The Crying Game

[Cuntysnark]

I may have consumed wine but have we been played since 1992?

Before and after

the crying game a problematic film due to its marketing campaign, but is actually one of the films that at its time showed a trans woman with her own agency and that depicted a scene in the mirror that was both moving and powerful and a scene while difficult to watch is one of the best representions of real reactions of some men to trans woman.

I may have consumed wine but have we been played since 1992?

What specifically are you referring to?

A gentle introduction.

I thought the Crying Game was an excellent film in itself. Quite apart from the transy bit.

They couldn't make it now. There would be uproar.

But we've been played since the first instance of being told a transexual was a woman born in a man's body.

The first time I came across it was "Dog Day Afternoon" in the 80s.

We’ve been being played for much longer than that.

See this thread:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3463920-Lets-go-back-to-2007

According to the director, Neil Jordan, the character is a transvestite, not a transwoman.

Did Jordan think of Davidson’s Dil as a pre-op transsexual?

“She wasn’t that. She was a transvestite. And Jaye wasn’t a transvestite, just a beautiful gay man."

www.irishtimes.com/culture/film/the-crying-game-they-wanted-me-to-cast-a-woman-that-was-pretending-to-be-a-man-1.3167472

That interview was only in 2017, but includes this:

“The person who helped me find Jaye Davidson was Derek Jarman, ” says Jordan. “But I still had to fill the bar Dil works in, and when I began to cast I was talking to transitioning people. They all had the same story. They all met a guy, on the street, wherever. The relationship began. And eventually the relationship moved on sexually, and they had to say: ‘You know I’m a man?’ And the general response was: ‘Oh that’s fine.’ Or, ‘I already knew that.’"

Things have moved fast.

I miss that old word transvestite

The appalling aspect of The Crying Game is Forrest Whittaker's accent and more importantly his bowling action.

The Jaye Davidson character was an exercise in social foreshadowing, in particular for what they say when disposing of Miranda Ricardson, the cleavage-envy misogynistic anger at the root of so much transeyness.

I found it interesting how the language has changed. Neil Jordan was inspired by this odd little subculture he witnessed while working as a builder in 1970s London and hanging round Irish pubs. There were these big hairy Irish builders with transvestite "girlfriends" and no-one batted an eyelid. But the Wiki page maintains rigidly that Dil is a "transwoman".

It's also interesting to hear Jaye Davison's perspective- it seems he found it a bit irritating to be typecast as he wasn't interested in drag at all, he just happened to look really good in makeup and a dress for the film. I've heard him quoted as saying he is simply a gay man.

But y'know. We have always been at war with Eastasia

Neil Jordan also mentioned that men were taken in but women spotted it immediately. Which makes sense.

Well I’m a woman and I didn’t spot it immediately - I was gobsmacked, in fact. I loved the film.

I didn't spot it. Even knowing Dil still looks like a woman to me.

I'd read a spoiler before seeing the film ... I'm sure there was never any description of Dil at the time as being anything other than a transvestite male. I don't think anyone was using the term 'transgender' back then, were they?

Dil reminded me of Rachael from Blade Runner.

Dil definitely looks like a pretty man. It is his/her strong features - firm masculine jaw, thick neck, boyish figure.
I knew almost from the outset that Dil was a man, it seems quite obvious to me tbh.

I saw he was a man immediately but I think it's more common for women to be able to distinguish between the sexes. (I'm a woman).