GLAAD: Having a Gay Actor Play a Transgender in a Movie is "Toxic and Dangerous" Because Reasons

All right sir.

For more than 40 years, Americans have sat down in front of their TV screens or in movie seats and seen male actors "pretend" to be trans women. By casting Robert Reed, Terence Stamp, John Lithgow, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Tom Wilkinson, Lee Pace, Cillian Murphy, Liev Schreiber, Beau Bridges, Jared Leto, Eddie Redmayne, Steven Weber, Denis O'Hare and Walton Goggins as transgender women, viewers receive two strong and wrong messages: 1. that being transgender is an act, a performance, just a matter of playing dress-up; and 2. that underneath all that artifice, a transgender woman really is a man.

Matt Bomer is the latest actor to find himself in the crosshairs of controversy, following news this week that he will be playing a transgender woman in the upcoming indie film Anything, executive produced by Mark Ruffalo. Following the film's announcement, Emmy-nominated trans filmmaker and actress Jen Richards responded with a series of tweets that re-ignited a long-simmering conversation about casting transgender roles....

The decision to put yet another man in a dress to portray a transgender woman touches a nerve for transgender people, and rightfully so. It's yet another painful reminder that, in the eyes of so many people, transgender women are really just men.

That message is toxic and dangerous. It's what prompts lawmakers in states like North Carolina to legislate that a transgender woman must use the men's restroom, humiliating her and putting her in harm’s way.

posted by Ace at 01:26 PM

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