Casting a woman as a transwoman

[Hazchem]

So there is a show about to air on the Australian ABC about Carlotta who is an incredibly well known and important entertainer in Australia. She Les Girls, was the first transexual in an Australian soap opera. An icon, someone whose very being has made changes to the Australian cultural landscape. She was original born male and very early on had surgery

So the person they have picked to play her is a ciswomen. Surely there was a trans actor who could have taken the role. My feeling is that a women has been cast because she can be sexy in the Les Girls numbers without making people feel uncomfortable about seeing her as sexy.

Am I over thinking this? Is it gender equality to have a ciswomen plan a transwomen?

I don't think you are a mean, nasty person; I just disagree with you.

The human rights I listed were access to sanitation and education. I have never met anyone who thought such things were bollocks.

You did say women were privileged.

I am not calling you out: I loathe calling out. I don't need a confessional about you as a person. I am interested in your opinion, which is why I have botheredto respond to your posts.

Of course you didn't talk about using privilege to hide power structures! You can't hide something by telling people you are hiding it. It isn't you personally. It is a common set of ideas that have spread amongst people who use privilege checking/calling out/confessionals of personal privilege.

I don't think your points are dull or offensive but I'm not sure how to respond to them. Since this is FWR, I assume you want a feminist slant on this but it's not a feminist issue. Without any feminist analysis, I would answer your questions as:

1. Since Carlotta seems to have been closely involved in this production, I would guess the casting of a woman was to make Carlotta appear completely passing. Casting a transwoman or a man would be more realistic but less flattering. I think you're probably right that the film makers would think it would be more appealing to a male audience.

1. I've no idea what trans people are asking for in terms of exposure on television or whether this is enough. There seemed to be an outcry about Jared Leto playing a transwoman.

Laverne Cox seems to be the only transwoman acting in the US at the moment. Spectacularly badly cast, in my view and very unconvincing as a late-transitioning married father but the trans community seems to be happy about this casting.

calmet I guess that discussion is where I am most interested int this "issue". Why aren't we seeing good transactors? Why did the procedures choose to make the show without having a good transactor available? what structures do we need to start building in so that we are getting better transactors available for roles? Would we get more transactors on screen will that encourage more transpeople to see they are able to have a career in the industry.

Almondcake No I don't think they are bollocks but I think human rights aren't as clear cut and unbaised as they are made out to be.

Yes I think some women hold a privileged position within society because of the structures around them. This doesn't mean I think they aren't oppressed. It's a bit like I think It a gay may can be both privileged and oppressed at the same.
I'm not sure if you mean power structures or the set of things you said when you said this sorry. "It is a common set of ideas that have spread amongst people who use privilege checking/calling out/confessionals of personal privilege."

FloraFox see I sort of thought transwomen and women in the TV were aspects of feminism. How women are portrayed is I thought part of feminism.

Hazchem how transwomen are portrayed is a trans issue. Women can talk about and organise around how to increase the participation of women or improve the portrayal of women in the media. I could discuss at length how to increase women's participation in male dominated industries but I wouldn't know where to begin with those questions. It's like asking how to increase the representation of black men. Speaking from a feminist perspective, there is no connection with this issue.

Really! I thought it would be included. This thread has been an education. Several people have suggested essays etc to read which I will.

I was also thinking if using the term privilege is wrong in the way I have tried to word it. What is the correct accepted term for what I'm trying to say.

Which is

: because I have not had to face the type of discrimination that might run along side others experience what do I take for granted without realizing.

Kim, I agree re having characters to whom the minority characteristic is incidental, but as this is a biopic, if I understand correctly, this probably isn't going to be one of those! Though there may be background characters who that applies to.

People do say "the feminist community" or "feminists" - sometimes it's annoying, sometimes it's not.

See I love the word community but it's what I'm studying but id doesn't and shouldn't mean homogenous group. A community is a network of connections that have a boundary to them (physical or not, real or not).

I guess I assumed that trans portrayal was a women's issue because it is about gender portrayal and that I think effects women.

Gender affects us all.

Hazchem, I think my posts were very clear, but I'll repeat to answer your questions.

You have used the word 'privilege' as a catch all term to include basic human rights like the right to marry who you like.

Actually, not only is forced marriage a human rights breach, it is also considered a form of slavery by abolition charities. It is pretty repulsive to say that some women (and if we are talking about women in comparison to trans women then your some women is 99.7% of women) are privileged by the right to marry who they want.

Responding to me pointing out that freedom to choose who you marry (and other very basic human rights) by saying that human rights are bollocks and biased is bizarre. Human rights conventions were actually written up and agreed upon by the nations of the world, as opposed to 'privilege' which is a nebulous set of checklists agreed upon by nobody apart from some Western social justice bloggers on the Internet. 'Privilege' in the sense you are using it, lumps together the right not to be tortured with the right to control a million workers or the right to rape someone without their being any strong likelihood of you being convicted. The former is a human right and the latter two are a privilege, unless of course you think the idea that people shouldn't be tortured is also a bollocks, biased idea invented by white Western males.

This masks power structures.

The other masking of power structures point was you comparing trans to race, which is why I pointed out the use of military power to enforce racism, which I then put in the context of global media, as you were talking about tv representation. I can't really make that clearer than I did the first time around,

As for what word should you use to describe for things you take for granted without realising, I don't know. There are a million and one negative experiences you will never have that happen to various different groups who each make up 0.3% of the population or less. There is no way of anybody in the whole of society avoiding that. It is very different to not recognising and understanding racism or sexism which happen to most people globally.

I just wrote a massive post and it's lost.

I haven't used privilege in the way you think I have. I have used it or intended to use it a bit like this (fictitious)
"I'm in a privileged because my local MP is involved in the charity I run" The privileged means I have access to an MP to discuss my grievances , it also mean my charity has easier access to power makers, and funders.

I'm not a social justice blogger or much of a reader of them. I am interested in women and women's rights and I admit I am mainly interested in things that effect me or I have a personal interest in.

My responses are to points you've made about women and privilege.

There's nothing wrong with having interests in things that immediately impact your life or that you have a personal connection to.

I agree that someone running a charity with access to politicians is in a position of privilege and will have to hold themselves to a really high ethical standard to make sure they use that privilege for the benefit ot others.

So that is how I have used it and meant it. I understand, now, that many feminists do not think that sort of prividlge can be held by a women but I think it can. Just as I think casting of transwomen is a women's issue not 'just" a trans issue.

And on thinking about it further this wasn't the right thread to say human rights was bollocks. It certainly has help make anything clearer. It was a bit throw away rather then moving a discussion forward.

I think feminists do accept that some women are more privileged that others. I don't think I've ever heard anybody say otherwise, and certainly not on MN.

Casting of trans women is a women's issue, and three trans people have been on this thread (as far as I know). But most women are not going to have enough knowledge of how a range of trans women feel about it to give an informed opinion.

I would say that some main issues are (to trans representation, not your point about sexuality)|

1. The feelings of the person being portrayed (as she is a real person, not a fictional character).
2. The range of trans women represented.
3. Trans women characters who happen to be in something rather than their gender status being the actual plot.
4. Representing women with a range of different physical appearances.
5. Recognising that some trans women after transition see their identity solely as woman and not trans woman, and so may not feel a trans woman character should be played by a trans woman actor.
6. Recognising that some trans woman see their identity as trans woman, and would want a trans woman character to be played by a trans woman actor.
7. Job opportunities for trans women actors.

Kim did raise quite a few of these points.

The sexuality element LRD did discuss in an interesting way but she hasn't been back.

The fact that some women are more privileged than others has been a basic tenet of what one can broadly term the women's movement for bloody decades. Go and read some issues of Spare Rib from the 1970s, to start with.

I'm really confused now because so much of this thread has been taken up with saying women can not be privileged. The reason I've brought on things such as marriage or what ever is I've been trying to find concrete examples of places that some women might be privilege.

so when I asserted I felt that I might not understand transwomens of experience because I am privilege in some ways how is that wrong? Because as far as I can work out that is what people have been saying is wrong.

Here are some quote that have led me to believe that people were saying women can not have privilege

What priviliges do women have as a consequence of being assigned into the subordinate gender at birth?
Compliance with patriarchal requirements can bring rewards but this is not privilege.
I can see privilege from being in a higher class, being white or straight but there is no class privilege from being female.
because that means there is female privilege and I don't accept that.

The first one I said. A woman can be more privileged than another woman. I am privileged compared to a black woman.

But the fact that I was born with a female body and then somebody assigned me the gender woman cannot be a privilege. Gender is a system which appoints sex roles to people, and I have been appointed the subordinate role. How can I be privileged by that?

I can be privileged and be a woman, but being a woman in itself is not a source of privilege.

It's not the womenness its the need not to change it that is where the privilege comes from.

Hazchem, I do need to change it. I need to completely change the whole of the female gender role because it is wrong that I have been assigned a gender that is not true about me or the vast majority of other women on this planet. That is why I am a feminist.

I will not cast off my assigned gender role and refer to myself as agender or similar and therefore trans because I have solidarity with the billions of other people who would still be stuck in the gender of woman, whether they like it or not.

I have never thought about it like that Almondcake. I think I will need to think on that for a while.

I have however thought of another word rather then privilege and was wondering if it makes more sense but in light of your last post I'm not sure.
Would Advantageous be better in the context I've tried to use it?

I’ve just finished reading an essay on Feminist teaching methods and the impact that has on how students view feminist lecturers. It’s made me reflect on this discussion in quite a critical way. I think here I have been guilty of, like the students in the essay, assigning feminine values to feminists. I have become defensive when people have disagreed with me rather than seeing it as a point of sharing and exploring, I felt unsupported in my thinking because people weren’t supporting me in the way I thought they should. My unconscious assumption being that I was in a female space that should have a kind and supportive way about it.
I have read and reread a set of rules about feminist philosophy many times thinking I understood her final rule “go for the jugular” but I don’t think I fully understood her final rule until now because I had thought it meant I should go for the jugular but really she is saying we all should do that. That we should challenge and also be prepared to be challenged.

That is interesting Hazchem that you felt unconsciously, that feminists shiuld be supporting you in a particular way. I think feminists here have been supportive of you by answering your questions, but yes some of the answers have been challenging.

Feminism is political, so of course feminists are going to be challenging.

Feminism itself is incredibly challenging - to the status quo of men having power over women.
If it doesn't challenge deeply held assumptions it isn't likely to be feminism (for example, the feminist porn awards - not feminist)

Calmet Reading the article was hugely reveling to me. As I was reading it I was like oh my god that is exactly what I have been doing. Expecting nurturing support rather then challenging support. Lots of people have put lots of time into this thread and this very supportive.
One of the points the author was making is that students expect feminist teachers to mark less harshly then men. I know I have been guilty of that thought too without having thought about it in that way.

The article is "Feminist Teaching/Teaching "Feminism" by Ellen C Carillo I don't know if it's freely available as it's behind my uni's paywall thing.

Super Is there really a feminist porn award? Although ten years ago I probably would have thought that was great step forward. I like the if it doesn't hold deeply held assumptions it isn't likely feminism. It's a great marker I think.