Casting a woman as a transwoman

Yeah, what Trevor said. The fact that women are rarely "just women" in films is why so many fail the Bechdel test.

I think much programming reflects who is in charge in society, white, straight, males. Everyone is is assigned to the 'other' and just serve as minor plot points to the real people. Often the only time women and LGBT get centre stage is when the programme is about our 'issues' and made specifically, and normally patronisingly, for 'us.'

It also isn't a privilege to be pregnant, any more than it is a privilege to be able to run.

Pregnancy can be wonderful and amazing. I assume that is why people want to oppress women.

Perhaps a little like seeing some people living on a nice piece of land and thinking you'd like control of that land and the people.

Or seeing an amazing craftsman enjoying his work, andthinking you would like to exploit him in a factory.

That is the point of patriarchy isn't it? To covet what others have, and to make it terrible for them so that the powerful can benefit and control.

I largely agree, but I do think MtoF should be played by a man or a MtoF. Surgery does not alter the frame of a male body.

I think we're back into using the term privilege in a nonsensical way.

It isn't a privilege not to be murdered, to have access to basic sanitation, to receive adequate mental health care or to have access to doing work necessary to your own survival.

These are basic human rights. They are not privileges.

Added to which, these are gendered issues and some of the most important issues globally for women. This has been covered recently in other threads and in the media.

In the recent press linked to in this section, it stated that one in ten of the girls who are allowed to attend school miss days of school every month because there are inadequate toilet facilities for them to menstruate in school.

I looked up the feminist response to this and immediately found people calling the campaign for better sanitation for school girls transphobic, because it suggests menstruation is a women's issue, and people want it to be referred to as a menstruator's issue not a women's issue because woman is an identity. So we now have to refer to girls as menstruators to get them toilet facilities, that is their identity. It would seem as if I am being told it is none of my business what is in trans people's pants, but other women must refer to themselves as menstruators if they want any access to toilets, or they are transphobes.

Then women will come on here and claim it is a female privilege to access toilets, when it is something they have as an individual and a great many women do not. Again, this should be a class analysis of women, not you and your life.

Then even though mentioning anything to do with female bodies can and has been considered transphobic, it is also apparently offensive for a biological woman to play a woman because she has never had a male body.

So the only body that it is acceptable now for a woman to have that can be talked about and represented accurately is a male one, according to feminism.

Or am I missing something here?

Hazchem - I know being born a boy and wanting to be a girl, but must be difficult. But it is not a privilege to be born a girl.
Girls are treated inferior to boys in every culture in the world.

There was a fuss recently about an Arcade Fire video. There were complaints that a man (Andrew Garfield) was playing a transgender woman. I think it turned out to be more or less one person with a big voice doing most of the complaining, and I believe the character wasn't necessarily transgender anyway. The Trans people I know were very "meh" about the whole thing.

Getting black actors to play black people shouldn't really be a problem as there are millions(guess) of good black actors. There are far fewer trans actors so sometimes you'll need to look further afield.

I'd rather have a good actor in a positive portrail of a trans person than a poor trans actor in some stereotypical crappy role.

Wot Tiggy said. And Kim, obviously.

Can't remember that stats on transwomen being killed (my friend Roz frequently tells me) but they're quite, er, striking.

Surely how transgender people are portrayed is more important than by whom?

Have you seen Elementary? The role of Ms Hudson in that - a transwoman - is played by Candis Cayne.

I don't see any privilege in being born female. - You can use public toilets. Less likely to be killed. Easier to get a job. Less likely to suffer from depression and try to kill yourself.

And very importantly you don't have people telling you all the time that you're not female.

Hazchem - By being born into the gender you feel you are, do you mean being born into the sex you feel you are i.e. you have a female body and don't think you are a man?

They did this in My Family. Diana Weston (v mush a woman. And Robert Lindsay's ex) played Ben's friend Charlie who had been a (male) drinking buddy of student days.

Haz I'm not sure what you think your privilege is. I don't see any privilege in being born female. It is very appealing to feel that you have a position of privilege as it makes your life in patriarchal or structural hierarchy more bearable. That doesn't make it true, however. Some women feel comfortable with their position in patriarchy as being the most favoured or favoured enough of the oppressed, whether they want to recognise it or not. I think this is at the root of women's compliance with the patriarchal hierarchy, just as most men accept their social class because there is always someone below them, either another man or a woman.

I would have thought that the best actor to play a transwoman would be either a transwoman or a man, like Jared Leto, especially if the character is shown pre-transition. I saw the actor who plays Haley once and she looked very different from her character, much younger and less frumpy. I think the character would have been less acceptable to middle England if she had appeared more obviously trans.

Dysfunctional, kind of, yes. Although I'd say Essex is more glamour model and Northern is more camp. But both are such an extreme performance of a particular kind of femininity that it becomes a bit aesthetically irrelevant what kind of body the person doing the performance was born into.

Very interesting thread. Thanks Hazchem. Am off to bed myself.