Soap Opera to Feature "Transgendering" Character

This Thursday, the ABC TV daytime serial drama All My Children will introduce a character who was born male and is being "transformed into a woman" through hormone treatments, surgery, and psychological retraining.

This is believed to be the first time an American television show has had such a "transgendering" character. Some programs in the past have had fully "transgendered" characters in the past, but you probably wouldn't remember them given that nobody watched. The L Word, on the Showtime cable network, has a character who is going the other way, from a woman to a "man."

According to the Associated Press,

"All My Children" was looking for something new, and knows its audience is always interested in anything to do with sexuality, said Julie Hanan Carruthers, the show's executive producer.

Like most daytime dramas, the program's ratings have been dropping, falling by almost 2/3 since the early 1990s.

Pardon me for thinking that this isn't going to improve the show's performance.

From Karnick on Culture.