Trans actors complaining about casting

[TimeForDebate]

Trans actors are complaining that cisgender actors are playing trans characters, and that this shouldn't be allowed.

But ...

If 'trans women are women, and trans men are men ...' surely ... under their own logic, it's completely irrelevant? It shouldn't matter a bit whether actors are trans or women etc. Aren't they getting all muddled up, suggesting trans men and trans women ... aren't?

Or is that only when it suits them?

www.glamour.com/story/should-cisgender-actors-be-allowed-to-play-transgender-characters

Urban I don’t think trans is a physical characteristic rather a belief. So I agree that deaf actors should get deaf roles, I think trans is similar to say religious belief. So I think an atheist could play a catholic and vis versa

Except there is a huge physical element to it.

I agree with you otherwise.

Only if you believe that a trans woman should resemble a cis woman. That's not always the case.

And it’s not the same as asking an astronaut to play an astronaut. It’s asking an actor with a specific characteristic to play a character with the same characteristic which is wholly appropriate.

I think trans actors should play a variety of roles.

Why do they want to limit themselves? Is their only purpose to fill a niche market segment?

Oh, there they go being neoliberal twits again. As usual. And they still think they are the progressive ones.

I think the issue is that Hollywood just won't add transwomen as major characters if they think they aren't sexually attractive. Welcome to the world of women.

I saw Frankenatein on stage. Just sayin'...

Surely the logic of this is that if only a trans actor can play a trans character, only a non-trans actor can play a non-trans character. This would mean that trans actors end up being limited to playing only trans characters, which I can't imagine they'd be delighted with.

No because they can do what they like as stunning and brave.

But it’s not the same as a job. We ask childless actors to play parents. We ask actors to do all sorts of thing be animals, be creatures never seen before, be gods and goddesses, I’ve seen actors play trees, be TVs, be chairs, all sorts of things that are different from how they physically look. And they can because they are actors.

Why then should deaf actors play deaf characters? Because there is not many deaf rolls and most writers aren’t clever enough to make use of a deaf actor in a non deaf roll.

That’s nonsense. You don’t have to limit minorities to only playing parts where their characteristic is explicit in the role.

Role rather than roll. It’s dinner time here :)

Why do we have to throw every ounce of decency out with this conflict?

No we don’t. Need to but most directors/writers aren’t clever enough to do it. So when a role s for a deaf character lets give them the opportunity over s hearing actor.

Look I’m happy for trans actors to be actors but I’m not convinced they bring any particular skills then any other actor

I'm very happy to accept that trans roles should be played by trans people, as long as they are happy to accept that women should be played by women and men should be played by men.

It's entirely true to say that people who have not transitioned cannot possibly understand the lived experience of a trans person. Just as it would be true to say that a trans woman could not possibly understand the lived experience of a biological woman.

Of course, there is an alternative view that actors are actors and that they should therefore be allowed to act in any role as the director sees fit. However, you're going to go down the route of insisting that actors cannot play things that they are not, then biological men/women should never play trans roles and trans women should never play biological women.

Perhaps a transwomens view of womanhood isn't nuanced enough for some directors.

Well quite. But nevertheless they do have a specific characteristic which matches the role of a trans character. So cast them as trans characters - what’s unreasonable about that? The only time it could be an issue is if you have a limited pool of acters to draw from eg a student production where there are no trans people on the course.

Because in the industry, there are trans actors on the books of most agents.

I know we won’t agree but I don’t think it is unreasonable for trans people to want to be represented in drama but trans actors.

If a part is specified to be a trans women then it should be acted by a trans woman. But if it is not specified then it should be acted by anyone the director sees fit, which could include a trans woman. I feel the same about all minorities even though I hold some gender critical beliefs about other areas where I feel biological women are made unsafe.

I think the broader debate on this is quite interesting. There was a bit of a fuss recently about a heterosexual actor taking on a gay role, which I found really strange (and quite funny) because I remember when Tom Hanks took on the gay role in Philadelphia and was lauded as, er, stunning and brave because people thought it might damage his career. But apparently these days only gay actors should take on gay roles. Again, the logic of that, surely, is that only heterosexual actors should take on heterosexual roles, and I can't imagine that anyone would see that as a good thing.

And yet I can also see why disabled actors get pissed off at able-bodied actors playing disabled characters. It must be incredibly dispiriting, given that the chances that you, as a disabled actor, will be able to take on the role of an able-bodied person are next to zero. And obviously very few of us would want a return to the days when white actors blacked up to play black characters. But it's completely fine, as far as I'm concerned, for black actors to play characters that might originally have been imagined as white - there's no reason at all why Hermione in the Harry Potter play shouldn't be played by a black woman. Similarly, I think it's great to see the innovation of all-women casts in plays such as Julius Caesar.

So I do think the whole issue is quite complicated, and can't be dismissed through analogy with only Martians playing Martians.

Yes probably should go to a transwomen however transwomen don't as yet make big box office hence scarlet johansson being cast as a transwoman

I guess it comes down to money in the end - big names get big audiences.

By this analogy, men can't play the panto dames at Xmas.

You'd think not, wouldn't you? But noone minds what men do, it's just women.