The Oscars

At the Oscars tonight all the buzz is on how many Oscars will “The Dallas Buyer’s Cub” win tonight, it has six nominations including best film and best supporting role for Jared Leto. In January I questioned if a straight actor can play a trans-woman, I say it was akin to blackface.

Ms. Busey the owner of the blog Planetransgender wrote about her experience at the 2014 LGBT Media Journalists Convening yesterday where she tried over and over to ask a question and was ignored,

As she began to close the final panel, I shouted "I HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY." I knew in my heart if she didn't call on me I was going to stand in front of the panel and have my say anyway. If they were that determined to shut me down completely they would have had to do it with law enforcement.

Looking at me in exasperation she invited me to speak. I made a comment on how GLAAD was giving  "Dallas Buyers Club"  a free pass on its inaccuracies regarding the history of HIV/AIDS and talked briefly about it's transphobic content, hoping others would become engaged in the conversation.

Now totally exasperated at this fucking tranny who had the audacity to demand equal time she inquired condescendingly 'Well, what's your point? Do you have something to say? Do you have a question"? Then totally frustrated she stated "Well, we're not going to talk about that here".
[…]
So I turned around and looked at all of my fellow LGB bloggers and journalists. I asked them why they had been silent about the problematic content of that movie.

Why did it take Steve Friess who wasn't even in the room to begin the conversation with "Don’t Applaud Jared Leto’s Transgender ‘Mammy" ?

Then looking directly at the ones who had written articles praising "Dallas Buyers Guide" I asked them why had done this. I asked if they understood that they were stomping on the graves of our fallen. Did they understand they were digging holes for transgender people with HIV/AIDS?

Not one person would look up. Not one. The ones who were looking in my general direction averted their eyes as I glanced at them.

There have been so much fawning over how great the movie is; how Jared Leto in an interview when asked about a straight man playing a trans-woman, “That being said, you wouldn't want to stick a transgender person with only transgender roles. So it goes both ways.”  Just goes to show how totally he missed the point. No Mr. Leto we do not want trans-people playing only the part of a trans-woman, however, when a part is written for a trans-person it should be played by a trans-person, just like a black person shouldn't be limited to playing black parts, but a black person should play a part that is written for a black person.

In the Time article "Don’t Applaud Jared Leto’s Transgender ‘Mammy" Mr. Friess wrote this about the movie,

Not long from now — it surely won’t take decades, given the brisk pace of progress on matters of identity and sexuality these days — Leto’s award-winning performance as the sassy, tragic-yet-silly Rayon will belong in the dishonorable pantheon along with McDaniel’s Mammy ["Hattie McDaniel took home the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of Mammy in “Gone With The Wind…”]. That is, it’ll be another moment when liberals in Hollywood, both in the industry and in the media, showed how little they understood or empathized with the lives of a minority they imagine they and Leto are honoring.
[…]
In “Dallas Buyers Club,” Rayon is tormented not by having HIV but by being transgender. You see it in the scenes in which she sits shirtless before a vanity dusting her face with a makeup brush or visits her estranged father in men’s clothes to plead for money. She’s the victimized dingbat whose incompetence and unreliability exists to show how far Woodruff has come both as a businessman and a human being. And, remember, the entire relationship is fiction. Not fact-based fiction. Pure, 100 percent fiction.
[…]
No, that’s not the problem here. The problem is what Leto did with the role and the fact that reviewers cannot stop fawning over it. Back in McDaniel’s day, reviewers and interviewers did the same, with McDaniel insisting her portrayal was authentic and the rest of the non-black world largely buying it.

Mr. Friess also write that Leto said that he researched the part, but there are no credits listing a consultant nor has anyone come forward claiming that they tutored him in the part.*

My prediction… is that Mr. Leto is going to win Best Supporting Actor because Hollywood wants to show how liberal they are and not giving him an Oscar will been seen by some as not being “with it.”

*Between the time I wrote this early this morning and when I scheduled it to be published, Calpernia Addams has stepped forward and said that she tutored him. On her Facebook page it is reported that she wrote in part...

As I've said before, my job was to sit down with him and answer lots of questions about what it's like to be trans, and to make a recording of me reading his lines from the script. From there, Jared did Jared's thing: a brilliant, eccentric artist created his own performance of a movie character. A movie character who happens to be some form of trans, in this case. His follow up speeches left something to be desired when it came to speaking well on the issues facing his movie character, especially against the backdrops of current politics and social movements. I suppose it's doubly rare to be a gifted artist AND a great political speaker. But personally, I thought Rayon seemed like a nice person and a real human being. I've known people like Rayon.

Anyone who's followed my 11 years in Hollywood knows that I've always advocated for trans people to play trans roles. But I also refuse to shoot down powerful people who take steps to bring human trans portrayals to the screen, even if they are played by a non-trans female (Felicity Huffman in Transamerica, Hilary Swank in Boys Don't Cry) or a non-trans male (Lee Pace in Soldier's Girl, Jared in Dallas Buyers Club). To all indications, Georges du Fresne was not a trans child when he played "Ludovic" in Ma Vie En Rose, but that incredible film continues to resonate with trans people and families of trans children. Good and important portrayals can come from non-trans actors. Sorry if that is an inconvenient truth, but there you have it.

Sure, I'd *love* to get these roles as an actress with a history of transition, or see them go to other trans actors. (Heck, I love to play non-trans roles!) But I'm not so short-sighted that I'll destroy allies and advocates. Even less than perfect allies, if I think the overall contribution is beneficial. This is a view that comes from long actual experience and familiarity with the business. Some small but vocal groups will disagree; that's just the nature of contentious issues. You can do your thing and I'll do mine. There are many ways to contribute.

But beware: the same logic that leaves zero room for a non-trans actor to try a trans role will then be used to mandate that trans actors should not be able to play non-trans roles. And that would piss me off.

Leto's "Rayon" is not the rock upon which I'd make my last stand concerning this issue. It's just an inspiration for this discussion. I advocate for positive portrayals and opportunities for trans people in the media. Some are displeased that this particular portrayal, "Rayon", is another trans sex worker role. Another trans addict role. Another trans "mystical advisor/comic relief" role. Another "trans person punished in the end" role. Those are indeed over represented portrayals, and I do want more balance... Soon! But I have known people like Rayon. She is not a made-up grab bag of random hateful attributes. She's a portrayal of an uncomfortable segment of the trans experience that a few TLGB folks would rather be erased and not discussed. I think many of the haters hate Rayon because she isn't beautiful, she isn't passable, she isn't gender binary, she isn't 2014-political. And when I see that elitist hypocrisy, I'm inclined to push back and write essays like this.