NYT: Acting Roles For Trans Performers Track Stereotypes

This needs to be read and UNDERSTOOD! We will endure and overcome!!!!! The New York Times has an article up in the Arts & Leisure section discussing trans performers.

It's all too often that trans actors are passed up in favor of their cisgendered counterparts, even for roles about trans people. Yes, I know it's called "acting," and one doesn't have to inhabit a particular social identity in order to perform a role. But when a particular social identity is largely excluded from acting roles over a long period time, except for very specific roles that perpetuate social stereotypes, then something's up, and we as a society ought to examine it and move to change it.

This isn't a new phenomenon exclusive to transgender and transsexual actors. It's been well-documented as a long-standing problem for African-American actors, and Asian-American actors, the celluloid closet of gay actors, and others. The exclusion of certain types of actors tells us something about the biases of the people who sell the "suspension of disbelief" for a living.

Transsexual actors who don't look transgender can't get a role playing a trans person, because those roles are usually based in crude stereotypes. The Times Article quotes Laverne Cox, a reality-television star with a role in the coming Susan Seidelman film "Musical Chairs":

"Ms. Cox said that many casting directors don't know what they want when a script calls for a transgender character and think she looks too feminine to convincingly play someone who was born male. To her dismay, she said, she finds herself 'in auditions with drag queens a lot.'"

It's clear that Ms. Cox isn't saying anything negative about drag queens, but is pointing to the fact that casting directors want someone visibly genderqueer for these roles because the role is playing to a stereotype.

This is reminiscent of the great short film made by Calpernia Addams and Andrea James, Casting Pearls, which makes the point humorously but eloquently.

Casting Pearls from Frameline on Vimeo.

As important as issues of law and politics are to obtaining formal recognition of respect for our community, issues of culture and the arts are equally important in creating the respect in the social system that must necessarily precede any foothold in law and politics.

The title of the New York Times piece gives me pause: "When They Play Women, It's Not Just an Act." That's very sly -- it's saying it's not just an act, so it's validating, but it is an act, because it's an act that's not "just an act." Wait...my head is exploding. Well, I'll let others chew over the issues of respect and not-quite-respect that it implies. Sometimes, any publicity is good publicity.

In any event, the piece details the casting of actress Harmony Santana, opening commercially in New York on Aug. 5. The way it's written, the foregrounding is that she has little acting experience and lives in a group home. Not exactly the kind of publicity I'd want as an actress. I'm not saying that it's not the truth, or that there's anything wrong with being upfront about her experiences, but it's not the first thing to know about an amazing young actress.

Monica Roberts of TransGriot gave the film a thumbs up and the trailer she posted gave me the chills. I recommend you take a look at the TransGriot post and the trailer there. Santana is an amazing actor. I want to see that film after reading Roberts' review. I didn't particularly want to see it after reading the New York Times piece, and I checked it out only because I wanted to be thorough. But my criticism is really a quibble, because it's important to see this issue of the exclusion of trans performers being discussed. Kudos to author Erik Piepenburg.

The piece goes on to discuss cross-dressing in film, and correctly notes that trans actors "are for the most part left to watch from the sidelines." The author also points up, thankfully, the important differences between drag and gender identity. Laverne Cox hits home the point well:

"I have such respect for drag queens," said Ms. Cox, who has been living as a woman since the late '90s and competed on VH1's "I Want to Work for Diddy" before starring in a VH1 makeover reality show, "Transform Me." "But what is troubling about the mainstreaming of drag, and people conflating drag and being transsexual, is that people think this is a joke. My identity is not a joke. Who I am as a woman is not a joke. This is my life."

The author goes on to talk about the discovery of Ms. Santana, quite a story in itself, and the uproar about the dreadful film "Ticked Off Trannies With Knives.."

It would have been apropos to talk about the upcoming role of Jamie Clayton on the TV show "Hung," but I suppose there's only so much you can put into a newspaper story.

Bottom line: I want to see more of the amazing trans performers out there in roles in TV and film, both in roles involving trans characters and non-trans characters. It's high time that writers, directors and producers recognize that trans people are more than a joke, a tortured soul or a prostitute.


NYT: Acting Roles For Trans Performers Track Stereotypes

G's Thought For The Day...

Just got done watching "Tommy", Ann-Margret is about a million kinds of awesome!

Mobile G...

I love getting carded!

How I Learned to Hate Transgender People

Despite being titled "How I Learned to Hate Transgender People", this article by Cord Jefferson is a a wonderful and very illuminating piece on the portrayal of TransWomen in the media and is something that should totally be shared by all in our LGBT community and beyond.

How I Learned to Hate Transgender People
by Cord Jefferson; Senior Editor, Good.is

The first time I openly laughed at a transgender person I was 12 years old. It was February, but I grew up in Tucson, Arizona, so the movie theater in which I was seeing Ace Ventura: Pet Detective had the AC on. The laughter helped me shake off the chill.

We, the audience, had just learned that Sean Young's character, Lt. Lois Einhorn, was transgender. Prior to identifying herself as Lois Einhorn, she'd been the pro football player Ray Finkle, who everyone thought was an at-large criminal. "Einhorn is Finkle!" screamed Jim Carrey, cracking the case before our very eyes. "Finkle is Einhorn! Einhorn is a man!" Then, more to himself: "Einhorn is a man?" Then he went to vomit.

The joke, if you can call it that, rested upon an earlier scene in which Carrey kissed Lt. Einhorn. "Your gun is digging into my hip," he'd told her as they made out. Now the memory of kissing a transgender woman was forcing Carrey to puke profusely, burn his clothes, and weep. In the background played Boy George's "The Crying Game," the hit song from two years earlier that had soundtracked a dramatic film with a prominent transgender character.

Looking back, I'm ashamed at how much I guffawed at Carrey's revulsion. We all know what the real joke was—it was disgusting to kiss Einhorn because there's something weird and gross about transgender people. The mockery gets especially debased when Carrey forcefully strips Einhorn down in front of an army of police officers in order to expose her tucked-away penis. Everyone dry heaves when they see the bulge. Carrey eventually tells someone to "read it its rights."

The laughter at transgender people's expense didn't end there, either. One month after Ace Ventura premiered I saw Naked Gun 33 1/3, the hit comedy in which Anna Nicole Smith's character does a sexy silhouette striptease that ends up revealing a penis. Once again, her former suitors are appalled. Then there's the famous Tone Loc frat anthem "Funky Cold Medina," the second verse of which finds Loc talking about a girl he meets named Sheena. After the two flirt, Loc takes Sheena home, where it's revealed that she's transgender. The rapper, who you might remember also co-starred in Ace Ventura, throws Sheena out of his house, saying, "I don't fool around with no Oscar Mayer wiener." Even in supposedly queer-friendly movies like 1991's Soapdish you'll find characters disgusted by transgender people, like when Robert Downey Jr. gags after having a romantic interlude with a trans woman.

Repugnance is a common theme in the trans-people-as-jokes canon. But more prevalent is the element of deceit. Time and again in both comedic and dramatic films, transgender people are cast as deviant tricksters out to fool innocent victims into sleeping with them. This narrative plays upon two of America's deepest fears: sexual vulnerability and humiliation. Not only is your sex partner "lying" about their gender, victims who "fall for it" are then forced to grapple with the embarrassment of being had, of being seen as gay. Men "tricked" into sleeping with another man are embarrassed by the threat to their masculinity. So much culture has taught us that transgender people aren't just sexual aliens, they're also predatory liars.

In reality, we know the real predators are straight people afraid of transgender interlopers. Transgender men and women have been raped, beaten, and killed, often with impunity, throughout history, but only recently have we been keeping count. In 1993 Brandon Teena was raped by two former friends after they discovered he was born a woman. Teena reported the rape, but his local sheriff, who called Teena "it," refused to arrest the attackers. Five days after assaulting him, they returned and murdered him. Similarly, in 2002, four acquaintances of Gwen Araujo, a 17-year-old girl in California, beat and strangled her to death after discovering she was transgender. In all, the Human Rights Campaign estimates one out of every 1,000 murders a year are transgender hate crimes.

More recent cultural depictions of transgender characters are less reactionary, but they're still not very humanizing. A character on It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia did date a transgender woman, but they concentrated most of the jokes around his girlfriend's big penis. And in the recent hit sequel The Hangover 2, Ed Helms has sex with a transgender prostitute who may or may not have taken advantage of him when he was too drunk to function (once again, trans folks are portrayed as predatory). We have made some progress, sure, but tell that to the transgender woman who was beaten into a seizure in Baltimore in April. We've still got a long way to go.

In the years since I laughed along with Ace Ventura, I've grown up and stopped getting a kick out of LGBT people—you could say I've gotten better. I've also started to consider what I was laughing at in the first place. I'm willing to agree that society is improved if we grant some leeway to comedians and artists to push the limits. But when pushing the limits becomes debasing an entire group of people as twisted quasi-rapists, we cross the line from comedy to bigotry. When I was laughing at Ace Ventura I was laughing because I was uncomfortable with a biological man living as a woman. I have to wonder if Brandon Teena's killers laughed, too.

How I Learned to Hate Transgender People - Culture - GOOD

Transgender: OUT!wear Pridewear Selling Anti-Trans Woman T-shirts!

This is a re-post from a transwoman named rebbeccasf. I saw it today on Facebook and thought it was a very poignant piece and needs to be seen by as many people as possible. Not just because of the ridiculousness of a stupid t-shirt and some lame sounding music fest, but just to get across one simple point...We are ALL just PEOPLE; OK?? And I'm not just talking about just trans people here, I mean EVERYONE! As a transwoman I deal with weird looks and labels and all that everyday. I knew that was part of the package when I decided to live my life MY WAY, and I'm OK with that. What I want to know is when are we going to get past all of this petty b/s and live as human beings who all share ONE planet. Not men or "womyn", or black, white, gay, straight, bi, tri, or whatever. Just simply ONE people!


OUT!wear Pridewear Selling Anti-Trans Woman T-shirts!

By rebbeccasf

This afternoon I came across a company selling WBW t-shirts. Their home page states the following.

OUT!wear™ is quality custom Pridewear and Accessories "WORN WITH PRIDE" to promote visibility, unity and self esteem amongst Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Trans-gendered persons.To promote a positive image within our community, whether bold or discreet.

The womyn-born-womyn policy of the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival is rooted squarely in prejudice and has aided the marginalization of trans women for 36 years. The selling of WBW items is clearly anti-trans woman and goes against everything in the companies own statement above. If you don't know what the WBW policy is, please read my (very) brief herstory of the exclusion of trans womyn from womyn only spaces below.

It's astonishing that an LGBt company would actually attempt to profit off the marginalization of trans women. I had made a few posts on their facebook page along with at least a dozen others, asking them to stop selling these items. I also sent an email to the addresses on their contact page with no response. A little while ago they deleted all wall posts and comments from their fb page they deemed negative while leaving many comments in support of the WBW policy at MichFest. They then banned everyone who posted comments asking them to stop selling the t-shirts from posting again. The deleting of the comments was especially sad because there was some really good dialog going on between a few of us and some of the supporters of the wbw policy. I feel like a good opportunity for discussion has just been completely nuked and will never appear again.

As a community, I'm looking for some ideas on how to respond. So far, there has been only silence and censorship from OUT!Wear. I think a good first start is to repost this on your own blog and ask your friends and all trans allies to do the same. I've reposted this already to the blogs below. I was thinking of trying to get a google bomb together to label them anti-trans. Also, they seem to be a large supplier of shirts and other items to PFLAG. If PFLAG truly supports the T, they should cease all business with them until they stop selling WBW gear. At the very least, OUT!Wear should remove any reference to trans people from their website since (at this point) it appears to be an absolute lie!

Let me know what you think!

Love and respect,
Bex Cat-herder

A (very) brief history of the exclusion of trans women from women only spaces.

The history of the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival's womyn-born-womyn policy is based on the notion that trans womyn are really men. It relies entirely on biological determinism, something feminists have been fighting against since there was feminists. It also completely ignores the life experiences of trans womyn and their chosen identities.

The implementation of the wbw policy in 1979, was a time when radfem lesbian separatists were carving out space for themselves and completely throwing off all reliance on men, financially, emotionally and politically. In the fervor, lesbians also began excluding trans women from their spaces claiming they were men infiltrating the burgeoning lesbian movement as a patriarchal attempt to disrupt. It's a beautiful history marred by this legacy.

The first well documented case of trans exclusion came in 1973 at the first West Coast Lesbian Conference held in southern California. One of the co-organizers, a trans woman named Beth Elliot, was at onetime the vice-president of the San Francisco chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis and also a folk singer. She was scheduled to perform on the first night of the conference, and as she was getting ready to take the stage, several women began shouting, "There's a man on stage!" Immediately a discussion ensued about Beth's legitimacy as a woman and her right to attend the conference she had helped organize. At one point, it was decided to put her presence to a vote. By one account, the vote was 75% in favor of Beth's attendance. However, the disruptors vowed to continue their activities if she stayed. Beth was so distraught by the often times bitter and cruel debate, that she left early the next morning.

In 1976, the struggling women only record label Olivia Records was threatened with a boycott if they didn't fire their chief sound engineer, Sandy Stone. By all accounts, Stone, a trans woman who had recorded with Jimi Hendrix, was generous with her talents teaching other women at the label the intricacies of sound recording. However, the threats from fellow radical lesbians became enough, that she left of her own accord in an effort to ensure the survival of the label.

In 1978, Mary Daly published "Gyn/Ecology" and a year later, her protégé, Janice Raymond, published "The Transsexual Empire: the making of the she-male." Both books promote the notion that trans women are men and accuse them of colonizing women's space. Raymond’s book was particularly caustic towards trans women. In it, she writes, "All transsexuals rape women's bodies by reducing the real female form to an artifact, appropriating this body for themselves .... Transsexuals merely cut off the most obvious means of invading women, so that they seem non-invasive." She also referred to trans women as "male-to-constructed-females" while largely ignoring and dismissing trans men.

In 1991, the National Lesbian Conference in Atlanta passed a resolution declaring the conference only open to "genetic women" and explicitly excluding "non-genetic women". Using the term "non-genetic" to refer to trans women is particularly de-humanizing as all humans are genetic. It is akin to calling them "it" or "things".

Just weeks after the conference, the Michigan Womyns Music Festival ejected Nancy Jean Burkholder, a self identified post-op transsexual. After receiving much criticism, the festival sent out a press release. In part it said, "In the simplest of terms, the Michigan Festival is and always has been an event for womyn, and this continues to be defined as womyn born womyn." It continued, "When it was clear this summer there was a known transsexual man attending the event, the festival security staff dealt with it as respectfully as possible." It's obvious from this wording that the organizers of the Michigan Womyns Music Festival do not respect the identities of trans women and are using an essentialist and non-feminist argument for excluding trans women. I'm also fairly certain that Nancy Burkholder would not refer to the way she was treated as respectful!

While the language of trans women exclusion has changed over the years, the prejudice and animus remain. It's time to put the term "womyn-born-womyn" in the history books and to give trans womyn the same dignity and consideration that is given to non-trans womyn by respecting their identities and not policing their bodies. Trans women are women, and like all women, they may have several other identities too (lesbian, trans, Christian, Asian, etc.). I'm asking OUT!wear to live up to the statement on its home page to "promote visibility, unity and self esteem amongst Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Trans-gendered persons" and to fully respect trans women. Please ask them to stop selling WBW schwag!

transgender: OUT!wear Pridewear Selling Anti-Trans Woman T-shirts!


WWJD...What Would John Do??
He'd sing...

Violent crimes against LGBT individuals up 13%, report says - latimes.com

We've come so far, yet there is still so far to go! Stay safe and stay aware everyone!!!

An 18-year-old gay man from Texas allegedly slain by a high-school classmate who believed his friend was making advances toward him; a 31-year-old transgender woman from Pennsylvania found dead with a pillowcase around her head; and a 24-year-old lesbian from Florida purportedly killed by her girlfriend’s father, who disapproved of the relationship.

The homicides are a sampling of 2010 hate crimes against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people compiled by a national coalition of anti-hate organizations.

The report, released Tuesday, showed a 13% increase over 2009 in violent crimes committed against people because of their perceived or actual sexual orientation, gender identity or status as HIV positive, according to the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Projects.

Last year's homicide count reached 27 -- up from 22 in 2009 and the second-highest number since the coalition began tracking such crimes in 1996. Of those killed, the data show, 70% were minorities and 44% were transgender women. The attacks also show a higher level of brutality, the report concludes.

The trends, said Jake Finney, project manager with the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center, one of 43 groups that participate in the coalition, “will not change without raising awareness of this brutality and taking affirmative steps to address transphobia.”

The 2010 murder count is second to the 29 logged in 1999 and 2008. Among the 2008 fatalities was gay Oxnard high school student Larry King. The classmate charged in that killing, Brandon McInerney, is currently on trial in Superior Court in his murder.

Not all the crimes were classified by law enforcement as hate-motivated, in part because some states have no such statute. In other cases, the coalition’s member organizations pushed police to recognize the hate bias.

Among those, Finney said, was the case of a transgender man who was attending a Los Angeles area university and was attacked in a campus bathroom.

“The attacker used a sharp instrument to carve the word ‘It’ in the victim’s chest, and campus police were not clear that the word 'It' was a slur and indicated anti-transgender bias,” Finney said. “It took a great deal of advocacy to have them classify that incident as a hate crime."


Violent crimes against LGBT individuals up 13%, report says - latimes.com

G's Thought For The Day...

I put a tweet out on my Twitter page earlier today and it got a decent amount of reaction, so I thought I'd clarify my position just a bit. The tweet said...

"Your TRANS lesson for today; Calling a Transgender person a tranny is like calling a gay man a f*g or an African-American the n-word. Ya get it??"

I know this is a word that gets tossed around a lot in our "world". Some TG's hate it, some don't mind it, and however they feel about it is OK by me, we all have our own perceptions. I just feel that as we move further and further into the mainstream, that at it's core, and how it is usually used within the context of the media, it's offensive, wrong, and as derogatory as any of the slurs I mentioned above.

I'm not trying to be some sort of crusader (at least I don't think I am), but I do like the sound of being an enlightener. So consider this my lil stab at enlightening the masses for today!

Katy Perry: Part-Time “Tranny”, Full-Time Bimbo?

Looks like hipster hottie Katy Perry stuck her foot in her mouth by saying "You can’t be a full tranny every day of the week, that’s an exaggerated part of my personality." in the latest issue of "Rolling Stone". Hey Katy, seems thinking before you speak is something else you don't do every day of the week. Being "TRANS" is something you obviously know nothing about or else you wouldn't use B/S words like "tranny". Try catching a clue a couple of times a week!

This article came from Tomas Mournian of online the magazine "Queerty"....

"You can’t be a full tranny every day of the week," Katy Perry says in this week’s Rolling Stone. “”That’s an exaggerated part of my personality.”

Perry’s quote appears in the print version of the magazine (pg. 74) , but has been scrubbed from contributing editor Erik Hedegaard’s on-line version. Perhaps “someone” at Rolling Stone, the once legendary magazine now known for its “hot” profiles of, um, Paul Simon, had sense enough to realize Perry’s comment shouldn’t go beyond print (which nobody few people buys they give away on Virgin Atlantic).

Billed as “backstage kick off her ‘California Dreams tour,’ Perry the still (being) Born Again singer, the profile’s packed with quotes like, “When I was a kid, I asked questions about my faith. Now I’m asking questions about the world.” She continues, “Our priority is fame” … “I saw this knowing full well that I’m a part of the problem.”

No kidding, Katy! While you were moaning about your part-time “tranny’ness” – besides being a transparent bid for hipster’ness (fail) – and flaunting your heteronormative privleges, did you ever pause to think (burp) that some people actual live as trans … full-time? Or, that it’s not a costume to take off when their feet hurt?

“Just because she dresses up for her shows or peformance that doesn’t mean she’s a trans person,” says Bamby Salcedo, the Los Angeles based trans activist who is the Project Coordinator for the Transgender Harm Reduction Project with Childrens Hospital Los Angeles. “She hasn’t been harassed in any way. You can’t really say you can relate to a community when you’re not part of it.”

A few months ago, Salcedo was invited to participate in a panel at the White House for HIV & AIDS women and girls awareness day.

“Everything was good, I had my plane ticket, and then got an emergency call saying I wouldn’t be able to get in,” Salcedo says, recalling the Secret Service’s ad hoc denial. “A community that should have been recognized as part of mainstream was not included in the panel, or discussed.”

“Yes, I do have a past, and a history, and they went with that rather than looking at everything that I’ve done in the community.” Unlike Perry, who’s able to flaunt her “tranny’ness” in mainstream media, Salcedo’s work spoke for itself – amongst other accomplishments, Salcedo’s founded Angels of Change, a fundraising mechaimism for transgender adolscent and young adult clients who don’t have insurance at Children’s Hospital.

For her part Perry maintains that “slowly” the “wool” is being removed from her eyes.

Glad you’re on top of that “wool removal,” Katy, and that you’re cultivating the self-awareness to say, “I know I’m not a dummy.”

http://www.queerty.com/katy-perry-part-time-tranny-full-time-bimbo-20110706/

G's Thought For The Day...

"Through chaos comes calm"
-- G