[Discussion] Trans Issues and Rights

This thread is for the discussion of current events relating to trans rights, for discussion of the lives of trans people and difficulties they face, and for basic questions about the lives and experiences of trans people. (If basic questions become dominant we'll look at making a Q&A thread at that time.)

Christa Leigh Steele-Knudslien, 42, North Adams, MA
Viccky Gutierrez, 33, Los Angeles, CA
Amelia Perry, 26, Somerville, MA
Tonya Harvey, 35, Buffalo, NY
Celine Walker, 36, Jacksonville, FL
Phylicia Mitchell, 46, Cleveland, OH
Zakaria Fry, 28, Albuquerque, NM
Hope Verbeeck, 17, Key Biscayne, FL
Amia Tyrae Berryman, 28, Baton Rouge, LA
Naomi Hersi, 36, Mill Hill, London

Christa Leigh Steele-Knudslien, 42, North Adams, MA
Viccky Gutierrez, 33, Los Angeles, CA
Amelia Perry, 26, Somerville, MA
Tonya Harvey, 35, Buffalo, NY
Celine Walker, 36, Jacksonville, FL
Phylicia Mitchell, 46, Cleveland, OH
Zakaria Fry, 28, Albuquerque, NM
Hope Verbeeck, 17, Key Biscayne, FL
Amia Tyrae Berryman, 28, Baton Rouge, LA
Naomi Hersi, 36, Mill Hill, London
Sasha Wall, 29, Chesterfield County, SC

Christa Leigh Steele-Knudslien, 42, North Adams, MA
Viccky Gutierrez, 33, Los Angeles, CA
Amelia Perry, 26, Somerville, MA
Tonya Harvey, 35, Buffalo, NY
Celine Walker, 36, Jacksonville, FL
Phylicia Mitchell, 46, Cleveland, OH
Zakaria Fry, 28, Albuquerque, NM
Hope Verbeeck, 17, Key Biscayne, FL
Amia Tyrae Berryman, 28, Baton Rouge, LA
Naomi Hersi, 36, Mill Hill, London
Sasha Wall, 29, Chesterfield County, SC
Karla Patricia Flores-Pavón, 18, Dallas, TX

Meanwhile, in Pakistan:
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-...

Pakistan's parliament passed a landmark bill on Tuesday that gives the country's transgender citizens fundamental rights.

The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act allows people to choose their gender and to have that identity recognized on official documents, including national IDs, passports and driver's licenses. The bill also prohibits discrimination in schools, at work, on public modes of transit and while receiving medical care.

The measure also says that transgender people cannot be deprived of the right to vote or run for office. It lays out their rights to inheritance, in accordance with their chosen gender. And it obligates the government to establish "Protection Centers and Safe Houses" — along with separate prisons, jails or places of confinement.

sh*thole countries I guess.

This... this is f*cking inhuman.

The Trump Administration Just Rolled Back Rules That Protect Transgender Prisoners
(Dominic Holden, BuzzFeed, 2018-05-11)

I'd argue that this is more than just rolling back rules, it's putting in place rules directly counter to the Obama-era guidance, and there weren't really any systematic federal rules at all prior to that (as far as I know).

The Bureau of Prisons now “will use biological sex” to make initial determinations in the type of housing transgender inmates are assigned, according to a notice posted Friday evening that modifies the previous policy.

This means trans women will likely be housed with men, and trans men with women. Doing this based on genital configuration is bad enough, but this wording leaves things even more open to abuse, since "biological sex" is not well-defined. Prisons have been resisting Obama-administration-era guidance to protect trans prisoners are is appropriate for some time, but this new guidance make that systematic is... horrible. And I don't know, but the other part may be even worse:

The new guidance also inserts the word “necessary” into a section of the manual on hormone and medical treatment, indicating the agency will make determinations about what sort of hormone therapies and other gender transition services are required.

Prisons routinely try to deprive trans prisoners of adequate medical care, and this will just fuel that and bring it to new heights. I have no f*cking words.

Our carceral system is broken beyond belief, but even beyond that these rules place trans prisoners in an unbelievably horrible situation. And since so many trans people, particularly trans people of color, are driven into the grey or black economies to survive... the human toll of these policy changes cannot be overstated.

Alberta joins the list of provinces where you can get select "X" as a gender option on your id. Which reminds me I should take care of that change in Ontario soon in case the new administration removes the option.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmont...

4dSwissCheese wrote:

Alberta joins the list of provinces where you can get select "X" as a gender option on your id. Which reminds me I should take care of that change in Ontario soon in case the new administration removes the option.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmont...

TIL the NWT is a province:

Alberta becomes the fourth other Canadian province to offer a gender option other than male or female, following Ontario, Newfoundland and Labrador, and the N.W.T.

I note that it's an NDP government in Alberta, as opposed to its neighbor to the east, which has earned the "Saskatchabama" epithet pursuant to the Gerald Stanley verdict.

Chloe Sagal, a trans woman targeted by Gamergate and Kiwi Farms, was driven to suicide by harassment.

https://articles.oregonlive.com/port...

f*ck, that's horrible.

I remember her, too. I donated to her fundraiser at the time, because of the harassment she was under.

How I Broke, and Botched, the Brandon Teena Story

Village Voice wrote:

On December 31, 1993, a 21-year-old trans man named Brandon Teena was shot and stabbed to death near Falls City, Nebraska, by two other young men because he was trans. A week earlier, they had raped and brutally battered him.

I wrote about it at the time in a long, reported feature for the Voice that introduced Brandon Teena’s story to a broad audience, and helped to galvanize the cultural conversation about trans people. After moving to Falls City from his hometown of Lincoln, Brandon met a 19-year-old woman named Lana Tisdel and swept her off her feet. But a week after he was arrested on a check-forging charge, local police revealed his birth gender in the newspaper. A few days later, Tisdel’s friends John Lotter (Tisdel’s ex-boyfriend) and Tom Nissen forcibly stripped Brandon and forced Tisdel to look at his genitals; then they kidnapped, raped, and beat him, and subsequently killed him.

Boys Don’t Cry director Kimberly Peirce told me in a recent interview that my article had been the major inspiration for her film about Brandon’s life and murder: “Your article was on fire. I read it and I fell in love with Brandon. It made me love his vulnerability, his daring, his innocence, the way that he gave pleasure sexually. I was in love with this person who had shaped himself.”

It also proved to be the most insensitive and inaccurate piece of journalism I have ever written.

For years, I have wanted to apologize for what I now understand, with some shame, was the article’s implicit anti-trans framing. Without spelling it out, the article cast Brandon as a lesbian who hated “her” body because of prior experiences of childhood sexual abuse and rape. (One of Brandon’s acquaintances had told me he’d said he was “disgusted by lesbians,” and several friends said Brandon had said, “I can’t be with a woman as a woman. That’s gross.”) I saw this youngster’s decision to lead a life as a straight man as incredibly bold — but also assumed it was a choice made in fear, motivated by internalized homophobia.

At the time, I was extremely ignorant about trans people. Like many other cis queer people at the time, I didn’t know that there were gay trans men, trans lesbians, bisexual trans folks, that being trans had nothing to do with whether you were straight or gay, and that trans activism was not, as some of us feared, an effort to stave off queerness and lead “easier,” more conventional heterosexual lives.

Even in New York City, someone like me, a journalist who considered myself very involved in queer radical politics, could be massively ignorant about what it meant to be transgender. In particular, I conjectured that Brandon’s long-term sexual abuse by an uncle and a rape in high school had led him to abjure his “female” genitals and breasts. It’s the aspect of my article that makes me cringe the most today.

Twenty-five years later, we are in a time of enormous cruelty in the body politic, a time when rebuilding solidarity is the most precious task we have. I hope this article can be my way of making amends by revisiting Brandon’s life and murder — along with those of his companions Lisa Lambert and Phillip DeVine, who were slain in the same moments by Nissen and Lotter. Their deaths became a touchstone for the then-nascent trans movement, and, perhaps more than any other single event, have shaped how Americans view transgender people.

Ah, maybe spoiler that and put trigger warnings, that's f*cking horrible.

I haven't really said much about Jesse Singal here lately. But here's a rather pointed commentary:

Private Messages Reveal the Cis Journalist Groupthink Behind Trans Media Narratives
(Harron Walker, Jezebel, 2018-06-27)

It turns out that if your main motivation behind writing about trans people is "all those trans people are saying the same thing, I think the opposing view needs someone to speak for it!" you... write stuff that trans people see as pretty awful. And, sadly, stuff that your cis friends will stroke your ego for and hire you to write about until the cows come home.

Hmmmm.... The trans community is about to get the full Ghost in the Shell treatment. Complete with Scarlett Johansson.

Tyops wrote:

Hmmmm.... The trans community is about to get the full Ghost in the Shell treatment. Complete with Scarlett Johansson.

*sees new post notification*
*whispers "please not a murder, please not a murder, please not a murder"*
*clicks*

Whew. I mean, it's still distressing news, but not murder- or suicide-bad.

A rep for the actress told Bustle in response to the backlash:

"Tell them that they can be directed to Jeffrey Tambor, Jared Leto, and Felicity Huffman’s reps for comment."

Somewhere, Hillary Swank's like, "Yesss! In before the lock!"

If Scarlett doesn't get her Oscar for this, I guess we'll have to wait for the Harriet Tubman biopic.

I understand the argument that ScarJo doesn't look anything like the person she is cast to play. But the backlash from the trans community has me scratching my head a bit. "Only trans actors should play trans parts" seems like a slippery slope to me. It isn't a far stretch to say next that only straight actors should play straight roles or only gay actors should play gay roles. I get that the trans community wants to support their members, but I would think any positive portrayal, whether by someone who is actually trans or not, would be a net positive for the community and for trans awareness.

Nevin73 wrote:

I understand the argument that ScarJo doesn't look anything like the person she is cast to play. But the backlash from the trans community has me scratching my head a bit. "Only trans actors should play trans parts" seems like a slippery slope to me. It isn't a far stretch to say next that only straight actors should play straight roles or only gay actors should play gay roles. I get that the trans community wants to support their members, but I would think any positive portrayal, whether by someone who is actually trans or not, would be a net positive for the community and for trans awareness.

Rather than try to make the case myself, please read this thread by a trans actor:
https://twitter.com/happeningfish/st...

Nevin73 wrote:

I understand the argument that ScarJo doesn't look anything like the person she is cast to play. But the backlash from the trans community has me scratching my head a bit. "Only trans actors should play trans parts" seems like a slippery slope to me. It isn't a far stretch to say next that only straight actors should play straight roles or only gay actors should play gay roles. I get that the trans community wants to support their members, but I would think any positive portrayal, whether by someone who is actually trans or not, would be a net positive for the community and for trans awareness.

Only gay actors SHOULD play gay roles unless there is some incredibly compelling reason for the part to not go to a gay actor. And it is the same thing here.

Slippery slope is a logical fallacy for a reason - it isn't really a thing. Worrying about what might happen because of X doesn't say anything about X's merits or flaws. In this instance, Scarjo playing a trans person is taking a job from a trans actor to give it to a person with more privilege. It is akin to whitewashing (something she was also guilty of doing in Ghost in the Shell.) Her response was tone deaf, and doubling down on her privilege instead of listening to people in the actual community.

There is no way for her to have an entirely positive portrayal, because this is 2018 and her having the role is in it of itself a form of bigotry. Maybe she'd be great, but that doesn't matter. Plenty of trans actors could be just as great without the baggage that comes from giving a minority role to a cis-white person instead.

It it helps, think of how offensive it is for a white person to play the role of a black character. I think it's the same situation.

I also think there's a deeper discussion to have about ensuring trans and other oppressed minorities have equal access to opportunities in acting (or any profession) starting well before they're ready for an A-list level role. And actively seeking out trans actors who are ready for these roles helps trans kids today see that it's just as much an opportunity for them as there is for their cis peers.

Here’s the thing.

Casting a lead actor in a Hollywood movie is about so much more than who acts the part the best. There are no trans actors with anything like the name recognition of Scarjo, (and I understand that that’s exactly the problem - if cis actors continue to get the big parts, there never will be).

Buuuut, that’s a systemic problem, and the makers of one particular movie have to work within that system. I have some sympathy when the choice is A: hire a big-name cis actor for your trans role, or B: hire a trans actor and forego all of the name recognition, prestige and skid-greasing that goes along with having a big-name actor attached to your project. That's a rough decision, and we're assuming that option B is even feasible - I'm sure in some cases it isn't - you don't get the big name actor, you're not making that movie.

Which brings me to my question - what is/are the systemic solution(s) that means that producers don’t have to make that trade-off in the future?

So what you're saying is that people should pay themselves? Isn't that the opposite of what it means to be an actor? I fully support trans rights but this controversy smacks of over compensation. Much like some of the comments about how The Greatest Showman should have hired an actual bearded lady (like that talent pool is large), this seems overboard. Many straight actors have played gay characters beautifully, just as the inverse is also true.

There is validity to ScarJo and this film's director engaging in whitewashing, but being trans isn't an ethnicity. I'm not saying that the role should go to ScarJo but I also don't necessarily think it must go to a trans person.

Jonman wrote:

Which brings me to my question - what is/are the systemic solution(s) that means that producers don’t have to make that trade-off in the future?

Actors taking a stand is one.

Ed Skrein exits 'Hellboy' reboot after learning character was whitewashed

The art of acting is to portray or recreate roles. There's no reason gender x, y, z, cannot or should not portray gender a, b, c. This applies to sexuality, religion, political stance, and so forth. The problem is with societal perception.

Some see it negatively as minorities being held down and discriminated against. Some see it positively as the established status quo exerting and maintaining their privilege. It should be seen as what it is. How well an actor or actress fits within the role as dictated by their ability to play and portray make believe, also known as acting.

If it's punching down it's a problem. As with Scarlett Johansson in this potential role. If it's punching up it's lauded. As with Sara Gilbert in most of her heterosexual roles.

There is not enough trans representation in film and television. There's no reason why trans actors and actresses cannot do as cis actors and actresses do. Why strictly a trans role? Scarlett Johansson could stay in the role she is presently. Emmett Jack Lundberg could portray a cis role. Or vice versa. That's acting.

The pile on Johansson is disappointing. It's justifiable and understandable frustration on the broad scale being vented where it is not necessarily merited.

Race is the only constant. In my view.

That's one opinion, anyway. If I'm the right gender, sex, race, to have an opinion.

Maybe we're not there yet and a strictly fit for the role as dictated by chromosomes, wiring, and lived experiences has to occur for a time.

There's no reason why trans actors and actresses cannot do as cis actors and actresses do.

Here.

Things don't magically change on their own.

Moreover it's the same director as ghost in the shell, so clearly they learned a lot of lessons there.

oilypenguin wrote:

Things don't magically change on their own.

They don't. So we change it. Put trans people in cis and trans roles. Put cis peole in trans and cis roles. Go all in. Don't limit it to trans portraying trans, and so on.

Now how to make that happen, I don't know, but getting everyone on the same thought spectrum would help.

RnRClown wrote:
oilypenguin wrote:

Things don't magically change on their own.

They don't. So we change it. Put trans people in cis and trans roles. Put cis peole in trans and cis roles. Go all in. Don't limit it to trans portraying trans, and so on.

Now how to make that happen, I don't know, but getting everyone on the same thought spectrum would help.

You're missing the systemic issue here which creates a power, access and opportunity imbalance that favors cis actors over transgender actors. We enable change by constantly speaking up when we see this imbalance manifest, such as when a white cis-woman gets to play a trans role in what could be an Oscar winning performance. Imagine what that role could do for a trans actor vs what it does for Johanssen?

Chairman_Mao wrote:
RnRClown wrote:
oilypenguin wrote:

Things don't magically change on their own.

They don't. So we change it. Put trans people in cis and trans roles. Put cis peole in trans and cis roles. Go all in. Don't limit it to trans portraying trans, and so on.

Now how to make that happen, I don't know, but getting everyone on the same thought spectrum would help.

You're missing the systemic issue here which creates a power, access and opportunity imbalance that favors cis actors over transgender actors. We enable change by constantly speaking up when we see this imbalance manifest, such as when a white cis-woman gets to play a trans role in what could be an Oscar winning performance. Imagine what that role could do for a trans actor vs what it does for Johanssen?

Definitely. I agree. I'm just saying go one further. Ask which trans actors were considered for Han Solo for example. Why not push for a trans actor in a cis role to align with Scarlett in a trans role. Fair is fair. Push the diversify further. Don't limit it to cis for cis and trans for trans.

RnRClown wrote:
oilypenguin wrote:

Things don't magically change on their own.

They don't. So we change it. Put trans people in cis and trans roles. Put cis peole in trans and cis roles. Go all in. Don't limit it to trans portraying trans, and so on.

Now how to make that happen, I don't know, but getting everyone on the same thought spectrum would help.

Change happens when people get angry. Like now.

Did you click the link?
Why do you think Johanson got this part? They wanted a bankable star.
Why do you think she took that part? People in similar roles got good reviews. She wanted a critical success.

That's literally what institutional discrimination is, the system functioning as it always has.
I can easily believe no one did any of this maliciously but this is how things start to change. Yeah, sure, trans* folks playing CIS and vice-versa, it's acting, great. We're all equal and respected, super. No one snaps their fingers and gets there. You don't go from almost 0 trans representation in Hollywood to equal representation.

sh*t! We can't even manage to keep these poor folks alive. Look at the top of the page!

Getting up in arms and speaking out is how you get there.
Fair media representation will go a long way towards getting these people acceptance.

When Hollywood is making movies about them and not involving them, you run the risk of the production looking like a sideshow. Like people to be mocked instead of respected.

Actor here. Cis.

The role should go to a trans person. Any cis actor with a lick of decency would be uncomfortable taking this role without a compelling artistic reason for not casting a trans person.

Yes, we can portray a multitude of things. No, that doesn’t mean we should. You have to be aware of privilege. It is 2018.

Getting up in arms is not in dispute. The message some bang out is. If you want diversity preach diversity, not your own limited scope of this person over here, and that person over there.

They went for Scarlett because she is talented and bankable. She has name recognition. She accepted because it's a great opportunity for her.

If she turns it down and cites discrimination. Great. But she can still support diversity and accept the role for her own personal goals, and her own personal desires. What about every other role in the movie? Trumpet trans actors and actresses for those roles as well as Scarlett Johansson's role.