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I was rather pleasantly surprised by this article in the New York Post. Its author, Eric Hegedus, seems pleased that more trans actors are appearing in films and television series. On the other hand, he points out that there is a danger of trans actors being typecast if they are called upon to play nothing but trans characters.
To me, an actor is someone who can step into a role, even one completely different from his or her own experience. Of course, by that definition, there aren't many true actors. But the day is coming, I think, when we'll see just how good some trans actors are when they play cisgender characters.
I had to laugh, though, at the title of the article: "When will we start seeing transgender actors in non-transgender roles?" Fact is, it's happened, at least once. And the trans actress I'm thinking of played a cis woman all the way back in 1981.
Back in my previous life, I would sometimes go to the movies with my father and brothers (My mother has never been much of a movie-goer!) and, later, with male buddies or co-workers. Some of the most popular "guys' night out" movies (I almost typed "films") are the James Bond flicks. I think the last one I saw was For Your Eyes Only.
And, yes, that was the one that featured the trans actress: Caroline "Tula" Cossey, who played the obligatory "Bond Girl" in the movie. To promote the movie, she also posed for Playboy magazine. She was probably the first trans woman to do that as well, although nobody--at least, nobody in the general public--knew about her identity at that time.
However, a year later, News Of The World, a British tabloid, "outed" her. For the next decade, she fought for transgender acceptance and worked to educate people. In 1991, she approached the editors of Playboy, who did another pictorial of her.
Now 60 years old, she lives in the Atlanta area with her husband. She says she is happy that there is more acceptance for trans people, though she was still shocked when Bruce Jenner became Caitlyn before the eyes of the world. Ms. Cossey empathises with Caitlyn's pain and suffering, so she knows just how difficult the road ahead could be for Caitlyn, in spite (or perhaps because) of her fame and fortune.
Even with such changes, and with the love and support she's received, "Tula" says doesn't know whether she'll ever "stop feeling like a second-class citizen".
Unfortunately, even her looks and talent aren't a shield against internalizing the hate and meanness that was directed at her. So, I believe, the question shouldn't be about when we will see trans actors play cis parts. Instead, we should find when people who just happen to be a little different from what society deems "normal" will be able to grow up and live without bullying, shame, discrimination and the threat of death for simply being who they are.
(Aside: Angelina Jolie was offered a role as a "Bond Girl" in Casino Royale. She turned it down. "I'd rather be Bond," she said. Now that, I would pay to see!)
You've been going to the clinic for a while. Hopefully, you have--or are developing--a rapport with your doctor and therapist. Perhaps you've begun to take hormones--or it's not far in the future.
But you're still going to work under the name you were given at birth, in clothes and hairstyles deemed appropriate for the gender in which you were assigned. Maybe your friends, family--or spouse or kids--don't yet know what you're doing. You're preparing yourself for the "right" moment, whenever that comes, to "come out".
Or, perhaps, you're living in the gender of your mind and spirit. But, to do that, you moved to a new community and, maybe, into a new line of work. None of your neighbors or co-workers--or students or instructors, if you've decided to go back to school--knows about your former life, and you want to keep it that way.
Then the worst happens. At least, it's one of the worst possible things for someone in your situation.
Such a thing happened in Glasgow, Scotland. Someone at the Sandyford Clinic in that city sent out an e-mail announcing an upcoming event to 86 patients. That e-mail included recipients' e-mail addresses in the "to" section. Worst of all, some of those addresses included all or part of the patients' names and birthdates.
I'm willing to believe that the error was accidental, as the clinic stated. But that, for me, makes it even more worrisome, for it's a reminder that it doesn't take malice or violence to put us in danger.
I found this in "The Homeless Hub":
How To Be An Ally To The Transgender Community
Certainly Do...
get to know me!
educate yourself!
use preferred pronouns!
Please Don't...
out me as trans without my permission.
ask what my name was "before".
make assumptions about my sexual orientation.
ask me about my genitals.
and learn my "real" name!
I think that, by now, most people would agree that it's wrong to "out" an LGBT person who is harming no one else.
But how do you discourage kids from bullying a trans classmate--or encourage those same kids' parents to be good examples of tolerance and honesty for their kids--without "outing" the classmate in question?
That's a question a school district in Missouri had to answer when someone who was born a boy was returning to school as a girl. School and district officials said they were interested in ensuring the child's safety and ability to learn.
Officials in Raytown sent a letter to parents informing them about the transgender child. Under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), schools are not allowed to release most information about a child without the consent of the child's parents. Exempt from this ban are "directory" information, such as a student's name, address, phone number and date of birth, which can be released without consent. However, the school or district must provide ample warning of the release to allow the parent(s) enough time to request that the information not be released.
However, as you can imagine, there's "gray area" in the law. While a student's name may fall under the category of "directory" information, it's not clear whether the student's gender--which, some would argue, is part of a student's medical history--also falls into that category.
Whether or not "outing" the student was legal, let alone ethical, the fact remains that the student was outed. What will be the result? Will the release of information help to prevent her from being bullied, as school and district officials claim. Or will it make her more vulnerable, not only to bullying and other kinds of harassment, but also to other kinds of exploitation?
When I was growing up, one rarely saw an LGBT character in a movie or TV show.
In fact, one almost never heard about "queer" people or characters in the news or other parts of the media. On those rare occasions when one appeared, he was almost invariably a gay man. And, if his sexual orientation was not denounced, there was an implication that it defined--in overwhelmingly negative ways--every other aspect of his character and life.
So, the few gay men we saw or heard about were shadowy, sneaky figures. They were seen as vaguely--or not-so-vaguely--dishonest. They were often double-agents or simply double-crossers, or their homosexuality was used to depict them as such.
One example is Clay Shaw, who according to his onetime lover (and male prostitute) Willie O'Keefe, discussed the JFK assassination with Lee Harvey Oswald and others believed to be involved in the killing. All of this is depicted in Oliver Stone's film JFK. Stone, of course, does not imply that either man's proclivity or interest in each other was a root cause of their involvement in the killing. But he shows how people commonly believed that such a thing was possible--and that O'Keefe's and Shaw's preferences and relationship (as well as the prison sentence O'Keefe served for solicitation) was used to discredit them.
Although some people have moved away from such attitudes--or, at any rate, wouldn't publicly express them--about gay men, transgender people are being portrayed as devious in almost exactly the way gay men were not so long ago. (Interestingly, there doesn't seem to have been a similar stereotype about lesbians.) Even people who have gay or lesbian family members, friends and colleagues--or who themselves are on the "spectrum"-- may hold or express the notion that trans people are fundamentally dishonest. In fact, I have talked--before, during and since my transition--with gay men and mental-health professionals who said, in essence, that trans people "just don't want to admit they're gay," as a onetime friend of mine put it.
So, although I was upset, I was not surprised to learn that Caleb Hannan had not only "outed" Essay Anne Vanderbilt; he used the fact that she was born male--something, apparently, only a few people knew--to explain her true dishonesty: lying about her academic credentials and work experience as a scientist, much of it as a private contractor to the Department of Defense. She apparently used those fictions to convince someone to invest in a new golf club she'd invented.
About all I know about golf is that Tiger Woods plays it (and the field). So I couldn't tell you whether Vanderbilt's club was everything she claimed, and her investor believed, it to be. But, apparently, some swear by it. Even Hannan acknowledged that he played a better game when he used it.
Now, if people like the club, they're probably not going to care whether she actually worked for the DoD or went to MIT or whatever. On the other hand, I can understand that someone would hold her, as a person, in low regard for lying about her credentials and just generally being a difficult person, as many have testified. After all, great ideas and creations don't always come from good people: Wagner was one of the greatest composers and most detestable human beings who ever lived. I'm not so sure I would have wanted Bach as a father, husband, brother, friend or neighbor, either. And T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound and Fernand Celine were notorious anti-Semites. Still, their flaws don't degrade the quality of their work, any more than Vanderbilt's fabricated resume makes her golf club less of a marvel than its enthusiasts say it is.
However, to imply that someone who was born with one of the most fundamental conflicts a person can live with cannot be anything but inherently dishonest as a result of that conflict, as Hannan does, is simply ignorant at best and vicious at worst. I can't help but to tend toward the latter interpretation: He portrayed Ms. Vanderbilt as one born to manipulate even though he knew about her suicide attempt--which he uses to further the idea that she was congenitally unstable.
But the real reason I am so upset at Hannan is that while he was "researching" his article, Ms. Vanderbilt took her own life. Now, I realize that it's probably not possible to "prove" that his outing her caused her to off herself. Still, I think he should be taken to task for "outing" someone who has the sort of history she had--or, for that matter, anyone who does not disclose that information about herself.
I realize that in writing this blog, and some of my other works, some people might think I'm giving them permission to "out" me to people who would use that information to portray me as a monster, criminal or worse. However, there are still many, many people who do not know my history and never will--unless, of course, someone "outs" me. As an example, I was renewing my state ID last week. The clerk did not know that, at one time, my name and gender weren't the ones on the card I was handing him. And, really, there was no need for him to know. I don't know whether knowing that aspect of my history would have changed the way he treated me (He was, in spite of the stereotype about Department of Motor Vehicle employees, friendly: Somehow we found ourselves talking about our cats!) or added another layer of bureaucracy to a transaction that, for most people, is routine.
I will probably never see that clerk again--or, for that matter, most people I encounter on any given day. They don't all need to know about my gender history and, really, have no right to know unless I disclose it (which, of course, I do on this blog). More to the point, neither they nor anyone else has the right to use it to paint me as anything other than I am, for better or worse.
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