2: Survival of the cissest
One of the main issues plaguing trans representation is the use of cis actors and actresses for trans roles (later Iâll discuss the use of trans people in their roles). Notable examples being Jared Leto, Lee Pace, and Hillary Swank as characters meant to garner sympathy and have a generally shitty time by the end of the movie. There are quite a few issues with each of these so bullet points are the way to go (Sorry Hillary).
âSadness sorrow and despair. People dying everywhere (unnamed birthday song)â Major roles for trans characters are not pretty and arenât intended to be happy stories, at least thatâs what cis people are always saying and who should blame them? The ridiculously low life expectancy and high rates of assault only strengthen this stereotype. A trans personâs story cannot be happy because no one has shown what that is.
Casting cis people wouldnât be a problem were there no other issues, but we arenât so lucky. Cis actors as cast as trans women and cis women are cast as trans men, perpetuating âman in a dressâ and âbutch lesbianâ stereotypes. In the case of Letoâs role, trans women werenât even considered for the part. This barrier that âthere are no trans actresses or actorsâ is created by lazy directors and their arrogance (I wish this were an assumption).
Trans people arenât cast as cis roles and rarely as trans roles. With few shows and movies making efforts to cast trans roles that arenât written in as jokes/gags, the few opportunities available to trans people are as that: trans people. If trans people were cast as cis characters then most likely roles like Letoâs wouldnât be so opposed, but that isnât the case.
Furthermore, the casting of a trans person revolves around a few possibilities. The role is for a single episode, usually the case, and they get to either be killed off or introduced as a date for a main character only to be used as a punch line, with gay jokes made, pronouns switched, and whatever else the writers think is funny to them. The character gets written off at the earliest convenience (The L Word). The character stays as a minor recurring character, and minor even among the rarely seen (Elementary). Or the character just doesnât make any sense to a logical trans person but nobody really knows that at the time (The L Word again)
Other topics will overlap more with these later on which will expand some of these concepts.