I'm really glad you found it interesting! :)
I hope the whiteboard gag is a recurring feature.
I'd wear that as a t-shirt!
So the character of Angela Montenegro is not a psychologist, she’s a forensic artist. Usually she does facial reconstructions or aging… there’s a really nice episode where she does facial reconstruction drawings from the skeletal victims of enslaved Africans who died during their transport on slave ships and reads their names at the presentation.
I think the reason why they made her able to tell from the photographs that “he knows” because she’s also shown to be the most emotionally intelligent of everyone in the institute because she’s like… the least formally educated, which is a trope I don’t love but I think she’s still a very nice character because she’s not stupid or anything, she’s just very real.
Angela's an artist, not a psychologist, though 99.9% of what she does on the show is pretty much plot magic and hand wavy fantasy with science terms.
The psychologist lady (Angela iirc) is actually an artist, like she draws interpretations of people’s face when just have the skull and draws a lot of other things as well, also she has some weird 3d technology at one point. She’s also often portrayed as the one that knows a lot about people, which where the psychologist vibe probably comes from.
oh damn, the show my parents would watch religiously had a trans episode? I wonder how i missed it, or how they missed on pointing it out to me /s
It had two
When you stated that the suspect was married, I knew it was going to turn out to be the wife, and that was a welcome subversion of the expected motive.
I teared up when you talked about the ending, as my father was the son of a pastor and had a similar rejection of the bigoted, conservative church. When he was in his 50s, he actually ended up becoming a Unitarian Universalist reverend himself, now referring to himself as the "Commie Preacher"
Please don't conflate conservatism and or religion with bigotry
@@CP-yd7lp um, I said my dad is a commie pastor, so I'm definitely not conflating religion with bigotry. But conservativism is bigotry
@@TheCyberQuaker communism is not consistent with mainstream religious beliefs so if you have a call me Pastor then there's some contradiction there and additionally I said that you shouldn't conflate religion and or conservatism with bigotry there's a lot of Truth and goodness behind conservative and Traditional Values
@@CP-yd7lp Jesus and the early Christians were proto-communists
@@CP-yd7lpthe overlap between religion, conservative and bigotry is very clear. It’s not a huge leap to say majority of at least conservative people are bigoted. That’s kind of the basis of being a conservative. Traditional values. Close minded. Not open to change. That’s literally the point of being a conservative.
Religion is a mixed bag, but anybody who is bigoted and religious, does tend to use says religion to defend their bigotry.
As for OP, they were sharing their own experience. Their experience just happened to be related to a pastor who’s also a conservative.
you know it's going to be a good day when you catch a new Lily video right as it goes up 😌
Someone mentioned this episode in your previous video and I watched it and... I liked it (I am easily impressed). FOR A SHOW WITH A TRANS CORPSE made in 2008 I thought it was really nice.
Ngl, I like how the detectives are looking for information about this mystery woman and trying to figure out why she doesn't have a past... and it turns out she's trans and moved.
That's genuinely a clever and original explanation for a identity mystery. They assume she's in witness protection or something "Officially she didn't exist before 5 years ago". Because she's trans! Clever use of a trans character!
And the characters in the show are... surprisingly good?... in context/the time I guess? They jumble with the pronouns but they're trying their best (I know some people get annoyed, I like those moments of confused adjustment in some cases) Multiple people get angry and defend her whenever someone says "not a real woman", They assume the murder is transphobically motivated, but nope, it's not! Woo. I don't think anyone's aggressively transphobic except for the wife who's in one scene? Well the interrogation is transphobic but it could be acting.
In the wider trans context it sucks she's dead, but in the show's context it's a murder show, there's not many ways to have a prominent guest character without them being a corpse. In this scenario the trans character isn't treated any differently than a cis corpse. So equality.
The episode's themes are more about how televangelists suck and small pastors who welcome everyone are nice than about being trans.
FOR A TRANS MURDER VICTIM this episode was actually really nice. It was awkward and clunky (as many people are) but it was genuine and nice.
💙💗🤍💗💙
The scene with the lower half a corpse on a table is some of the most horrific body horror made worse by the investigators. I would rather my murder go unsolved than have strangers examine my exposed genitals and bones while debating my gender, which is irrelevant to the case.
...I would like to think they are looking for the sex, as in what was the person's birth certificate registered at, or however this works, so they can be sure who the person is, their name (which may or may not be subject to change later on in someone's life), then their circumstance and eventually who the murderer was, so that person can get punished. If a criminal did harm to you (murdered you) would you not want them to figure out who the victim (you) was, to make sure the culprit is found and cannot do anything like that again? The misgendering is personally harmful, but they need to start somewhere. Identifying the sex is tricky enough on just a skeleton, there is no fault in not "seeing" the gender and/or personal identity and needing more than the body itself to figure out their label. The science does not see the person, it is merely the starting point, and it has to go through the scientific process (statistical likelihoods first) before, hopefully, finding enough clues to get the full picture.
While this is fiction and the process depicted in a more TV worthy sensational manner, it it a process and one that tries to be as factual as possible (boiling down to the fact that humans are at their bones not so different in regards to sex, race or religion, but differ individually) yet involving a lot of guess-work and circumstance and context reliant (a problem archeologists face as well all the time). The entirety of the field,of autopsy is highly invasive on a personal level, but the body is dead and cause sometimes has to be found nonetheless.
The scene, while body horror if you imagine this to be your or someone (a person's, an individual's) body, is actually a good presentation of the struggle the people looking at it go through, who are usually professional (or detached, both good and bad) to not view the body as a sexual object, they might as well look at a machine. The emotional body horror felt could not be further removed from such a situation for those (living) involved.
Forensics is moving in the right direction these days (despite what this episode makes it look like). There has been a lot of discussion of discrimination, bias, and treating people with diverse gender identities and sexes in after death care. This year at the NAME (national association of medical examiners) annual meeting, there was a presentation about how to write proper autopsy reports for those who are nonbinary/trans. The field has definitely become a lot more aware of stuff like the difference between sex and gender, and how to respect gender identity forensically. So, please don't hold this episode as an actual representation of how the field is at present. You don't have to be burned to avoid being misgendered (unless you want cremation), since the field is definitely better than it was portrayed here.
As a person who watched the show, I knew this day would come and I am happy it has come
There was also an episode where a Japanese doctor came to work with them and they were very androgynous to the point where there was an entire subplot of trying to figure out if they were a man or a woman that was concluded by Angela hugging them and deducing they were a man cause "it moved".
...
Wait until cis people find out about packers,,,
You heard Lily at 20:50, we have to give her all the pronouns so she can grow to full power!
Please donate your pronouns below!
Do we have to, when we like our pronouns?
she/her/idgaf 😂 I was questioning as a teen, but I simply have neither gender dysphoria nor gender euphoria, regardless of whether I try to present more male or female. I think my questioning and rejection of traditional femininity came more from the fact that my grandparents tried to put me into a very narrow box of what a girl should be.
At this point, being closer to 30 than 20, I am fairly certain that I am cis, but gender-nonconforming.
I'll offer up some of my they/them lol
i used to use ono/jeno (in a foreign language, not english) but i dont anymore so lily can have them
bones is one of my fave shows, i grew up watching it with my dad and i remember as a kid this show basically taught me what bisexuality was (both w angela and because everyone on the show is super hot). there are many aspects of it that have aged poorly, and parts of this ep def have but i rewatched it recently and idk, makes me feel fuzzy in its better aspects ^-^
edit: just finished the video, and im really happy you liked this episode! :)
Oh hey, police procedurals are on the table? This is a slippery slope… but which trans SVU episode should Lily cover?
The one where identical twin boys are born but the doctor screws up one of the circumcisions so they raise one of them as a girl. If I remember correctly, one of the plot points is that the kid gets estrogen pills
@@andrewdunn8778ah thats one of the ones based on a true story.
@@andrewdunn8778 That episode lives rent free in my head, I think they said something like "It's easier to make a hole than a pole" super uncomfortable sentence
I am an autistic queer person who grew up watching bones. This show meant so much to me and im pretty sure this episode awakened something in me
Wow, I forget how many twists and turns police procedurals often take. There were, like, 8-10 "Ah but this is actually the case!"s throughout a 45-minute episode.
Lily being all "you cannot misgender me" is such a mood and it is divine ❤
Angela is an artist who has trained to be able to reconstruct the features of a dead person with input from bones who marks those flesh points and facial features.
Her thing is being able to make someone out of nothing.
And surprisingly, the skull & pelvis are highly sexually dimorphic.
My really good friend went from Alexandra to Alexander. Or just simply Alex. Sometimes keeping it simple makes it easier for the transitioner as well as for the people in their circle to not get confused or accidently call them by their dead name. I admit i have made that mistake both misgendering and dead naming my friend during the first week I found out of his transition. Man did I ever feel terrible when i made that slip up.
Oh no, trans Cop show episodes... you have the SVU episode with "Charlie" and the CSI episode that also includes a furry!
Wait, was there another episode with a furry outside of Fur and Loathing?
Actually, Angela is not a psychologist, she’s a dark arch-wizard plotting a ritual known as the “Awakened Blood-Agony-Sphere Emergence” and she needs a bunch of fragments of different bones to conduct it so she’s posing as a forensics expert to steal bone shards. If she is allowed to succeed she will bring Armageddon to the material plane. Hope this cleared things up for you!!
friendly reminder not to forget that sweets, AKA John Francis Daily wrote spiderman homecoming.
edit: angela aka who you call the psychologist lady is actually the tech character/ sketch artist, I'm pretty sure she's not like an actual psychologist though she's just emotionally intelligent and is often called in as the "Human" character hence why she reads the images so well and stuff, being more grounded, expressive, relatable, etc. also fun fact Angela did have a same sex relationship later on in the series which i wish lasted longer, though Hodgins and her are good for eachother.
Angela isn't a psychologist she's the one doing facial reconstruction of the skulls.
Last month I didn't even know what the show bones was, and now I saw two video essays about it, both regarding lgbt representation on the show. Was there some event that put the show back on the zeitgeist?
sameee willie muse right??? that was my intro to the show too if so lol
@@viviatwilight Yes!
my man willie
it’s a good show. got a few really great episodes.
The emotional ending song is by the band Anohoni and the Johnsons which is a very cool english band lead by a trans woman.
The band was formerly called Antony and the Johnsons. Side note, she is an older generation where i think a lot of trans woman had "matching' names. Like my aunt went from mark to mary
'When You Preach to the Street, the Street Always Wins' should be the title of a bananas Italian crime flick from the '70s.
Have you watched the trans Psych episode? I remember hating most of it but there was a monologue near the end that had me literally weeping it was so good!
Which episode was that?
That episode made me so uncomfortable I didn’t finish it, how did it end?
The point about name changes, I've seen quite a few people use similar names, often to go by a neutral nickname that makes it easier, like Patrick - Pat - Patricia or Samuel - Sam - Samantha or Eliot page went with a similar name to make it easier to correct yourself half way through. But honestly, I will say it's refreshing to see that there are others who believe that trans people can still lead churches, and find supportive communities.
I like the idea of transitioning as a metaphor for metaphysical transformation. Making radical choices to make yourself into a truer version of yourself is a hero's journey all on its own - while also making a trans story a universal story. That's good writing!
I snorted at the "burn my ashes" bit. 😂
Did they make Angela a psychiatrist? Cause I'm pretty sure her deal was supposed to be the "artistic emotional core" that digitally reconstructed faces...
yeah she was just the artist friend that the writers made into a mary sue who could do literal magic with computers.
Speaking of John Francis Daly from Freaks and Geeks (and Yo Gabba Gabba) - any thoughts of discussing the intersex episode of F&G? It was only a B plot, but it was pretty fucking impressive for 1999. And while the subject is a person being born with ambiguous genitalia, not socially and/or medically transitioning, Amy does hint at the importance of a person's own identity, when she clarifies that it worked out in the end because she's a girl after all.
And also because of Ken's journey questioning what it meant that he liked her - questioning whether he's gay, finally realizing hello, she's a girl, and finally coming around to realizing it's not about him - that how Amy got to where she is doesn't matter, just that she's Amy. And they live happily ever after (...by default at least, the show was cancelled a week later).
I love watching lilys vidoes about shows I have never watched
I think maybe my favorite Angela moment was when they found a slave trade shop that had crashed, it was a whole thing but at the end she had drawn the faces of the 200 kidnapped people to give them at least their faces back because so many names were unknown. I only catch pieces of Bones but thats stuck with me.
this episode traumatised a very young closeted trans me and gave me brand new dysphoria that i still have to this day. i cannot watch this episode but i'm very glad you made a video about it!
I really wish for the analysis section of the video that you named it "The Anal in the Analysis" because C'MON THATS MILDLY FUNNY
28:44 As someone who uses "they," "she" and "it" interchangeably, I understand this power and it feels amazing.
P.S. I'm pretty sure that in the final scene of this episode, the person singing is the transfem artist Anohni, which is a genuinely nice touch. I am pleasantly surprised.
I came into this a bit guarded and ready to defend the first show with a main character who I related to, and found myself laughing and agreeing with you on many points. This show isn’t perfect and many episodes haven’t aged well, but it will always hold a special place for me, and I really appreciated your thorough analysis. (Also, had to pause and slow clap when I noticed the section titles followed the format. That detail made me laugh.) For reference, I’m cis bi/pan (once considered myself possibly gender fluid before I understood my sexuality fully and realized I didn’t have to be/become more masculine in order to love or be attracted to feminine people or vice versa). I was raised in a hateful church like the one shown here and heavily relate to the transformation of spirituality and personality explored in this episode. Great video, hun! I’ll definitely be checking out your other content! :)
Angela is an artist, not a psychologist of any kind (she does however have a certain way with people and a better understanding of "alternative lifestyles" than the rest of the cast )
The denotation about the spine being severed was a way of indicating violence as opposed to accidental, chopped vs decayed away
I very much loved this show, it helps think of booth as like.. your Archie Bunker character meant to highlight the standard buffoonery of the average man(and average government stooge) and while he's not horrible we're NOT meant to think his takes are good
Saw this episode as a rerun on TV and was super surprised how decently it was handled. Especially with the time it came out.
7:00 Kathy Reichs, one of the the show's producers and author of the book series the show was based on, is actually a forensic anthropologist and made sure all the science-y jargon actually meant something.
this is one of my guilty pleasure shows and the end of this episode always makes me cry. the combination of my own religious upbringing and my experience as a trans person hits me very hard every time i watch it
i remember this being one of the first positive trans stories i saw in high school. i used to watch bones with my parents and this episode made me cry when i first watched it even though i didn't know i was trans yet. i didn't remember much about it so i'm glad to see it still holds up well
As someone who has studied psychology for their entire life, I can say that psychology is in fact magic. Psychologists are basically wizards.
So many of these procedurals treat psychology like it's magic. Gave me such a warped idea of psych for so long.
RUclips adblocker blocker stopped the video right as you said "don't you want to come?" which I found to be very entertaining
This episode does actually point out why the whole “yOuR bOnEs aRe sTiLL” male/female argument is ridiculous. Skeletal remains are often misgendered. For most of my life one of my parents was considered missing and I’ve spent a bit of my life looking through Doe sites. Something I learned was things like gender and race are often just a best guess.
And as someone with a TBI
pronouns trip me up (along with most words) at times and I greatly appreciate anyone who just gets more powerful with any and all of them! ❤
also cool that the closing song ("River of Sorrow") is by a trans woman and about the martyrdom of Marsha P. Johnson
12:12 holy shit she’s accurately describing the procedure that was used for my vaginoplasty! I really didn’t expect that
You and Willie Muse doing Bones episodes in rapid succession is a real treat. My folks and I watched the whole series during its original run. I have a real soft spot for it and its occasionally excellent writing.
I hope you do an analysis of Cold Case's trans episodes one day! There's arguably two: "Daniela" and "Boy Problems". "Daniela" is 100% a trans episode, but in "Boy Problems" is not so clear if the character is trans or not.
This uh video made me cry as religious trans person I have a family that’s amazingly accepting of my true self and everything but having grown up in the south and in the southern Baptist church and in particular a part of the Texan southern baptist church that’s culty. I have always grown up with a secret feeling of guilt and weight of being me. Even if I’m surrounded by love the culture is there. And that ending line of redemption through transformation did genuinely make me 🥹.
I was kind of awful prior to being myself and accepting myself. And that sort of self discovery allowing for a growth and I just
🥲
Idk if you’ll ever see this video is kinda old but this video means a lot to me I needed that kind of ending
I haven't watched all of Bones, so I was convinced this video was actually about the episode with a gender-ambiguous Japanese character that the main characters argued about behind their back. They somehow managed to be transphobic, enbyphobic, and anti-Asian with a single one-off character. But perhaps I'll see that episode get mentioned when I finish the video.
I see some people disliked this episode in the comments. Fair enough, still I wanted to share my thoughts. I grew up watching bones. This episode always stuck with me. When I was really young, like 11 or 12, before watching this episode, I took the stance of “I don’t understand it and glad it’s not me” around the trans community. This episode was really the first time I changed that opinion. The first conversation between booth and the son really impacted me. I saw how her child responded, with grace and regret at not getting to know her verse how stilted and confused booth was throughout the episode and it was clear who I wanted to be. And as a Christian I think I resonated with those characters more, seeing that made me made me realize I should never aim for tolerance. Instead, aim for true acceptance and welcome all.
I won’t say this episode alone brought me to where I am now, but it got me to stand up to some kids bullying the girl who just transitioned in our class in high school.
I really appreciate that it also showed a spectrum of religious individuals opinions and reactions to it. And that they weren’t all terrible. It was nice to see other Christian representation that end up on the side of supporting the LGBTQ+ community. I know many have been and are still being hurt by the church, and I’m so sorry for that. Not all Christians feel that way and I know I will stand along side lgbtq+ people any day in their fight for equality, respect, and unfortunately where we are now: basic rights.
Also yes, Angela’s job was literally do impossible things with technology and art because the plot needed it. Rewatching I can never get past how insane what they have her do is.
Love your videos, really enjoyed this one as usual! (Big fan of that skeleton in the back). You should look into 9-1-1 Lone Star, it has a trans man (Paul) in the main cast, and he's one of the focuses in S2E6 'Everyone and their brother'. Had some thoughts on it as a trans dude myself, but found it to be a really strong episode! Paul is actually played by a trans man!
this is the first video the algorithm served me of yours, and i loved it. i remember this episode, but it's been a long time so i didn't remember how well they handled it. After your review, i recalled that it gave me a lot of hope.
Wonder if you'll cover any of the trans episodes from SVU? I remember ones from the early season to the newer.
I think (excuse my bad memory) first one being a trans woman who killed someone out of fear of her being trans revealed.
Season being a black boy killing a trans girl out of peer pressure/ it being a accident.
You realizing the title reminds me of the time i realized why "criminal minds" was named the way it was 💀💀
Yes Booth saying that stuff was on purpose, because you can tell a lot about a person by WHAT PART of something they get angry about and how they respond. The fact he got angry about how Booth was reffering to her rather than the insinuations about his own sexuality makes him a less likely suspect and even in the event it did wind up he was the killer that his motive was not related to her gender identity. On the other hand If he had gotten angry about the insinuation it might have made him snap and inculpate himself or give further clues they could have pursued.
Exactly he picked the most extreme path to get an extreme and honest reaction from JP. He was eather going to agree or be p!ssed. The seen with Patricia's EX wife was Booth playing good cop to Brannon's bad cop.
For me the most likable thing about Booth is his willingness to step out of his comfort zone and at least try to understand the things and people he was taught by his religion where bad. Being Catholic and his faith is a large part of who he is but he does his best to not let it stop him from growing.
In love with the whiteboard doodle in the background.
There is a trans episode of NCIS called Dead Man Talking. It is where a "man" pretends to be a woman in order to hide from the police because they're a murder. Several characters are disgusted by the thought of a trans person existing. To say that it is not the best representation is an understatement.
I feel like it may not have enough substance for an episode, but have you considered covering the Veronica Mars trans episode?
Oh god I just remembered that. VM is my mid 2000s former fav that now haunts me with memories of how horrible it actually was
Damn that Bones intro music brings me back.
I also remember one of my Christian friends wasn’t allowed to watch Bones anymore after one character was implied to be a lesbian or something.
I love that either I've fallen down a Bones hole on youtube or if everyone is also rewatching bones and having Thoughts rn
NOOOOOO QUE LINDO IMMA CRY
I will never forget this proverb.
"God blessed us with the trans experience for the same reason god gave us wine, to experience the joy and love of creation, transformation."