Julie Hesmondhalgh, who played Hayley Cropper on Coronation Street, wouldn't take the role today as she's 'cis-gender'

Does anyone remember the story about Hayley's son?.

Basically Hayley had fathered a son back when she was Harold then tracked him down years later. Instead of coming clean she first told him she was his aunt and that his dad was dead. When she eventually came clean he punched her then was made to look like the bad guy.

I thought that ridiculous even before I knew anything about this malarky

Do you mean a man?

If my aunt had had balls she would have been my uncle.

I'm very very concerned about hobbits being played by humans.
Surely, we should now be at a point where we question the Lord of the Rings films. They always made me uncomfortable as it was obvious that the actors had no lived hobbity experiences and, as such, were hobbits.

Could Mermaids help Hobbits? Could Julie front the campaign?

Played by a transwoman I should add.

There’s been a trans character in Hollyoaks in recent years. I can’t remember any of their storylines though.

Well said, Cherryblossoms!

Exactly this!

Shrugs!

She's in the spotlight under scrutiny she has to toe the line to keep her job.

I do think they should have men in these roles.
I'm tired of the lies and the grooming.

At the time, I wasn't TWAW, because this didn't exist the way it does now.
I was very sympathetic to Hayley as she was lovely and very much a one off person who had a "sex change".

'Hayley' definitely gave people a very particular idea about what trans women were like: look and sound exactly like women, consider 'full surgery' to be integral to their transition; is attracted to men; etc.

How noble and self-sacrificing of her…

I believe as Larry Olivier said “it’s called acting darling”

I wonder if Corrie would even cast another trans character? They would be under so much scrutiny now it may not be worth the bother.

Does EI possess an anorak?

"I'd love one of the soaps to recreate this exact storyline, with say, Eddie Izzard, playing the role of Hayley"

I would love to see Roy Cropper in a relationship with Eddie Izzard.

As Haley has died and Roy is single then why not?

I realised recently that on grey's anatomy the child (about 6) who is supposed to be a boy who identifies as a girl is played by a girl.

It feels so bloody duplicitous.

At the time of that storyline I was still very much “ahh, what’s the harm, transwomen are women if it makes them feel better” but even then it was crashingly obvious that Hayley being born male might not have occurred to unworldly Roy if the part had been played by a transwoman, but no one else in Coronation St would have been fooled for a minute.

This reminds me of a true crime serial murder documentary thing I recently watched on Netflix. They built the whole "mystery" around why male DNA was found at the scene of the crime yet a woman had been arrested for the murders.

It was supposed to be shocking, a "who dunnit" type thing.

Except they made the mistake of showing the picture of the "woman" before the story began.

It was clear why male DNA had been found at the scene of the crime.

Cannot remember the name of the killer but they had killed several people. Once it came out they tried to argue that the crimes had been committed by the person they "used" to be and that person no longer existed, so they should be pardoned.
All very bizarre.
My point is that there was no great shock in the story of the "how could this BE?" just as there would be no shock if a real TW had played the part of Hayley in Coronation Street.

I remember mike Baldwin saying 'the machinist formally known as Harold'.

I wonder how much of the whole story line was used as proof that a grc holders privacy was needed in the GRA.

I agree that even if filmed now the character has to be played by a women because there cant be any risk of views guessing for the story line to work.

That was the story line in a nutshell. That's exactly how the characters were written.

Does anyone remember the episode when Blanche was talking about Roy and Hayley?
She said, "he's a loony and she's a man"
It was funny at the time.
Imagine the death threats now.

I wrote about the Hayley Cropper phenomenon. Julie Hesmondhalgh is up to her eyeballs in KoolAid.

uncommongroundmedia.com/hayley-cropper-coronation-streets-trojan-horse/

It is. Somne otherwise very outspoken gay actors don;t say much about this because then they might be told they shouldn;t perform heterosexual roles and they make their living acting straight 90% of the time. Which is fine. That's the job.

If transwomen are women, and it’s offensive to make a distinction between the two, then what wrong with a ciswoman playing a transwoman? Surely that is just a woman playing a woman, according to Stonewal et al?

Their line, and it is NOT my line so don't shout at me, is that TW are a subset of women. So saying should a non-T woman play a TW, to them, is equivalent logic to saying should a non disabled woman play a disabled woman. That is not as far as I can see a logic fail. (To be completely clear this is comparing trains of logic and not in any way saying a TW is comparable to a disabled woman or vice versa).

It is a category fail as TW are not in fact women. And they've made no credible attempt to define a category of women that includes TW without circularity or rendering the term entirely meaningless.

And any argument that differentiates "cis" and "trans" invalidates sex-is-a-spectrum arguments. I don't know whether that position is taken by the same set of people but pretty sure it is.

Anyone remember that episode of Lewis where they were clueless about who the murderer - who had male DNA - might be? The plot was that it was a gay man whose lover couldn't accept him because of religious homophobia so he transitioned - and was still rejected. So having the role played by a woman made no sense whatever other than credibly fooling the detectives.