Julie Hesmondhalgh, who played Hayley Cropper on Coronation Street, wouldn't take the role today as she's 'cis-gender'

[daringdoris]

Just listening to her on Radio 4's Front Row now.

She also decribes herself a left-wing intersectional feminist.

She's drunk the cool-aid though, the section of the book she's written (why she's on Front Row this evening) that she chooses to read out is about how fond she is of her daughters when they tell her off for mis-gendering someone.

I know, it's not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but as an avid Radio 4 listener, it would be nice to hear some balance every now and then, not just this unquestioning 'be kind' attitude whenever this comes up.

is she 'making up for' having played that role because she feels guilty about it?

listen here, 1st section

I eyerolled through a lot of this. You almost need a bingo card - cisgender, pronouns, intersectionality etc.

Yes! Baffled that so many can't see this inconsistency !

Thought it was called "acting" for a reason?
Is her real name Hayley? Perhaps the role should have gone to someone called Hayley.

Where does this end? Can only actual members of the Royal family play Royals? Can British actors no longer take American roles?
Should Doctors be played only be actual Doctors?

This is all such virtue signaling bullshite.

I thing Eddie Redmayne also came out with something similar after the Danish Girl.
Which is weird, because the part he was playing WAS a biological man, as is he.

But you know, woke points.

*She’s saying a transwoman should have played the part.

Because transwomen are different from women.

Therefore transwomen are not women.*

Now look, I don't agree that TW are a subset of women, but that's what they are claiming. It would not be illogical to advocate for e.g. a disabled woman to play the part of a disabled woman. I don't think your deduction works.

All A are B is a statement that As are a subset of Bs. It doesn't follow that all B are A.

What it does scotch is their claim that sex doesn't actually exist and is a social construct etc. The whole concept of trans/cis contradicts any kind of sex doesn't really exist argument.

No one is talking about subsets. If this female actor considers now she should not have taken on this role its because it wasn't a female part. This actor is confirming that males are not female. Something we already now.

It wasn't believable at the time precisely because she was a woman.

I don't think that's what she is saying though. She's saying she was representing what she'd see as a subset of women which she didn't belong to. Like a white woman playing the part of a black woman. I don't agree with that analysis, but I don't think the logic is what you think it is.
Though I guess you could argue that to acknowledge trans women as a category at all you have to acknowledge sex exists.

I heard this interview on r4 tonight, and rarely have I heard a front row guest be really quite as up their own arse as this. From the initial salvo about immediately closing all private schools, (with no thought as to the ramifications for children attending them) she then managed to simultaneously explain what an honour it was to play the trans character whilst also saying that she doesn't think a cis(shudder) woman should play the part of a transwoman now. She didn't seem to have the self reflection to see the problem with this statement.

Yes. I usually turn the radio off after the Archers 😄because as someone who lives in a rural area and has no telly, most of the stuff featured sounds a bit 'up their own arse' to me! But this was quite something.

And yes to the complete contradtiction of trans both needing sex to exist and not exist at the same time.

This.

Teenagers yelling at parents for ‘wrongthink’ is so Orwellian. It always reminds me of the cultural revolution in China and how for a while they thought it was a good idea to burn books and humiliate teachers.

Then they realised that letting lunatics run the asylum does not facilitate scientific progress or business profits, and had a bit of a rethink.

but she was worried that person would get too much flack/abuse so nobly decided to take the role herself

Given that at any time 99% of actors are out of work, I doubt there was anything 'noble' about taking a long running part in a soap that's a national institution for millions. Self-interest, more like.

It is a confusing point she’s trying to make.

If transwomen are women, and it’s offensive to make a distinction between the two, then what wrong with a ciswoman playing a transwoman? Surely that is just a woman playing a woman, according to Stonewal et al?

Or perhaps transwomen aren’t women 😱

Personally I have no problem with actors playing anyone or anything. In drama class I used to act as a tree, or as the wind. I had no idea it was a thoughtcrime to act as something that I wasn’t actually.

I guess to be on the safe side all accountants should be played by real accountants, and The Crown should only use genuinely royal actors, etc.

It was an odd watch at the time.

she was introduced as a woman who was then revealed to be a transwoman.

Nobody has guessed she was a transwoman but then again she was not played by one so why would they?

Yes this, I watched it first time round and I am watching it again on Classic Corrie, the only reason it worked is because obviously Hayley is a real woman, there is no way the storyline or her character would have worked otherwise.

Not wading in on the gender ideology stuff, but just wanted to say that as someone who clearly remembers watching it at the time- I was 12 and in year 7 at school- we can't compare it to how it might be received now. It was shocking and everyone was talking about this "new idea" of "transsexuals" as they were called then. I distinctly remember a conversation about it with my parents and grandparents around the Sunday dinner table. Remember, section 28 was still a thing and 'Queer as a Folk' was more than two years away. It was just about getting anyone to talk about this "perverted" stuff then, back when the age of consent for gay men was still 21, the finer nuances hadn't been ironed out. Even her leaving Corrie was almost ten years ago. A lot has changed in that time frame.

Pity she had no such qualms as she assisted the writers in selling a false story to the nation.

Exactly.

I’d love one of the soaps to recreate this exact storyline, with say, Eddie Izzard, playing the role of Hayley - the storyline being that absolutely no-one guessed Eddie’s character was a transwoman until their big reveal.

I think EastEnders should give it a go, it seems right up the BBC’s street.

I remember a bit about the storyline when it was in the early days. Tracy and the others didn't want Hayley (or Harold as the character was called sometimes) using the women's toilet in the knicker factory.

I saw JH on Lorraine this morning. Infuriating. She just doesn't get it. Neither does LK tbf though.

😑

Anyone remember that episode of Lewis where they were clueless about who the murderer - who had male DNA - might be? The plot was that it was a gay man whose lover couldn't accept him because of religious homophobia so he transitioned - and was still rejected. So having the role played by a woman made no sense whatever other than credibly fooling the detectives.

If transwomen are women, and it’s offensive to make a distinction between the two, then what wrong with a ciswoman playing a transwoman? Surely that is just a woman playing a woman, according to Stonewal et al?

Their line, and it is NOT my line so don't shout at me, is that TW are a subset of women. So saying should a non-T woman play a TW, to them, is equivalent logic to saying should a non disabled woman play a disabled woman. That is not as far as I can see a logic fail. (To be completely clear this is comparing trains of logic and not in any way saying a TW is comparable to a disabled woman or vice versa).

It is a category fail as TW are not in fact women. And they've made no credible attempt to define a category of women that includes TW without circularity or rendering the term entirely meaningless.

And any argument that differentiates "cis" and "trans" invalidates sex-is-a-spectrum arguments. I don't know whether that position is taken by the same set of people but pretty sure it is.

It is. Somne otherwise very outspoken gay actors don;t say much about this because then they might be told they shouldn;t perform heterosexual roles and they make their living acting straight 90% of the time. Which is fine. That's the job.

I wrote about the Hayley Cropper phenomenon. Julie Hesmondhalgh is up to her eyeballs in KoolAid.

uncommongroundmedia.com/hayley-cropper-coronation-streets-trojan-horse/

Does anyone remember the episode when Blanche was talking about Roy and Hayley?
She said, "he's a loony and she's a man"
It was funny at the time.
Imagine the death threats now.

That was the story line in a nutshell. That's exactly how the characters were written.

I remember mike Baldwin saying 'the machinist formally known as Harold'.

I wonder how much of the whole story line was used as proof that a grc holders privacy was needed in the GRA.

I agree that even if filmed now the character has to be played by a women because there cant be any risk of views guessing for the story line to work.

This reminds me of a true crime serial murder documentary thing I recently watched on Netflix. They built the whole "mystery" around why male DNA was found at the scene of the crime yet a woman had been arrested for the murders.

It was supposed to be shocking, a "who dunnit" type thing.

Except they made the mistake of showing the picture of the "woman" before the story began.

It was clear why male DNA had been found at the scene of the crime.

Cannot remember the name of the killer but they had killed several people. Once it came out they tried to argue that the crimes had been committed by the person they "used" to be and that person no longer existed, so they should be pardoned.
All very bizarre.
My point is that there was no great shock in the story of the "how could this BE?" just as there would be no shock if a real TW had played the part of Hayley in Coronation Street.