the_fantastic_ms_fox | Alternatives to arguing that cis people playing trans characters is like blackface (Reply)

From an FB thread:

It does help to have some strong talking points. Here are some alternate arguments that I've field-tested:

- "When spending thousands or millions of dollars to make a movie about the dignity of a marginalized group, you'd think the decent thing to do would be to solicit, or at least accept, applications from members of that group"

- "Networks will hire for a trans role and deliberately recast trans actors."

- "Roles are written for the majority as a default. Roles that could be played by anyone (i.e. "woman in park" "doctor #3") are still assumed to be the majority. And when a minority role comes up, people in the minority are told that they 'don't have enough experience.' (Although experience doesn't make you better - practice does). And then they get the minority role too. This is another example of an experience trap that uses someone else's predjudice as an excuse for more of the same."

- "The government is spending hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies to an industry that refuses to live up to even basic human resources equity - and refuses to hire 95% of the population for key publicity positions. this discrimination crosses many axes - trans is just one of them."

- "Cis actors have a track record of doing sloppy research, confirming a caricature, and then shooting their mouth off in transphobic ways until they thankfully get tired of the transgender content and forget about us entirely . This is just one more example."

- "I'd be happy for hollywood to hire cis people for trans roles, if they did the reverse - heck, i'd prefer it. But they don't hire trans folks at all. So hiring trans people for trans roles is a first step."

- "Wouldn't it be nice to see a world on TV that actually looks like the world around us?"
21 minutes ago · Edited
Another problem with the blackface analogy (beyond the large contextual gulf between mocking parody and something contemporarily prevalent and more subtle) is that it tends to lead people to conclude "and therefore drag is also bad" - and I'd rather not oppose drag as it is one of the few performing arts fields where trans people can get a leg up.

If an analogy is necessary, I find it's best to let the person one is trying to convince find a reason why *they* (or failing that, someone they know) would be recast in a hollywood lead role. If you rattle off one of the above arguments, and, if it doesn't seem to be connecting, mention how this is part of a larger TV/film HR trend that also applies to looks/age/ability/race/accent/weight/height/class/women/LGB. With this floating past them, *most people* will be able to draw from their own experience to find a reason to suddenly agree with you - as very few people have privilege on all these axes, and are therefore potentially subject to discrimination themselves.

I find that this invocation of self-interest will abruptly sway people who, minutes before, were indifferent to - if not actively speaking against - employment equity for trans actors. It leads them to the (logical, contextually more accurate, and less anti-drag) conclusion that they are not allies in the fight against shitty casting, but are victims of it themselves. Personal rage is way more of a motivator than analogous sympathy.