Welcome to #TransTuesday! This week we’re going to talk about trans roles in media, and who gets to portray them, and trans stories in media, and who gets to tell them. Spoiler: it’s trans people! But why is that? Let’s dive in to: TRANS ROLES AND STORIES.
This week, what we’re specifically talking about is who gets to write trans characters, and who gets to portray them in movies/television/video games/scripted podcasts/plays/anything else.
So let’s just get it out of the way right off the bat. NOBODY should be playing trans characters except for trans people, and there are multiple reasons for this and none of them have anything to do with acting ability.
“Just cast whoever is best for the role!” is a bullshit stance that ignores the real world barriers trans people face to seeing ourselves represented at ALL. It also presumes that a cis person could be better at portraying a trans character than a trans person.
We’ve lived that experience, and to claim a cis actor, no matter how good they are, could be us better than US at BEING US is some hot nonsense. It’s also INCREDIBLY dangerous, because cis men playing trans women is a big problem.
It reinforces the bigoted and wrong refrain of “trans women are just men in dresses” that so many people weaponize against us. If you cast a cis man to play a trans woman you’re at worst admitting that’s what you think we are, and at best making it easier for others to say that.
It’s admitting you don’t see us as WOMEN. And as such: screw you. And it’s not like there aren’t trans actors who are good and readily available. All you have to do is LOOK. Here’s a fine example with a cis character…
I don’t know if you watched The Expanse (but you should, it’s spectacular), but there’s a character on it named Bobbie Draper. The show is based on a series of books, and in the books she’s described like this:
“Bobbie was not the right shape to fit into one of the standard suits, and the Marines made her jump through a series of flaming hoops every time she requisitioned a new custom one. At a bit over two meters tall, she was only slightly above average height for a Martian male…
…but thanks in part to her Polynesian ancestry, she weighed in at over a hundred kilos at one g. None of it was fat, but her muscles seemed to get bigger every time she even walked through a weight room. As a marine, she trained all the time.”
The authors of the books insisted she be cast right, without changing the core of who she was. And do you know what happened? They found Frankie Adams, who’s amazing, and fits the description perfectly, and is a DELIGHT.
And of course the right actor for the part was out there, because people from all walks of life are out there if you look. There’s no excuse whatsoever for claiming you couldn’t find a trans person to play a trans role. There are a ton of very good trans actors.
But trans roles in media are still incredibly rare. We almost never get depicted, and when we do it’s often hurtful, harmful, and can perpetuate lies about us and increase the violence we already experience. You can see the trans tuesday on the dangers of BAD REPRESENTATION for an example.
I won’t say only trans people can write trans characters, because that’s not true at all, and also because that would even further reduce the amount we’re represented in media because there are so few people giving us the opportunity to make and run our own shows and movies.
There’s a right way and a wrong way to go about including us in your stories (which you SHOULD do!). I’m going to stick to talking about this in relation to trans people for obvious reasons, but I think it applies to marginalized communities across the board.
There are some stories that are intrinsically ABOUT being trans. About what it means to BE us, about how we move through the world, about the very nature of our identities. These stories should only be written BY trans people. Those are our stories to tell.
Now there’s a caveat to this in that trans people might not be out as trans yet, or even aware they’re trans yet, so when you see things you might not always know if there’s a trans person behind them or not. And that’s okay. Don’t jump all over those people.
I’m speaking specifically to the folks who KNOW you’re cisgender. You’ve frankly got no place telling a story about what it’s like to discover you’re trans or coming out as trans or existing as trans in a world set up to pretend we don’t exist, or anything else like that.
So how do you include us in your stories? I’m gonna let you in on a secret, but it’s a really big one that may shake the foundation of reality as you know it. Seas will boil, mountains crumble, the ground may crack open and swallow you whole. Are you ready?
We’re more than just our transness.
Just like cis people are more than their cisness.
We’re just PEOPLE, and we EXIST, and we can be (and are!) anyone! Need a librarian? Bet your story doesn’t have a need for them to specifically be cis. Cast a trans person! Cab driver? Trans person. NASA scientist? Trans person.
Brain surgeon? Trans person. Teacher? Trans person. Pro athlete? Trans person. Writer? Trans person. Politician? Trans person. Ghost? Trans person. Knight in shining armor? Trans person.
Like we can literally be ANYTHING, just like cis people! Isn’t that crazy? Why you can also cast us as parents! And children! And we can be characters in those stories where our transness isn’t the focal point. We NEED to be in all those stories too.
That’s the ONLY way we’re going to get the kind of representation we need in our media, which of course does wonders for normalizing trans people and works toward changing the hearts and minds of those who may be prejudiced against us.
Our art is powerful, and can move mountains at times. There’s a really strong case that shows like Modern Family, which depicted a loving married gay couple, helped move the needle on marriage equality. There’s an article from The Atlantic all about this.
Think about the thousands of characters you’ve read about, seen, heard… for how many of them was being cisgender central to their story, or even an important part of who they were?
Also, I want to add, it never hurts to get a trans person to look over your work and check the portrayal for any red flags or potential problems you might not have realized. This is what sensitivity readers are specifically for. It’s why they exist!
In fact, it’s something I do for friends, and am happy to be hired to do on projects. Hit me up! Susan and I consulted on an entire season of an upcoming show for this very reason, more news on that when the NDA says we can tell you.
But sometimes even if you have a sensitivity consultant things can go bad (if you don’t listen to them). Story time!
Okay so there’s actually two stories. And each of them illustrates the exact right and wrong way to handle things. Let’s start with the wrong way.
A while back another writer I know was talking with a producer about a project the producer wanted to bring them on to. And it was the story of a trans woman, and a tragedy in the queer community, and how she made a found family and found a way to heal after.
And I should add this is based on a real trans woman, and real events. It’s a story that I think needs telling.
But the producer was a white cis man, and the writer he was talking to was… also a white cis man. Now, TO HIS ABSOLUTE CREDIT, my writer friend said, “I’m not the one to be telling this story.”
And he put the producer in touch with ME, as I am (surprise!) a trans woman writer. This is EXACTLY what we need more of our cis allies to do, by the way. Advocate for us and help us break through the barriers and gatekeeping that keeps us from getting our stories told.
So I talked with the producer, and he already had an outline for a pilot episode and the subsequent season of television were it to get picked up, and had already made all the decisions about everything and basically wanted me to take all that and write the actual script.
Which is not so much “getting input from trans people” on the actual story or portrayal of the characters. Nobody is going to be able to tell that story better than trans people, but changing the story or the perspective or anything was seemingly out of the question.
It gets worse, because in the pitch deck he’d already made (for those who aren’t screenwriters, it’s basically a pdf or powerpoint type thing with slides that sells the concept of your show)… he deadnamed and misgendered the very real trans woman it was based on.
Not intentionally or with cruelty in mind, but because he didn’t know to not do that when discussing a trans person pre-transition. And there were parts that also used offensive terms that showed how little he understood about being trans.
Which is exactly why this is a problem, right? So I wrote him back and outlined all of that, and I asked if he had the trans woman’s life rights since it’s based on things that really happened to her…
And then I had to, gently, ask him why he felt he was the one to be telling this story. Why did he, a white cis man, feel like this was HIS story to tell? Seemingly only interested in bringing me on for any “trans authenticity” it would provide, but not interested in changing anything.
I told him that if he felt this was a story that needed to be told (and I think it is), the best thing he could do as a cis white man producer was find a trans writer, hire them, and let THEM tell the story in the way only they can.
His response… was to ghost me entirely. It’s been months and I’ve not heard a thing. He had no intention of listening to me telling him that this very trans story wasn’t his to tell. He wasn’t concerned about getting it right if it meant it wasn’t what he thought it should be.
The second story, the one with a good outcome, is much shorter because things went the way they should. Another writer/producer is doing a project about an intersex person who they felt had a story that needed to be told, and wanted me to consult.
And this was at the inception of the project, nothing had been done yet. There was no outline or anything. It was just a producer realizing there was an important story about someone from a marginalized community that needed to be told. That’s the EXACT time to bring someone on.
So… the first thing I said to them was I’m so glad you know you need to bring someone else in on this, but I’m not the right person for the job. I’m a trans woman, and not intersex. And while those two things are not cisgender, they’re not remotely the same.
I told them they needed to find an intersex writer, because that was THEIR story to tell, not mine. I could write an intersex character into any story, any and all of us SHOULD. But a story ABOUT being intersex? That’s not something I have any business writing.
And this producer… then went and found an intersex writer, who they are now working with. Yes! Success! Victory! Happy exclamations! That’s exactly how it’s supposed to work.
The one piece of info I haven’t given you yet is that this producer told me they were not cis. And I’m sure that made them more receptive to understanding that this story belongs to the intersex community and NEEDS their involvement.
Susan and I have talked with producers and comic editors, white cis people (almost all men), who say they want trans stories about the trans experience. And then we pitch them incredibly trans stories and get told: no not like that.
If you’re a cis producer or editor or a gatekeeper of what stories your company produces or publishes, the best way is to bring us in at the inception of the project. Let it be our project, and then get out of the way. Or to let us pitch our own stories and help those get made.
Trans stories aren’t going to conform to cis expectations, and that doesn’t make them bad. It makes them OUR stories, which are not the same as yours.
But cis people will still identify with them! Don’t tell me they can’t. Trans people have to identify with cis characters in everything ever made. If we can do it, so can you.
As I’ve said so many times, trans stories are HUMAN STORIES. So much of what we go through cis people also go through, just in adjacent ways not maybe not even related to gender. But the STRUGGLES are similar, because we’re all human beings.
You can best see this in my book, BEGIN TRANSMISSION: THE TRANS ALLEGORIES OF THE MATRIX.
You can see it in the TRANS ALLEGORY OF REAL GENIUS, part 1.
You can see it in THE TRANS ALLEGORY OF THE LITTLE MERMAID‘S “PART OF YOUR WORLD.”
You can see it in THE TRANS ALLEGORY OF THE TWILIGHT ZONE‘S “NERVOUS MAN IN A FOUR DOLLAR ROOM”.
You can see it in THE TRANS ALLEGORY OF SILO s1, part 1.
You can see it in THE TRANS ALLEGORY OF BARBIE, part 1.
I want to remind you that we NEED CIS PRODUCERS to do this, because there aren’t enough (or… any?) trans producers out there who can get more trans stories on screen. We NEED CIS ALLIES to help get our projects made.
We WANT to be seen. We want to tell our own stories, but we also want to be part of YOUR stories. And I don’t think it’s too much to ask that when we are, you’re not doing active real-world harm to us in the process.
Trans writers and actors and directors are everywhere. I happen to be one! I write with my lovely and talented and beautiful (cis) wife. Hire us if you want, we’d be happy to work for you (I mean I don’t KNOW you, but I feel pretty sure you’d love us, we’re very charming)!
Trans folks are a myriad of wonderful, diverse people with unique perspectives who are more than ready to be part of the stories we ALL love, like we should have been all along.
Help us out by opening the door and letting us in.
Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com