Casting a woman as a transwoman

LRD I used the term NT as it's how I would describe the majority of people with no 'issues'. It's not the best, and in certainly no expert but seemed to fit for a quick and easy explanation without using the word 'normal'

Otoh, Kim, I think there might be a point in having transwomen characters played by women (whether trans or cis) who bust the conventional ideas of what a transwoman looks like? Just wondering.

almond - oh yes, totally agree that would be better. I'm not saying it wouldn't be, though?

What would, of course, be absolutely lovely would be if you could do gender-blind casting. They did colour-blind casting for Grey's Anatomy, and I was reading about how people found it amazing at the time (it is a while back) that they'd just written characters and not 'the black girl' or 'the latino man'.

You could do that with gender, but it's not going to happen, is it?!

LRD, but the better way to get around that would be to cast trans women in general parts, like the Bond girl, not to create a division where trans women must be played by trans women.

And from the photos, there are plenty of other characters in the movie who are being played by people who are not gracile in appearance (I don't know how else to word that, people who would be assumed to have been male at some point?), but are wearing sexy dresses etc and dancing.

This is the actual quote, I've cut and pasted as it is from the Flail and I don't want to link:

'Speaking to The Sydney Morning Herald, Carlotta said Jessica had, 'done an amazing job,' as 'she really did remind me of me and she was my only choice for the role.'

Well, I have very little to do with queer theory, and I agree with what the OP says about it being problematic that society won't accept transwomen as sexy.

This is how the gender binary is reinforced. There are some people out there who have such an ingrained belief that women are there to be fucked, and utterly different from be-penised people, they will not accept that someone who has or used to have a penis could ever be part of the sex class. That's what this is. You look at the way some men talk about transwomen. It's all about what those men imagine is their right - to judge women as sexual objects. For them, the idea they might fancy someone who was born with a penis is upsetting and offensive.

If this is being approached from a queer theory perspective (and I can’t see what other perspective it can be coming from for the OP to have reached these conclusions), then identity is based on a person’s sense of gender and not on on the gender they were assigned at birth. In that sense, it shouldn’t make any difference what the background of a woman actor is, all that matters is that a woman plays a woman. Trans women actors or what ever other identity women should be playing all women.

The people who definitely shouldn’t be playing women are men. So the casting we should be taking issue with are shows like glee, where a transgender woman is played by a man.

The equivalent racial issue to the OP’s complaint would be one that happened recently where people complained that an African Indian American character (i.e. a black person from heritage in India but who was born in the United States) was being played by an African American woman. This was seen as being racist because the actor had no Indian cultural heritage. This standard is never applied to white people, as white British Actors play white Australians and white Americans all the time. (If people are still confused by this I mean that there are black people in India just as there are in the UK, not that the population of India in general are black).

What the OP seems to be arguing is that what matters is not who someone is capable of portraying on the screen based on their current identity, but what that actor’s background is. This standard is not applied to men (as in Glee) or white people, but to black people and women, whether they are trans or not.

Although I should add her role was limited to lounging around a pool in her bikini and when the media later revealed she was trans her career suffered.

Caroline Cossey a very beautiful transwoman played a non trans Bond girl. Surely the other way round is fine too.

What's being NT got to do with it? Or is gender dysphoria seen as not being NT (I didn't know that).

almond - forgive me, but I don't see why it's ironic, though I didn't know the real-life person chose this actor and that does change my perspective.

Demented a ciswoman is one who identifies as the gender she is physically.
So most NT women

The irony of this thread.

I have no words.

If you are serious OP, the actual person the actor is playing wanted this particular actor for the part.

I agree with that - I know that the woman who acts in Orange is the New Black - who is a transwoman in real life as well as on the show - got a fair bit of flack from people (male people) who reacted exactly that way. It just reinforces the idea women are the sex class and nothing could be worse for a man than to discover he fancies someone who might have/have had a penis.

Whats a ciswoman?

or Kathleen Turner playing Chandler's dad in Friends.

The role should go to the person who can do it best. A transwoman would have a big advantage, but I don't see why a cis-woman would be incapable of playing the role. After all, non psychopathic murderers play psychopathic murderers. I believe they're actually preferred.