Diana’s Little Corner in the Nutmeg State: Trans Actresses/Actors

Friday, February 27, 2015

Trans Actresses/Actors

Those who read my blog regularly will know that I am a firm supporter of trans people play parts of trans people, that at the very least we should be asked to audition for the parts.

Is 'Transface' a Problem in Hollywood?
Hilary Swank, Andrea James, Natasha Lyonne, Armistead Maupin, and more weigh in on casting discrimination in the entertainment industry.
Advocate
By Daniel Reynolds
February 25, 2015

On the eve of his Oscar win for portraying a transgender woman in 2013's Dallas Buyers Club, Jared Leto found himself the target of criticism from an audience member at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival.

"Transmisogyny does not deserve an award," shouted an unidentified woman from the audience to the actor onstage. When asked for clarification, she responded: "You don't deserve an award for portraying a trans woman, because you're a man."

The accusation is rooted in what some in the LGBT community refer to as "transface" — a term that conjures the culturally taboo practice of "blackface" — in which a cisgender actor will "take" a role from a transgender actor.

The assumption tied to transface is that Hollywood is a discriminatory industry, which would rather cast a cisgender (nontrans) movie star who can be transformed to look like a transgender person through diet and cosmetics, than consider a minority actor with an authentic life experience for that role.

I’m not saying that non-trans actresses/actors cannot give a great performance but we need the chance to audition,

"Everyone should have an opportunity to audition and have the chance to act and to be a part of a film," Swank [Hilary Swank in Boys Don’t Cry] concluded. "But in the end, I don't think they should get it because they actually live that day in and day out."

But as it stands now we do not even have our foot in the door. Those directors that see the value of having a trans person play the part of a trans person realize that trans actors can add more depth to the part. In the movie Boy Meets Girl the director understood that Michelle Hendley who played Ricky in the movie had a lot personal insight to offer him.

Boy Meets Girl will be released on Netflix this spring.

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Quotes

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

Morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. Judicial decrees may not change the heart, but they can restrain the heartless.

A right delayed is a right denied.Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.

Martin Luther King Jr.

No one is born hating another person… People must learn to hate and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.
Nelson Mandela

We can disagree and still love each other, unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist
James Baldwin

There is a fine line between free speech and hate speech. Free speech encourages debate whereas hate speech incites violence.
Newton Lee

The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.
Albert Einstein

"The point is that there are always obstacles, whether they seem insurmountable or merely bothersome. The question is not how difficult the path, but whether in your heart, you wish to undertake the journey."
Zandru's Forge

Keep your thoughts positive because your thoughts become your words. Keep your words positive because your words become your behavior. Keep your behavior positive because your behavior becomes your habits. Keep your habits positive because your habits become your values. Keep your values positive because your values become your destiny.
Mahatma Gandhi

“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

You've Got To Be Carefully Taught
You've got to be taught
To hate
And fear
You've got to be taught
From year
To year
Its got to
Be drummed in your dear little ear
You've got to
Be carefully
Taught
You've got to be taught
To be
Afraid
Of people
Who's eyes are oddly made
And people who's skin is a different shade

South Pacific
Songwriters: Oscar Hammerstein II / Richard Rogers

Friday, February 27, 2015

Trans Actresses/Actors

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