Breaking The Lavender Ceiling

We are like so many other minorities when it comes to Hollywood. Do you remember those Saturday morning westerns where the Indians were white men, the only indigenous American was Jay Silverheels but he was always subservient to the ranger. Charlie Chan was also played white men, Warner Oland and Sidney Toler and then we had black actresses and actors play submissive characters or were played as bumbling fools.

Jill Soloway the creator of Transparent speaks up and cisgender actors playing trans people.

‘Transparent’ Creator Jill Soloway on Caitlyn Jenner, Lena Dunham, and Mark Ruffalo’s Trans Casting Controversy
In a candid talk, Transparent creator Jill Soloway calls out Hollywood’s cis male privilege and reconsiders her decision to cast a cis actor as the trans lead of her show. 
By Kevin Fallon
September 20, 2016

The week before we sat down with Transparent creator Jill Soloway at the press day for the third season of her hit Amazon series, a controversy of sorts was unfurling in the media over the casting of a cisgender male to play a transgender character in a new film.

Two weeks after our conversation, Sunday night, both Soloway and Transparent star Jeffrey Tambor, a cisgender actor playing trans character Maura Pfefferman, accepted their second consecutive Emmy Awards for the series—she for directing, he for acting—with Tambor using his time at the microphone to say, “I would be happy if I were the last cisgender male to play a transgender female.”
[…]
In a series of tweets endorsed by many members of the LGBT, specifically trans, community, trans actress Jen Richards took the opportunity to educate Ruffalo and Bomer on their complicitness in silencing trans women by not giving them the opportunity to play trans roles, not to mention the risk of inciting violence against trans women by perpetuating the notion that trans women are really just men. Ruffalo responded in kind: “I hear you.”

Those who say that we have to earn our dues before we can be in movies, I say that we have. There are trans actresses and actors who have been nominated for Emmys and Oscars and there are a number of trans actresses who are in televisions shows.

From tackling privilege and race in season three to the recent Lena Dunham and Amy Schumer controversy and, as mentioned, her impassioned plea that we stop allowing cis white men to exclusively be the ones to tell the stories that aren’t theirs to tell, here’s our conversation…

At the very least we should be giving a chance to audition for the parts instead of being locked out of even trying out for the parts.

---

Today I am doing to outreaches at CCSU, one in the morning and then again in the professor's afternoon class.