That’s one of the best things about This is Me — it’s creating a whole class of trans people in the film and tv industries who now have experience, contacts and an Emmy-nominated project on their resumes. When one of the most common excuses for not including trans people in TV shows and movies about trans characters is that there just aren’t any trans actors or trans writers, or just trans people in the industry at all, showing that there are all of these skilled creative people will hopefully lead to better representation.
We must continue speaking the truth even when it feels like we’re shouting at the wind. We just have to keep working, keep walking, keep the faith that none of this is hopeless and that at the end of the day each other is all we have.
I feel that I can do a lot of good by being an openly transgender woman who practices a hyper-masculinized profession by making adorable little critters and vegetables out of steel. I can do my bit to show that transgender women can be more than stereotypes, and that blacksmiths can be more than beards.
I’m sorry, but the last time I checked, the only gay people I saw hanging around there were across the street cheering. They were not the ones getting slugged or having stones thrown at them. It’s just aggravating. And hurtful! For all the girls who are no longer here who can’t say anything, this movie just acts like they didn’t exist.
The photo on your cover or hanging above your article comes next. Go for broke here. Images of hairy legs in high heels or emerging from tutus are classics you can’t go wrong with, like Strauss’ Blue Danube waltz or light summery pastas with basil and garlic. The goal is to suggest that trans women must look like comical parodies of womanhood, like clueless men.
And why is it that so few TWOC (aside from Laverne Cox and Janet Mock) get any kind of airtime when it doesn’t involve trauma? Why are cis folks only interested in seeing us hurt, traumatized and alone? Those select few trans women who do get the spotlight, not just when they are murdered, are the exception and often tokenized by the spaces that they are in. You only ever hear about TWOC after we have been murdered. And in many ways this film is no different. It relies on the difficulty of our lives, it’s fetishizes the way our existence is marked by this world in order to titillate, to entice. The exotic other enchanting the “normal” cis white audience. And they leave the theater thinking that they know something, that they are more familiar with the lives of trans women. But our lives are not like in the movies.
“Jo’s trans identity was just another integral part of her character, and it developed very naturally — she was a leader, she was VERY passionate about being a Lumberjane, she was also trans.”
Lumberjanes Issue #17 Continues Positive Representation as Jo Talks About Being Trans
The movie lost my attention for a while; I just dismissed it as yet another misguided attempt by cis people to make a movie about trans people. After all, the media seems to love us right now. Or at least they love some of us, or maybe just the idea of some of us. When I saw the film’s director, Gaby Dellal, talk about the film, and specifically about her main character, Ray, for the first time, though, my worry turned into overwhelming dread. It seems like Dellal, despite being a person who is making a movie about a transgender boy, doesn’t understand that transgender boys aren’t girls.
I know that some people are going to be angry, but I’m not concerned with preserving bullshit art. I’m angry about the whitewashing of LGBTQ history.
[Trans women] must stop being afraid, because fear is a form of violence. If we replace fear with knowledge, we can become safer.
Stacy Velasquez Vasquez via Venir Al Sur Creates Vital LGBTI Feminist Community In Latin America
