Are We Harmed?

When a celebrity transitioned and all the tabloids go wild, what does all that press do for the community? Does it harm or does it help other trans people? I do not mean that in any way celebrities should not transition, what I mean is does the way the press cover us, especially the tabloids sensationalize us.

In the blog PrideSource Gwendolyn Ann Smith writes an Opinion about Jenner and celebrities,

This badly photoshopped photo isn't like Cox's Time cover. If anything, it is comical: a hit piece designed to scorn Jenner and -- by extension -- his ex-wife and family. The overall look of this cover is clownish, a thinly veiled mockery.

Whether they fully realized it or not, however, In Touch has painted a broader target than Jenner and the Kardashians. By putting this out, they have put transgender people at risk.
[…]
Others are nowhere near as fortunate. Others are at risk of violence in the home, in their school, at their workplaces and in their own neighborhoods. This cover only feeds into a culture that -- in spite of our advances -- still sees transgender people as freaks. That is what they have literally painted Jenner as on that cover.

This, too, is what fuels transgender people to self-loathing, to hatred and violence against themselves. When Leelah Alcorn took her life, one of her fears was that -- as she was not being allowed to start her transition early -- she would always appear masculine. In Touch has opted to display a somewhat-masculine Jenner in bad makeup and someone else's coat and scarf. What sort of message does this send to the next Leelah Alcorn?

Do these tabloids stir maybe not hostility but maybe paint us as Ms. Smith as freaks, something to laugh at? I think so, but there is nothing that we can really do about it.