Now a malory towers tomboy was trans

[peachsquish]

{https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/06/25/malory-towers-enid-blytons-tomboy-bill-actually-transgender/}

If the actor is female, then they're still just a tomboy, which is fine.
If the actor is male, they wouldn't have been allowed into Malory Towers (which you have to wonder if the people running this show, have grasped, was fictional. Fictional characters can't secretly be anything- they are whatever the author wrote them as).

The actor identifies as "non binary" which makes me worried that they are using breast binders and forcing everyone to refer to them with veh special counter intuitive pronouns. Rather than just being content as a tomboy.

Into the madness we go. So now anyone who identifies as a tomboy is trans. I wore typically boys clothes growing up. I was a tomboy. I didn’t want to be a boy. One of my dds wears clothes from the boys section. She very clearly states she’s a girl. Once again men come along trying to shove us into neat boxes.

I’m also very sick of the “best life crap”. By living as a “cis” woman I’m obviously not doing that.

Look at peachsquish's photo of the cast and tell me that that Adam's apple is female

I'm trans.

I was such a tomboy I refused to even read those Enid Blyton books because I thought they were too "girly" What boy wants to read about a girls boarding school after all?

I can't believe how much we've regressed that any child not completely and utterly conforming to gender stereotypes is now thought to be trans.

I can't believe that the most wokest of my friends are the ones that on the one hand let their boys have long hair, wear dresses if they wish etc and vice versa for girls, and on the other hand completely go along with this shit is what makes a child trans. How do they tally it up in their mind?

I'm not trans. I'm a heterosexual female.

If I was a kid now though.......

Men don’t really know much about women and girls do they?

No. And they get so cross when women and girls' actual realities and experiences start muddying the waters of their fantasies.

Oh sorry I didn’t reply - I was too busy braiding my girlfriends hair at our pyjama party in between pillow fights and swapping baby doll nighties. 🙄

I'm critical of this but, TBF, I don't see there's anything other than Bill being played by a non-binary person that says it's going to explicit in the play that they are trans necessarily?

But if the idea is to suggest that Bill is trans, yes, I'm not keen as we seem to have lost the idea of a girl just being a girl and not fancying conducting herself in conventionally 'female' manner. This stuff is why I am expecting my short-haired daughter, who always wears trousers at school, to be greeted in her new secondary with 'Are you trans? Do you think you're a boy?' because kids may have picked up the idea that any child who looks and dresses like her can only do so because they are a trans boy. We also need narratives of gender non-conforming kids who identify as their own sex!

Bill and George were my faves.

Back off BBC.

And the uniform is so wrong.

Posters on this thread need to remember that Vinnie is a person. A living, breathing person. Vilifying them because they have been cast in a particular role in a play is vile. The decision was with Emma Rice, the director. Vinnie is a superbly talented performer. I have tickets to see the show and I cannot wait. My DTDs are coming too and they are also excited.

I'm sure they would say Ann Lister was trans

To be fair, Ann Lister specifically said in her diaries that she believed she had internal testicles, so perhaps she was, by modern definitions. 🤷🏼‍♀️

Still agree about Bill though.

A friend of mine has a daughter who was just like Bill when she was younger. As a grown woman, she is ultra feminine. The whole tomboy era was exactly that. A transient part of her life growing up. She never wanted to actually BE a boy, she just wasn't a girly girl. Bill is the ideal role model for GIRLS like this. Don't make it into something it was never intended to be in order to be PC/inclusive/cash in.

Yep, there was a hooha where Anne Lister was post transed.

Thread here. www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3318306-Anne-Lister-was-not-a-Lesbian-but-Gender-Non-Conforming#prettyPhoto

I'm critical of this but, TBF, I don't see there's anything other than Bill being played by a non-binary person that says it's going to explicit in the play that they are trans necessarily?

Practically speaking it often seems to come to the same thing. I was at a concert the other night and one of the performers was someone who identified as non-binary a few years ago, before that was performing as a woman. As a woman she kind of a gamine type, petite with short hair, and as non-binary really still quite similar. Used they/them pronouns. Last night though was clearly either binding or had had a mastectomy, voice changed, much more masculine features in the face, clearly male haircut and clothes. The host performer also used he/him pronouns but that may just have been because he was older.

That the tomboy female character is played by a 'non-binary' actor really doesn't matter. You don't have to be gay/Jewish/Peruvian to perform a gay/Jewish/Peruvian role: it's called 'acting'.

The issue is if the tomboy female character is played by a male actor. That is making a statement. A statement cleverly 'protected' by the fact that two of the white Malory Towers girls in that picture are being played by non-white actors. So having a male actor play a girl can be defended by claiming equivalence with racially-diverse casting.

It's so depressing. Girls need strong female charters and that includes tomboys.

I don't know if 4 months counts as zombie - apologies if it does!

But I saw this play last week and was googling opinions on it and found this.

I found it impossible to tell whether the actor was biologically male or female tbh - but actually, the actor worked in the part, imo. It was never mentioned in the script that Bill was anything other than a girl. She or he never appears on stage in a school dress - only pyjamas or a riding outfit. The publicity photo doesn't happen in the show.

Using a non binary actor neither detracted from nor added to what was a reasonably enjoyable but not especially memorable production.

For a cast of only 8, I do wonder if the director was trying a little too hard with the casting - one transgender, one achondraplasiac (Sally) and three BEM (Darrell, Alicia and Irene). Obviously not at all realistic for a 1940s boarding school but it didn't come across as wrong to me in the audience. It wasn't a realistic show to start with! All five of those actors played and suited their parts very well.

A lot of the opinions here are overly harsh, it seems.

There is a difference between an actor playing an opposite sex part (don't really care - happens all the time on SNL - only question is how well they play the part) and implying that a fictional character is non-binary because they don't conform to 1940's stereotypes of how a girl should behave.

The implication wouldn't be there if the non-binary actor were playing Darrell instead of Bill.

Following as having read the thread am now inspired to read Blyton again.
Blyton loved tomboys - remember Jo as well in the famous 5? She was a gypsy girl pretending to be a boy.
Anne and other feminine females were naff and Blyton scorned them.
I aspired to be George, Jo, Carlotta and Bill.
Blyton seemed to idolise tomboys or people who were a bit wild and free (eg Carlotta).
There was Bobby as well in St Claire’s
Obviously there was a lot of stereotyping ref gypsies and circus people but the way she wrote about them made me want to be a gypsy. Yes I know it’s completely romanticised nonsense.