Boy who in 2018 boasted of 'breaking gay stereotypes' is now trans and the female lead on Saved By The Bell reboot

[ShootsFruitAndLeaves]

Here is Teen Vogue on how the 16 year old gay male star of a sitcom was breaking stereotypes about gay men.

<a class="break-all" href="http://web.archive.org/web/20180615053216/www.teenvogue.com/story/champions-star-jj-totah" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">web.archive.org/web/20180615053216/www.teenvogue.com/story/champions-star-jj-totah

Good stuff, but then he came out as a transgender girl a few months later, and Teen Vogue retrospectively changed names and pronouns in the article so that it no longer made any sense and they'd probably have done better to delete it, rather than confuse the hell out of any readers.

Anyway now that JJ is Josie and a she, she is lead for the Saved by The Bell reboot as 'the most popular girl in school'. link

Oh and 'producer' as well.

Anyone make any sense of this?

I make no comment on the individual involved other than to wish them all the best, but a certain word printed on the backdrop in the picture of them in the white dress made me do a double-take.

"child in the media spotlight turns out to be trans gender" isn't a particularly unusual story - but I find the re-writing of the Teen Vogue article much more interesting!
Perhaps no sex-specific pronouns should be used in all publications in case someone changes (or reveals their true) gender at any point in their life?

Apparently this realisation of being transgender came from watching 'I am Jazz', which led to an immediate appointment to get on puberty blockers (which is obviously an irreversible decision in reality)

time.com/5371387/josie-totah-transgender/

So at the time Totah was appearing as a gay boy in Spiderman Homecoming Totah was actually already identifying as a girl and taking hormones which meant that Totah would not develop a normal male physique, voice, etc.

I'm still struggling to make sense of it from the perspective of logic.

I.e. Totah had a career as a gay male actor, but in reality identified as a female, and chose to completely suppress that innate femininity until it was convenient from a career perspective

Perhaps no sex-specific pronouns should be used in all publications in case someone changes (or reveals their true) gender at any point in their life?

Or in the case of Pippa/Philip Bunce, it changes daily and woe betide the offence of misgendering.

Or because you can’t know if someone IDs as non-binary or gender fluid, or two spirit or pan galactic or...

In fact - let’s just stop writing about anyone, ever, unless it’s an autobiography and won’t that be ummm ‘interesting’.

Who needs the news anyway

Good grief, I followed the OP’s People link through to another link here: people.com/tv/mario-lopez-criticized-comments-parenting-transgender-kids/

Where some US talk show host had to apologise for saying that parents should wait until a child’s formative years to make any decisions about gender. One of the quotes was:

“Look, I’m never one to tell anyone how to parent their kids, obviously, and I think if you come from a place of love, you really can’t go wrong,” he said. “But at the same time, my God, if you’re 3 years old and you’re saying you’re feeling a certain way, or you think you’re a boy or a girl or whatever the case may be, I just think it’s dangerous as a parent to make that determination then — ‘Okay, well then you’re going to be a boy or a girl,’ whatever the case may be. It’s sort of alarming and my gosh, I just think about the repercussions later on.”

The world is truly going mad.

Bit of a derail here, but Tesco mobile have put a block on me accessing that link due to being deemed over 18 material. I can access the Teen Vogue Anal Sex one without any issues.
I've registered as a complaint.
I don't know to laugh or cry.
FFS

I remember this kid from an episode of 'Glee' some years back where they performed a Beyonce song. Talented but I distinctly remember being somewhat creeped out by how overly sexual the performance considering their age at the time, unfortunatedly this seems run of the mill with a lot of child performers these days.

This is the performance:

@SugarPlumFairyCakes I don’t know if Tesco mobile has an app but 3 network does and it’s just a case of going on the app and turning the adult filter off. Failing that just ring customer service, they’ll take it off usually within 5 minutes of your call. You might just have to turn your phone off and then switch it on again.

My phone scolds me severely every time to try to get onto a website selling booze.

@GivesNoFox Glee had a lot of dodgy performances. Buzzfeed has a whole trope of Mr. Schue being really inappropriate with the kids.

Slightly off topic but I used to like going on a nostalgic trip watching nickelodeon shows from childhood but since I learned about Dan Schneider and his child foot fetish you literally can’t not see all the bare feet and jokes around smelly feet and sniffing/touching them, it’s vile. I think there’s a lot more in tv shows that we don’t fully see until something comes out.

That YouTube video ! Why do people celebrate this rather than see how bloody inappropriate it is?! Ugh.

I just watched the Glee video with the sound off and I don’t remember it from the show, but it looked as though the audience were pretty uncomfortable, so wasn’t it making a point of it being inappropriate? Sue certainly didn’t look impressed and the only one dancing along was the stupid cheerleader, the Britney wannabe. Of course, filming a child doing an inappropriately sexualised dance routine so you can say gosh that’s inappropriate is still exploitation.

The 18-year-old actress will play Lexi, "a beautiful, sharp-tongued cheerleader and the most popular girl at Bayside High who is both admired and feared by her fellow students"

Male takes lead role from women. It's happening and we're supposed to smile and clap like it's a good thing.

My instinctive reaction was that the male part of the audience won't take to transwomen being the sex appeal in mainstream films but then realised that it depends on the presentation on the screen. With enough CGI who knows?

The 18-year-old penguin will play Pingoo, "a beautiful, sharp-beaked mascot and the most popular animal at Bayside High who is both admired and feared by her fellow birds

Might as well issue this statement. Same logic.

All this talk about finally being able to 'be themselves' - well, no, you aren't being yourself. You've had to drastically change the real you to feel accepted. What happens when they wake up to that?

Transgenderism = gay eugenics.

A conservative's wet dream.

sad

So all the fuss about only using trans actors to play trans roles doesn’t apply to roles playing natal women? That’s a surprise. Or is the character trans now?

It's interesting though, the article about the earlier role being a supposedly non-stereotypical gay boy. Because his bar for non-stereotypical seems pretty low.

A lot of these kinds of tv shows are just very small variations on tropes. Which is maybe not so bad, that's the level of tv they are, it's why they appeal to kids and teens to whom they are still fresh. But people seem to feel that they somehow reflect a kind of reality.

So all the fuss about only using trans actors to play trans roles doesn’t apply to roles playing natal women? That’s a surprise. Or is the character trans now?

I am sure they would say that this is because trans actors are marginalised. You see something similar with ethnic/race based casting.

a certain word printed on the backdrop in the picture of them in the white dress made me do a double-take

Gilead!