I don’t suggest they would, I was only talking about gay actors since someone else suggested it was a similar situation and I was pushing back.
For most trans actors I suspect they are limited to trans roles or roles where an otherwise unusual appearance would be an asset.
And when the same ability to get cisgender roles exists; the time may be ripe to reevaluate things.
You can twist this however you like, but I just posted an article listing what scientific research confirming what I’ve found from talking to transgendered people. They often feel ostracized by family, friends and society. This isn’t a news flash, it’s not controversial.
Why don’t you post some evidence that what I’ve said is incorrect?
I’d suggest you may ask your friends about calling them transgendered. Unless you call your gay your friends gayed, your Jewish friends Jewed etc.
It’s almost as if one can’t use the google and see thousands of trans people arguing that cisgender actors playing trans people isn’t seem as empowering.
But- let me grab some study that says nothing about that subject to support my unsupported assertions.
Long distance rates to Canada aren’t all that expensive.
Not this shit again. It’s one thing casting someone of a different nationality in a role - I mean, hell, it seems like there more Australian actors playing as Americans than Americans these days. This is a huge difference from a white actor putting on brown/yellow/blackface to act as someone of a completely different ethnicity or otherwise whitewashing a story. It’s not like A-listers like Johansson are hurting for work or anything.
But I guess to you casting a trans actor to tell the story of a trans person is just another example of political correctness running amok.
That’s never come up in conversation because that is only one part of their personalities. I have two friends who identify as trans (I never said I have ‘many’). One of them is a musician, so we usually just play our instruments and talk about music when we hang out. It does come up that she feels alienated all the time, and that she feels it’s linked to being trans.
They are both sophisticated people who have more going on than in their lives than a single defining trait. The amount of emphasis on the character being trans is what makes this weird.
It’s like when certain groups tell comedians not to make fun of them. That’s what comedians do. By taking offence those groups alienate themselves. They are making themselves look weird by not taking it in stride.
Having a movie made with a big star will make things less weird and maybe take away a bit of the fear of the unknown people have around it. Bring it into the popular consciousness. Of course Hollywood isn’t perfect, but it can help raise awareness and empathy in some circumstances.
In the end it’s a matter of preserving privilege, consciously or not. A lot of the opposition to the Industry taking affirmative measures boils down to the quote "when you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.” For various reasons American society is going through some jarring shifts at the moment and there’s a lot of acrobatic ladder-pulling going on as people try to preserve the privileges they have.
You’ve been told that the majority of trans people disagree with you - and you haven’t even said that you actually discussed this with your trans friends.
So why so invested in speaking for others?
They disagree with me that many trans people feel alienated? You didn’t answer my question.
They don’t feel alienated because a cisgender person didn’t get a role.
Why is that so difficult for you to grasp?
Sure, but how often does it come up in discussion with your non-trans friends?
I really only know one trans person, and they didn’t even come out as trans until they’d moved to another city, but it never occurred to me to refer to her as trans or transgender. If I did have an opportunity to talk to her in person again my main concern would be how much to refer to her gender to signal that I accepted her transition without making it creepy or weird.
Otherwise I’d just like to have a normal conversation like we would have had previously, it would be very easy to end up oblivious about transgender vs transgendered.
And as for trying to speak on behalf of others, the other option is to not speak on behalf of others and minority interests get ignored. No one here is claiming we should make a movie about transgender people without any transgender people involved, I’ve explicitly argued the opposite. Instead, it’s a frankly tactical discussion about a famous cisgender actor playing the lead role.
The majority of trans people may indeed be against the casting of a cis female actress in this role. And if that’s the consensus that’s a fair opinion to have.
But it doesn’t suggest what they want as the alternative, nor whether that alternative is the best option for their preferred outcome. And those are both perfectly valid topics to discuss, they don’t discount the experience or perspective of trans people, it’s talking about how to work in the context of those experiences and perspectives.
On a separate topic… it’s odd how people who really don’t want you to engage or converse with you keep referring to you in the 3rd person…
But surely- if only a big name star is cast as a trans person- trans people will feel empowered and just automatically love it.
Jesus - this is like just two years ago:
It unfortunately comes up every other week or so online.
I don’t think the article’s author would agree with you.
The article criticized the script and character, not choice of a cis male to play the lead.
In fact, the analogy drawn in the first paragraph is about the first black women to win an Oscar and the fact that she played a similarly problematic character.
The author’s example of the right thing to do was brought up at the end of the article, and it was of Transparent, another cis male playing a transgender person in a lead role.
Did trans people love Jared’s characterization? Did we feel empowered or less stigmatized that this is how we were presented?
But is your issue that Jared played a stigmatized version of a trans person, or that Jared was a cis male playing a trans person, because that’s the root of the discussion here.
And there’s a similar issue with Johansson because she made some tone-deaf statements which suggested she didn’t have much input from trans people.
So is the problem with her that she was going to play a trans person without talking to actually trans people so she could make an authentic unstigmatized character. Or was the problem that she’s a cis woman playing a trans person?
Well- I’m heading out for a bit.
Folks who feel the need should feel free to describe how they want trans people to feel about the issue.
