Transwimen actors call for trans quota quota for female roles

[GrumpyPanda]

.. more specifically, for 2 to 3 TW candidates to be united to every 20-strong audition.

And one of the interviewed, a mid-40s trans actor, complains about getting fewer offers of female roles, ostensibly since "coming out" aged 40. Who's going to tell the poor dear about Amy Schumer's genius sketch celebrating an actress' "last fuckable day"? Welcome to womanhood, "sister."

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/article/2024/may/02/just-let-us-audition-uk-transgender-actors-appeal-to-be-cast-in-non-trans-roles

There's a female non binary actor playing a female non binary character in the otherwise brilliant Our Flag Means Death.

The way you realise the character is non binary is the use of the "they" pronoun by other characters. It's fucking depressing because the character is written as a fantastic gender non conforming woman. Her biological sex and non conforming personality are absolutely integral to the story. Making her non binary totally undermines this and consolidates the narrative that the character is fighting against: that women have to behave a certain way.

It is such a funny, clever and well written show, I struggle to believe the character was originally written as non binary. I wonder if the actor demanded or suggested it? She's good in the role, by the way. I'm not suggesting she was miscast, only that making the character non binary is extremely sexist and illogical to the plot.

Ah I didn't realise that she was supposed to be non binary. It's so stupid and ruins the point of the character as you say.

I didn't pick up on it initially - obviously the character was a woman pretending to be a man for some time! But after noting a few "theys" from other characters I did a Google on it.

It always grates on me in Billions that Ax and his finance bros always obligingly refer to Taylor as "they/them" even in their absence

The introduction of Taylor put me off watching any more Billions. Is Taylor in it beyond the second series? It was just so infuriating the way Ax and others hung on her every word like she wasn’t talking reductive shite like pretty much every non-binary person ever.

Me too. It became unwatchable.

I would just like to point out that demographically there are lots of middle aged actresses, far far more than there are transwomen actors, so when are writers going to start writing roles for them and casting directors casting them, because middle aged actresses have a) got more audience members rooting for them b) need to earn money too and c) judging by the examples upthread are far better at acting than the trans actors featured.

The problem in 'identifying' non-binary characters to the audience is that 'they' is not solely used to refer to a NB person - in fact, the vast majority of usages of 'they' have nothing to do with NB people.

It's also used in the plural, or for a general person of unknown sex (e.g. 'each customer must show their ticket') and also - increasingly, especially amongst younger people - to refer to anybody who is very clearly male or female and doesn't claim to be anything else but 'just because'.

Even if you manage to catch another character saying 'they', it isn't always obvious that they are referring to a single person who identifies as NB. In general, it will detract from the quality or watchability of a film or play when things have to be deliberately spelled out rather than communicated and understood subtly.

It reminds me of those old-fashioned newspaper cartoons where the whole gag hangs on you knowing that one of the pictured people is, say, a magician; and the only way the cartoonist can easily communicate this to you is by giving the person an unnecessary suitcase improbably labelled 'The Great Marvo - Magician'.

Kim Tatum has been a drag artist for many years. This whole "take me seriously as a real woman" is simply another act.

The very idea that she might have been hiding in fear, behind sunglasses and a hat would be ridiculous to anyone who ever met her.

Because it looks ridiculous. We already have panto.

It looked ridiculous shoe horned into the Mayfair Witches.

It's obvious and clumsy no matter how much they try to bully and gas light us into pretending we can't see they're men they'll never 'pass' and that's not being mean it's a fact.

Yes - but they'll all want to be the Principal Boy.

It always grates on me in Billions that Ax and his finance bros always obligingly refer to Taylor as "they/them" even in their absence

Indeed.

Especially when you know that is is a fecking off-the-scale culture of misogyny in that industry, and Taylor would have been an object of

a) ridicule, and
b) "she just needs a good f*cking"

-type conversations, no matter how clever "they/them" was and how much money they/them had made for the business.

Apparently the Taylor character (Billions) is not an unrealistic portrayal of what would really happen in that industry, but is instead, a "teaching tool".

https://variety.com/2019/tv/news/asia-kate-dillon-billions-gender-identity-1203246709/amp/

They don't even cast Jewish actors in Jewish roles. Bradley Cooper wore a prosthetic nose to play Leonard Bernstein, for example. No other group gets so overlooked. But those fake women want even more validation to play a different sex to them. Give over. Can you hear my eyes rolling from wherever you are right now?

Interesting that the Variety article describes the other characters’ use of Taylor’s preferred pronouns as “religious” 🙄

@SydneyCarton

Rebecca Root was in The Rising (which I really enjoyed) playing a very deep-voiced policewoman, but it wasn't clear whether the character was supposed to be trans, or a biological female. To be fair it wasn't essential to the plot either way.

There was a bit of a theme in The Rising about society's outsiders. At one point Root is talking about this to another 'outsider' (a young offender) and its only then I realised she's trans. So it was appropriate casting.

In the Monster High film Frankenstein's monster (aka Frankie Stein) introduces themselves as having they/them pronouns, which I thought was meant to be a witty joke

Yes, that would have been quite a neat joke.

I don't think actors would really like it in the end if it became the rule that people could only play their own ethnicity. Would Jewish actors really like to be confined to Jewish roles? Or similarly, gay actors only playing gay roles?

It's dumb too.

I actually agree with you @TempestTost. However, drag has been called ‘woman face’ and there is ‘black face’ too. Some people say only gay actors should play gay roles. My call is for consistency across all roles. As long as the actor is great in the role it shouldn’t matter. But there is a big difference between acting in a role and being great at it. We know from seeing many men ‘playing’ at being women that most are deeply unconvincing.

I think a lot of what upsets people about this stuff is the inconsistency many people seem to have on it. In some cases the rule is, don't cross lines! In others, Lines are racist! It pisses people off.

I actually have no issue at all with a man playing a female role, if I am convinced of the subterfuge. Or for that matter, actors playing across racial divides and using make up to do so.

Usually of course it is difficult to do it without it being obvious. At least on the screen. On stage is another story.

We're consistent in our agreement about inconsistency being the issue!

Yes, I see inconsistency, and with a helping of male assertiveness. It's pretty assertive to demand an audition percentage far greater than the actual percentage of trans women in the population, and it's even more assertive considering that women actors who are older tend to have far fewer opportunities than younger women do, so that these demands might disadvantage them even further.

Someone involved in the LGBTQ+ circles recently noted that trans women tend to rise fairly rapidly in the progressive organisations, trans men not so much. Reminds me of something else...

I think another inconsitency is that a trans woman will never be reviewed at being unconvincing in a role. What reviewer is going to have the guts to say that Eddie Izzard is unconvincing or looks ridiciulous playing a female