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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Transwimen actors call for trans quota quota for female roles

193 replies

GrumpyPanda · 02/05/2024 11:05

.. more specifically, for 2 to 3 TW candidates to be united to every 20-strong audition.

And one of the interviewed, a mid-40s trans actor, complains about getting fewer offers of female roles, ostensibly since "coming out" aged 40. Who's going to tell the poor dear about Amy Schumer's genius sketch celebrating an actress' "last fuckable day"? Welcome to womanhood, "sister."

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/article/2024/may/02/just-let-us-audition-uk-transgender-actors-appeal-to-be-cast-in-non-trans-roles

‘Just let us audition’: UK transgender actors appeal to be cast in non-trans roles

Kim Tatum, Mariah Louca and Reece Lyons combine to call for trans women to be put on an equal footing for cis roles

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/article/2024/may/02/just-let-us-audition-uk-transgender-actors-appeal-to-be-cast-in-non-trans-roles

OP posts:
IDoNotConsentToAstonResearch · 03/05/2024 09:50

There are plenty of roles where it doesn’t matter. All I ask is that people doing the casting exercise a bit of discretion where it does.

WickedSerious · 03/05/2024 09:47

Men pretending to be women want acting roles where they pretend they're not men pretending to be women.

"I see" said Wicked,but she didn't really.

NoCheesesForUsMeeces · 03/05/2024 09:46

I have no issues with trans actors playing trans characters, or at least having a man playing a trans woman or woman playing a trans man.
Doing it the other way around just feeds the narrative that the majority of trans pass easily when that just isn't the case.

Walton Goggins did a great job in Sons of Anarchy. It was a male actor playing a pre op trans woman whose character was clearly female enough to be called she/her but not so perfectly passing. Also, the other characters were nice to her in that way we all are, when you 'know' but don't acknowledge because she was harmless - that was way more in keeping with my experience of trans people I've met.

Directors etc aren't stupid. They know we know.

Runningupthecurtains · 03/05/2024 09:45

Yalta · 02/05/2024 23:42

I identify as an 18year old 6ft3” super model

How very dare anyone suggest I am an overweight 5ft 3”pensioner

I identified my pizza and cake dinner as salad and fruit but I still gained weight! It was like material reality counts for more than identity.
Shocked I was!

SinnerBoy · 03/05/2024 09:42

😁

Hoosemover · 03/05/2024 09:09

I am sure there loads of parts for in the Christmas pantomimes 😁

Yalta · 02/05/2024 23:42

ProfessorFJLewisThatsYouThatIs · 02/05/2024 17:15

But if you can identify into being a female actor with no issues, what on earth is to stop you from identifying as decades younger than you would be if you 'believed in' boring old chronology?

I could actually see a big, burly, deep-voiced 70yo transwoman actor going for the part of Annie - and any casting person who wasn't fully on board with that would most clearly be a hateful phobic bigot, #nodebate.

I identify as an 18year old 6ft3” super model

How very dare anyone suggest I am an overweight 5ft 3”pensioner

CheeseSandwichRiskAssessment · 02/05/2024 23:00

GrumpyPanda · 02/05/2024 22:51

Always wondered if the non-binary implies that Emma Corrin really should have played Charles rather than Diana in The Crown. And if not, why not?

Or the gameskeeper in lady Chatterley's lover 😂

thirdfiddle · 02/05/2024 22:58

TRAs want to take us back to the time when there were no women on stage

Ha, we always said their ideology was regressive.

ProfessorFJLewisThatsYouThatIs · 02/05/2024 22:56

burnoutbabe · 02/05/2024 21:42

Well someone like the person in billions -Tyler -I assume they are non binary as they are very androgynous with shaved head and wear more male Tailoring.

I can also note that the person is biologically female. The actor uses the then pronouns too.

But the character (and/or actor who plays them) could be a butch lesbian or effeminate gay man, who presents and dresses in public in a way that doesn't fit with their 'normal' sex stereotype - but is under no illusions whatsoever as to what biological sex she/he is.

GrumpyPanda · 02/05/2024 22:51

Always wondered if the non-binary implies that Emma Corrin really should have played Charles rather than Diana in The Crown. And if not, why not?

OP posts:
TempestTost · 02/05/2024 21:56

I suppose they see this as a kind of blind casting. Like a black Anne Boleyn. We all see that the actress is black, and it does break the realism for a lot of people, but we are supposed to ignore it. Some people really don't mind this, or they don't mind it in certain types of productions.

But there is a group of people who will say that those who don't like that approach are basically racists, so tbh, theoretically these guys wanting this kind of casting are not asking something radically differernt in terms of the audience suspending disbelief. (Personally I think it is a bollocks accusation.)

I do think there is a slight differernce in that race categories are wholly constructed and can be invisible to those not socialized into seeing them, but sex is not like that. But arguably, we have been socialized in that way so the differernce is only in the abstract.

Personally, I generally prefer realistic casting in films, unless they are very much taking a non-realistic approach all round. But I'm also a purist about acting, I am happy for any role to go to any person who can convince me that they fit the part. I don't really care if that crosses race or sex, or uses make up or wigs or other actors tricks. Realistically though, it is tricky to appear convincing as someone you are not.

miri1985 · 02/05/2024 21:54

Googled the actors who are pictured in the article and was easily able to find the heights of two of them, one is 5 foot 11 the other is 6 foot 1. How many actresses are that tall and how many actors would want to play opposite someone taller or the same height as them? Film and tv is still fairly wed to the man taller than woman norm and when the woman is taller its usually remarked upon, sometimes for their supposed mannishness like Brienne in Game of Thrones, I'm sure that would be considered transphobic if the woman was played by a trans woman.

In my googling I came across one of their instagrams and theres a story about the audition process/dating the lead actor of baby reindeer that others who have seen the series might find interesting https://www.instagram.com/p/C51Q_PdI5K4/?hl=en&img_index=1

Instagram

https://www.instagram.com/p/C51Q_PdI5K4?hl=en&img_index=1

afternoonoflife · 02/05/2024 21:49

”I am just catching up on Interior Design Masters. Female contestant, female name, female pronouns suddenly announces she is designing a room for trans and non-binary people as it was so important to her.”

I have long thought that we need to smash the gender binary of rooms. They are so heteronormative. And think of the non-binaries, forever stuck on the mezzanine. And JKR has too many rooms, which surprises no-one given her known transphobia.

burnoutbabe · 02/05/2024 21:42

Well someone like the person in billions -Tyler -I assume they are non binary as they are very androgynous with shaved head and wear more male Tailoring.

I can also note that the person is biologically female. The actor uses the then pronouns too.

AnnaMagnani · 02/05/2024 21:40

I honestly don't know how we are meant to know for non-binary characters.

I am just catching up on Interior Design Masters. Female contestant, female name, female pronouns suddenly announces she is designing a room for trans and non-binary people as it was so important to her.

At the end she'd designed a room which basically looked like a normal not v well designed room. And I was none the wiser why she had done it.

ProfessorFJLewisThatsYouThatIs · 02/05/2024 21:34

user09876543 · 02/05/2024 18:18

Sting's daughter in Ripley playing a male was frankly ridiculous and incredibly distracting. It was also necessary since it isn't possible that she was genuinely the best actor for the role.

The actor who played Dane in Fallout was a female actress and model until very recently, She was in Wheel of Time playing a female. She's recently become a transman. I think she's supposed to be non binary in the programme rather than the viewer being expected to think she's male.

This is a genuine question: how on earth are we expected to 'recognise' a character as non-binary.

Men, I understand; women, I get; men or women obviously dressing/presenting as (a stereotype of) the opposite sex, I see what they're driving at.

But what does somebody identifying as non-binary look like? I presume they would have to insert it prominently into the script, to tell the audience (before they yawn and think 'just get on with the play, will you'), which seems kind of odd and distracting.

You wouldn't have a character randomly telling you their favourite colour, or whether they prefer chips or jacket potatoes, or what kind of music they like, or what car they drive, or which bank they have an account with, or whether they have an iPhone or an Android, or where they do their shopping - unless any of this was actually somehow relevant to the character or play.

Aside from the fact that none of us is 'gender' binary inasmuch as we like/act/do ONLY things that stereotypical men or women would do; however we are, of course, binary when it comes to our biological sex, as we are humans and that is a basic immutable fact about humans.

I really am struggling to understand what people - real people as much as characters in a play or film - actually want us to say or do when they tell us they are non-binary. How are we meant to react, other than with a "That's nice for you, dear" - as we would when a 3yo tells us that they ARE Elsa, Fireman Sam, a crocodile or whatever?

Empowermenomore · 02/05/2024 21:09

I’m confused.
wasn’t it just yesterday they didn’t let others play them? Now, they want a quota off the women quota?

This is so predictable. The best women are… not the cervix havers.

quantumbutterfly · 02/05/2024 21:06

WinterTrees · 02/05/2024 19:43

It's a bold demand. I wonder if they're prepared for an honest answer?

Acting is pretending. That's the deal - someone pretends to be someone else and the aim is to construct that fantasy so well that the audience totally buys it. Anything that doesn't quite fit - even a tiny detail like a TV aerial in the background of village street scene on Downton Abbey - jars the audience out of the fantasy. The illusion is spoiled and the audience drifts away to give their attention and their money to a different, more seamless construction of artifice.

People don't want to waste their chill Saturday evenings or their hard-earned cash on validating someone else's fantasy. That's not entertainment, it's hard work.

this.

I've known a few actors, if I can forget who they are and just see the part they're playing even when I know them personally then it speaks of their acting ability.

We all know of actors and actresses who only play 'themselves' and the effect of that can ruin the show.

zanahoria · 02/05/2024 20:55

GrumpyPanda · 02/05/2024 19:54

It's actually going the other way currently- saw a mention of a remake currently in the works and Norman won't be allowed to dress as his mum any longer as that's considered offensive.

so he can peeping on women in the shower? then stab them ?

but people are up in arms about his dressing as his mum?

zanahoria · 02/05/2024 20:50

thirdfiddle · 02/05/2024 19:35

So in fact it was a female pretending to be a male pretending to be a female which wasn't even vaguely funny and was frankly ridiculous casting and incredibly distracting.
I dunno, sounds kind of Shakespearean.

TRAs want to take us back to the time when there were no women on stage

Emotionalsupportviper · 02/05/2024 20:37

thirdfiddle · 02/05/2024 18:00

Sad thing is they probably get more auditions already than women their age.

Anyway, how do they know they aren't seeing TW on stage all the time? I thought they couldn't tell the difference?

Good point!

They walk among us and we are unaware - that's the line we're usually being fed.

Emotionalsupportviper · 02/05/2024 20:30

GrumpyPanda · 02/05/2024 11:13

That never made sense anyway - should be men in those roles. Women playing TW is largely responsible for the "passing" myth.

Indeed.

When TW complained about women not wanting them in women's toilets ("But we just want to peeeeeeee"), everybody immediately thought of poor little Hayley Cropper and shouted "Stoppit, you beasts! You've made poor little Hayley Cropper cry."

Nobody thought of Karen White, or Isla Blair - or even Himdia Willieboy India Willoughby. Obvious men.

But of course, that was why women were used to play the parts of TW to begin with - to imply that they really were harmless and little and weak, and not remotely like blokes.

Edit - autocarrot as usual

Smallwins · 02/05/2024 19:59

But to police the quota transwomen would be required to out themselves, because how else would we know??? Which makes the quota itself transphobic

GrumpyPanda · 02/05/2024 19:54

toomanytrees · 02/05/2024 19:08

I'd be up for a remake of Hitchcock's Psycho with a transwoman playing Norman Bates, but I'm not sure if it would be classified as a trans or non trans role.

It's actually going the other way currently- saw a mention of a remake currently in the works and Norman won't be allowed to dress as his mum any longer as that's considered offensive.

OP posts:
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