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On Friday night, ABC aired its exclusive interview between Diane Sawyer and Bruce Jenner, in which the former Olympian and reality TV star stated definitively that he is transgender. (Note: Jenner uses male pronouns in the interview and when speaking about himself — with an intention to eventually reveal his female identity — so for now I’ll do the same.) Throughout the special 20/20 episode, Jenner revealed his struggles with gender dysphoria, something he had encountered since his childhood. Considering his connection to the Kardashian family, his status as a world-renowned athlete, and the longstanding rumors about his transition, the interview was a ratings boon: 16.9 million viewers watched the special on Friday night, no doubt bringing the complicated and expansive issue of gender identity to an incredibly large audience and shedding a broader light on a an issue that has, in recent years, gained mainstream awareness.

The interview with Jenner comes at the heels of two major TV series that have tackled trans characters in thoughtful ways. The first was Orange Is the New Black, which featured, among a large ensemble cast of characters, Laverne Cox as Sophia Burset, an inmate at Litchfield Penitentiary. Cox herself is a trans woman, and the first season of the Netflix show gave her character an arc that revealed her backstory (which included her pre-transitioning life, allowing Cox’s twin brother, the performer and musician M Lamar, to portray the character). While Cox’s role is relatively small, she did receive an Emmy nomination for the series. More importantly, the role catapulted Cox to fame, allowing her to continue her work as an activist and bring awareness to those who experience gender dysphoria. Thanks to OITNB‘s runaway success and her being one of the few trans actors on a major series, Cox has found other platforms through which to speak out about her own experience and to raise the voices of others who share it.

In terms of visibility, Cox, along with Janet Mock and Carmen Carrera, have made major strides as the faces of the modern transgender movement. But Jill Soloway’s Transparent, which premiered last year as an Amazon original series, also made great progress by bringing a considerate look at the trans experience. Inspired by her father coming out as transgender, Soloway produced a bold, moving, and hilarious series about the patriarch of a Los Angeles family whose transition forces her three children to come to terms with their own personal identities. The series picked up the Golden Globe for Best Comedy earlier this year, with Jeffrey Tambor also winning an award for his touching portrayal of Maura Pfefferman.

While gender identity plays a central theme in Transparent, the protagonist is, of course, played by a cisgender male. (The show does, however, employ a team of transgender producers Jennifer Finney Boylan, Rhys Ernst, and Zackary Drucker as well as numerous trans crew members; musician Our Lady J was also hired to write on the show’s second season.) Transparent, despite its major theme, is a show about the cisgender perception of the trans experience — as is OITNB. There have been plenty of debate within the trans community about what this means; as with many marginalized or minority cultures, the visibility is important. But so is the sense that one can speak up once he or she is invited to a party. No one wants to be a token or to have their story told for them.

That’s the most important aspect of Bruce Jenner’s interview on Friday night: after months of speculation (much of that speculation manifesting itself as crude jokes made at Jenner’s expense), Bruce Jenner opened up and told his own story: a story that includes the complicated nature of human nature of which none of us are immune. It comes at a time when trans stories are being told with more frequency. That OITNB is on Netflix and Transparent is on Amazon, and that viewers can stream Bruce Jenner’s interview on Hulu, I think it’s important to note how the streaming medium is brining those stories to audiences who need to see them — cis and trans viewers alike. Television, as a medium, has a long, rich history of bringing a variety of social issues to a massive audience, sometimes for bad as much as for good. In our current age, I think we are moving at incredible speeds to understand the incredibly nuanced transgender experience as much as we are able to shed a light on various identities — and allow our own worldviews to evolve as we gain empathy for others who are not exactly like us.

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Photos: Everett Collection