I am sorry to start yet another trans thread, I don't want to add to the stream of trans topics overwhelming us all, but I've only recently had my revelation of the damage being done to feminism by all of this, and I'm still working through my thoughts on it all. This is what's set me off this morning.
The gist of it is that transactivists have launched a petition to boycott the new Zoolander film on the basis that Benedict Cumberbatch, who is playing an androdygnous comedy character is "offensive". They comment: "This is the modern equivalent of using blackface to represent a minority", and 'By hiring a cis actor to play a non-binary individual in a clearly negative way, the film endorses harmful and dangerous perceptions of the queer community".
I keep getting stuck in the logic failure loop! It's OK for non-binary people to utilise (appropriate?) whichever bits of gender performance they feel best express them, and that's fine, but if someone who doesn't feel non-binary does the same, then it's offensive. How do they know Cumberbatch is "cis"? He might be yearningly non-binary inside and terrified to come out! How would we know? Also, he's an actor, so his job is dressing up and pretending to be people he's not, which seems to have eluded the creators of this petition.
"Cis" people dressing up as non-binary = blackface, appropriative, offensive. Why doesn't that apply when it's born men dressing up and demanding to be treated as women?
And all this is based on a few seconds of material from the trailer, when the film hasn't even been released yet. It's Zoolander, every last person in it is bound to be portrayed as a TOTAL arse - really, it should be viewed as progress...