I Did Not Like Baby Reindeer (But We Should Still Discuss It)

Watching Baby Reindeer as a trans person and a survivor is a frustrating experience. At its best moments, it made me feel seen. When Donny said ‘Isn’t getting groomed fun— until you realize you’re getting groomed?” I felt that from the bottom of my precociously traumatized heart. Sadly, I was groomed by a dork on the internet. If I’d realized there were groomers out there with industry juice, I might have aimed higher. 

Speaking of people with juice: did you know that the creator of Baby Reindeer, Richard Gadd, was investigated for giving a trans woman the impression that dating him might help her get cast on the show? 

“A comedian manipulates an actress into auditioning to be his girlfriend on his autobiographical television series about being sexually manipulated by another comedian” is a dark joke, not a charming production anecdote. The fact that it actually happened is shocking to me. 

But then, so is the overwhelmingly positive reaction to Baby Reindeer. As people have the right to praise its attempts at representation, I have the right to point out that it perpetuates rancid stereotypes. The idea that being raped by a man may have awakened Donny’s queerness is one of the queasiest allusions that occurs in Baby Reindeer. It’s not exactly stated outright, but it’s a thread that several professional critics picked up on.  

The idea that queerness is a sexually transmitted disease is a tenant of the queerphobia that used to be (and still often is) taught to children under the guise of safety. Some kids are told that queer people want to rape them in places like public bathrooms, and that the trauma will warp them into queers themselves. We see the reverberation of this urban legend in the bathroom laws that prevent people like me from visiting states like Florida and Utah.

Unfortunately, that fear echoes through the one-man-show that makes up the DNA of Baby Reindeer. In this clip, Gadd discusses how his hypersexuality after being assaulted by a man led him to wonder if the assault caused his queerness. He felt deep shame until he made peace with it in the name of sluttiness. It’s a dark joke, but it works in context.

We cannot fault victims of trauma for their honesty. It is not uncommon for male victims of sexual assault to struggle with their sexuality as they process trauma. I do not find it implausible that a man processing shame might reach into a dusty box of cultural knowledge in his head and use it to try and understand his mental turmoil.

I wish he’d had access to resources that would have actually helped him. I also wish he’d explained to his present-day audience that his previous fear was derived from hate. But faulting a rape victim for imperfectly describing their trauma is heartless and unnecessary. 

(However: there is absolutely zero correlation between being queer and being raped. Nobody “becomes queer” because they were assaulted, any more than I became straight when I was assaulted. Alright? Alright.)

And that is where the “sympathy for Richard Gadd” section ends, because now we're gonna talk about Gadd stand-in Donny's horrible treatment of trans love interest Teri. Absent Donny’s self-pitying narration and endless justifications for his shitty behavior, the story of their relationship is bleak: 

Donny met Teri by creating a fake profile on a trans dating site. After lying to her for weeks and humiliating her in public several times, Teri still allows Donny into her home to give him respite from his substance-abusing roommates.

He is standoffish, grumpy and obviously hesitant to be seen with her in public. Eventually she gets fed up and kicks him out, only to later learn that he has created a comedy special where she is featured as the manic pixie transfemme who got away. Now she gets to relive a confusing relationship with a weird dude every time she turns on one of the most popular media streaming services in the world. 

This guy is clearly an asshole. And yes, Donny may be a traumatized and relatable asshole. But being traumatized does not give you permission to use a trans person as a rehabilitation facility, or a plot device for your television show. 

Donny’s treatment of Teri was distressingly familiar. Cis folks may find Donny's story unique, but trans folks experience plenty of gross dudes who are willing to lie to get access to us. Persistent, curious and fascinated by transness, the ones who gush about how interesting it is and how interesting they are for being cis and attracted to you while never asking you a single question about your life. 

Some call those guys chasers, but they don't see themselves that way. They see themselves as the heroes of their own stories, and never realize they treat trans folks as their props. 

Nava Mau, the actress that plays Teri, has been effusive about how Gadd’s love of the woman who inspired Teri shone through the writing. I don’t want to argue, but I do wonder where she saw that deep affection glimmer in the script she read. 

Was it the way the show posits losing Teri as Donny’s tragedy, while downplaying or ignoring the ways that Donny hurt Teri by speed-running every shitty way a cis dude can mistreat a trans love interest?

Is it the show’s complete lack of empathy for a trans woman stuck navigating her partner’s internalized transphobia every time he abandons her in public or refuses to talk about his obvious discomfort with intimacy? 

Was it in the brief moment Donny wonders if his assault made him queer enough to be attracted to Teri, despite the fact that he previously identified as a straight man who is attracted to women, and we all know that trans women are women? 

But trans people are not a monolith. The things I found disappointing about Baby Reindeer may not bother you. People are complicated, in ways that allow them to be both empathetic and exploitative of others.

However, the lack of critical discussion about this show is a problem. We can allow art to express uncomfortable truths and still hold artists accountable for the way they treat people. We should ask questions about what cis people are paid to tell trans stories, and why. And maybe, eventually, we can stop praising every clickbait show that tosses queer and trans folks a couple crumbs of half-assed representation.