They didn’t try hard enough
A transgender actress has pulled out of a new play in protest after a cisgender actor was cast as a trans character.
Kate O’Donnell was set to appear in a new stage musical adaptation of Patrick McCabe’s novel Breakfast on Pluto.
O’Donnell was due to play the mother of the main character, Patrick/Pussy Braden, but withdrew after that role was given to Irish actor Fra Fee.
The producers said they tried to find a trans performer for the role. O’Donnell said they didn’t try hard enough.
But…O’Donnell was supposed to play a character who’s not trans, right?
O’Donnell was due to have played Ma Braden, who is not a trans character.
So…it’s ok for a man to play a woman, but it’s not ok for a man to play a man. It’s ok for a trans person to play a character who is not trans, but it’s not ok for a person who is not trans to play a trans character.
Why is that exactly?
The casting of Fee sparked an outcry among the trans community on social media, and O’Donnell said the backlash was “justified and nothing new”.
Yet there was no outcry about a trans woman playing a woman? That was fine?
According to industry advice from trans-led charity Gendered Intelligence, having a cisgender man playing a trans woman increases prejudice because “many people internalise the myth that being trans is a performance, a deception, that trans women are ‘really men’.”
Well ya know the people seeing the play don’t necessarily know that the man playing the trans woman is a man as opposed to a trans woman.
O’Donnell said: “I could not be in a show where a trans woman is once again seen as a man in a dress as this perpetuates the idea that this is what a trans woman is and leads to violence, even death.”
Leads to it how? The audience applauds politely and then rushes out into Covent Garden to assault trans people? Or what?
O’Donnell recently appeared in the musical Gypsy at Manchester’s Royal Exchange theatre and is artistic director of trans arts company Trans Creative, which runs the annual Trans Vegas festival in Manchester.
Are there any trans characters in Gypsy? O’Donnell played one of the strippers (I just looked it up) – I kind of doubt they were supposed to be trans women.
I guess that’s the rule then. Trans people can play non-trans people, but non-trans people cannot play trans people. Write it down.
Hmm, how to fix this? I’ve got it:
TIMs seem to exist on very shaky psychological grounds. Not only can someone calling them “he” make them flip out because their autogyno fantasy bubble is popped, but watching another man fake up as a woman apparently does the same thing. Is it like a little kid who thinks he does great card tricks having someone point out his obvious drop?
Then someone better stop publishing all those fluff pieces I read in the media about some young bloke saying the always new they were a girl because they liked to put on mum’s dresses and play with her make-up.
This is all so meta. Aren’t they all supposed to be ACTING? Did Wiccans protest that characters in the Harry Potter films were not actual wiches and wizzards? Straight actors play gay characters and vice versa all the time, though I wouldn’t doubt that there would be some contoversy around that from some quarters. I can certainly see that crossing racial lines can be fraught with issues of blackface and whitewashing, too. But ultimately isn’t acting (much like writing and reading fiction) supposed to be like stepping into somebody else for a while, to view the world from a perspective other than one’s own?
Once again we have a one way street, with rules, enforcement and cancellation in favour of only one “side.”
So, could Fee have headed all this off at the pass by “identifying” as trans for the duration of the rehearsals and performances?
I would not be surprised if people are already making comparisons to blackface, and we come full circle on the Rachel Dolezal incident, and the zeitgeist settles (however, as always, ephemerally) on “transface” being a thing, and on trans people being at once trans in the same essential way that black people are black, *as well* as being “really” and “simply” the sex that they insist they are.
We’ve been asked to swallow equally-if-not-more dissonant ideas at this point.
Got it. It’s a bit tricky, but I can manage it. I think. For now. But as the old saying goes, let’s see what tomorrow brings.
Off-topic but… There is a vapid piece that resolutely fails to address genuine issues in today’s Guardian by Zoe Williams. It seems obviously intended to ‘balance’ Suzanne Moore’s ‘incendiary’ article and put the Guardian in a good light. And the other day Suzanne Moore herself had another piece, I suspect forced upon her, in which she explained from her own experience why she thinks as she does.
Re @YNNB #3
Acting, writing, all that are SUPPOSED to involve putting oneself in the shoes of another, but there are indeed many complaints about “cultural appropriation”.
Re Wiccans: I have encountered people who use Wiccans as the prime example of how witches “really” act. Those people, not Wiccans, strike me as the ones to complain about Harry Potter. But of course there are no real witches, as anyone who helps defend people against accusations of witchcraft can attest; Wiccans only pretend to be witches, or else co-opt the term. Perhaps they are trans-witches.
Sackbut, I know what you mean. I am currently writing a young adult fantasy series that involves witches, and people are like “but can witches really do that?” or “is that how witches really act?” or “is that really how it is?”. The only correct response is “no, because there are not really any witches, that is why this is fantasy”. And while there is witch lore out there (as there is vampire lore, werewolf lore, etc), when you are writing fictional beings, there really is no need to have to follow everything exactly because IT IS FICTION. You can create a world that is your own, and set the rules.
Just so is trans ideology based on fiction, and therefore they write their own rules, and change them to suit the day.
If I understand what you’re saying here, it seems ironic to use Rachel Dolezal as an example to support the trans issue of not doing “transface”, since they keep insisting she is not analogous to their situation. It would indeed by a turn around, because they would then be putting those who are not actually part of a group as the real group, and those who were originally in the group as those appropriating. That would be some twisted logic. They’ll almost certainly try it…
Indeed!
Isn’t this what some TIMs are already doing with “womanhood?” Particularly those who say they are “womaning” better than actual women. By swapping gender for sex, the “role” of woman is up for grabs, and the role is claimed by those who can perform it “better”. Thus the colonizers and appropriators become the new owners, on whom everything is to be “centered.” From then on, they get to define who and who is not a woman. This is why words are so important.
Gypsy, huh? Well, Y’gotta have a gimmick.
Snerk. I saw a bit of the movie recently on the tv machine, for the first time in decades…the strippers were kind of more like drag queens than women.
Keep it up, trans actors. Pretty soon nobody is gonna want to hire you.
It’s one thing to engineer the cancellation of someone else’s event (of which you were not a part), but it’s shooting yourself in the foot pulling the plug on something you’re actually a part of, into which other people who are relying on you have put time, money, and effort. It would not engender trust or confidence, and unless you’re a Big Name, you’re replaceable. And though they are branding themselves as “unreliable”, “difficult” or “troublemaker,” you can bet they’ll claim “discrimination.”