Trans actors can play cis but cis can't play trans. Why am I bothering to try and see the sense?

[Doyoumind]

A trans woman was due to play a woman in a play but declined when it turned out a trans woman would be played by a man. As far as I can tell, the trans character undergoes no medical or surgical transition so would have a wholly male physique anyway.

The casting decision could cause violence and death, apparently.

I'm sure the talent pool is limited just down the numbers. Would it have been acceptable for a woman to play the part?

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8098373/Transgender-actress-Kate-ODonnell-pulls-Breakfast-Pluto-musical-casting-row.html

they don't pass

I would be very confused and distracted if I saw a play where the mother was played by an obvious man. I would be even more confused if there was also another trans character in the play.

There have been many gay/bi men playing male lead roles. Think of old Hollywood!

It’s called acting, darling.

Asan eminent director once said to me.

I can’t believe the irony of someone who wasn’t born female playing the part of a mother and whinging that a man was playing a trans part

It’s narcissism really.

Barely known actor creates bonkers media controversy to get attention. Yawn.

I seem to remember actors getting hounded out of roles because they aren’t the same race (even if the original was a comic book character) as the original character and making a show of declining the part.

Shouldn’t this actor have done the same? No one criticised this actor who wasn’t born female playing a character who was a woman who had given birth (so no ambiguity or twists in the plot)?

Could a feminine gay man play a trans character then?
Jaye Davidson in 'The Crying Game'. It was necessary for the plot that he passed as a woman, and he did, at least on screen.

As an aside, always worth noting qualifiers like this as a reminder to those that think posters here don’t walk on egg shells with their language with concerns that the budding team of external TRA Monitors (note, not moderators) will vexatiously report.

I got my last warning for use of the phrase 'be in a ds'.

I specifically was not referring to trans people, which MNHQ acknowledged, but bloke/man in... is strictly verboten- hence my caution.

Whitewashing history and historical characters is a serious problem in the film industry. This is not that.