Originally published at: Texas HS yanks lead role from student for being trans
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Texas again…
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They’re trying to keep LGBTQ+ people out of freaking musical theatre now?
Have they even met musical theatre?
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Someone needs some education on how Shakespeare plays were originally cast. Also, Oklahoma! is risque? Why? Because it uses the word ‘fringe’? WTF?
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It involves at least two female characters who assert some form of agency while considering potential romantic partners. Scandalous wenches!
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Twelfth Night will be banned, as there is no way to make that not seem LGBTQIA+ inclusive.
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Well, that’s also on their agenda, too…
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My experience has been that it’s uncommonly difficult to find enough willing males to fill out the cast of high school musicals. Why does anybody drop an actor who wants this role? (Morons!)
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If you’re not safe in drama club, the historically safe place for anyone…
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Sexual content and profanity? In Oklahoma?
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William Shakespeare, “What the fuck?!”
Or “As You Like It”; young women disguised as young men, playing the part of young women, so the older men can practice wooing (with the added historical wrinkle, that the young women would have originally been played by young men).
I think that if Texas was exposed to traditional British Panto, it might create a tear in reality.
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This is fucking madness.
Whether the kid is trans or not, plays have a LONG LONG history of having the actors not be the gender of the character. Whether that was social norms like in Shakespearean times, or the fact that a young woman is a more believable Peter Pan, or in the case of many of my kids productions, they just don’t have nearly as many boys as they do girls, so some times you make do with what you have.
I remember my kid was a Dwarf in production of The Hobbit, and she just finished Hello Dolly with multiple roles, including one of the waiters, complete with faux mustache! (I thought it was drawn on from my seat, but nope, faux hair one.)
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Step two: After extensive review we have made the decision to cancel all plays and disband the theater program.
Something something oh no, these plays have a long history of grooming and/or transgenderism, lord have mercy on our souls.
If some YA novel is pornography for having two characters kiss and think about sex, well this is positively the ninth circle of debaucherous hell incarnate. We must save the children.
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They’re worried that the trans person will outperform their own kids. 
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Our elementary school in Arlington TX put it on one year for its 5th/6th grade spring musical. They did omit the Jud Fry character for some reason (I guess because of what happens to him?). We also watched it in music class (at least twice), start-to-finish, even those of us who weren’t in the musical. (For context: as for the usual music class curriculum in that school, “separation of church & state” did not even seem to be a mild suggestion.) I say all that, well because it’s my chance to criticize Arlington again, but also to posit that if it wasn’t too risqué for that school in Arlington, in Reagan’s America of 1982, then it’s not risqué.
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I graduated high school from Wichita Falls, TX way back in 1987. Every year, the senior class of WFHS would put on a Senior Play. And I mean the senior class, not just the drama folks, although they got the bulk of the speaking roles. Irreverence was always the point with that senior play, and it frequently included some borderline lewd jokes and crossdressing (big, burly football players in drag was always good for a laugh), and no one ever did anything but laugh, which was intended. I imagine an attempt to do that there today would result in suspensions and maybe the arrest of the drama teacher.
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The school’s response to a proposal for, say, South Pacific, would answer any questions remaining as to their politics. A Pulitzer Prize winning progressive musical with a clear call for racial tolerance! What’s not to like?
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Oklahoma is a state other than Texas or Florida, therefore too woke for them to acknowledge its existence.
Or maybe it’s that threatening exclamation point at the end.
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To my trans brethren and sistren and non-binary siblingren:
I would like to show you a newspaper clipping from The Tuscaloosa News (Alabama) from 1993:
(Yours Truely is third from the left)
Those fucksticks on the right (ha!) were certain that gays and lesbians would NEVER serve openly in the US military.
Well it turns out: We were right, they were wrong. Society, on the whole, doesn’t give a shit about that anymore. And we will get there, regarding trans and non binary Americans, and it will be in our lifetimes. And this big, ol’ cis gay boy will be with you in the fight along the way.
(edit: in the photo, the sign I’m holding said “PREJUDICE is not PATRIOTIC” with the word “patriotic” coloured to look like the American flag…
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Did I mention I was gay?)
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