So for those of you who’ve missed it, a trailer was recently released for the film ‘About Ray’, a story about a transgender teenage boy and how his parents and family deal with his transition.
Personally, I was really excited about it, transgender people are so starved for representation, and this is a really important story. However, lots of people are really frustrated about the casting choice to once again put a cis girl in the role of a transgender boy. For those who don’t understand why, here are some articles for you, or the cliff notes:
- It steals opportunities from trans actors, who have a hard enough time breaking into the industry as it is.
- Transgender people want the opportunity to tell our own stories, it’s not acceptable for cis people to talk over us about issues that don’t affect them.
- It reinforces the idea that trans boys are actually girls trying to be boys, and trans women are really men dressing up as women etc.
- Transgender people want it to stop. It’s not up to cis people to decide what’s transphobic and what isn’t – if you’re an ally, listen to the people you claim to be allies for.
And the Director’s response to this frustration and outrage only makes me more skeptical about whether to see this film. I quote:
“The part is a girl and she is a girl who is presenting in a very ineffectual way as a boy,” Dellal says.
“She’s not pretending to have a deeper voice. She’s just a girl who is being herself and is chasing the opportunity to start hormone treatment. So to actually use a trans boy was not an option because this isn’t what my story is about.”
Which is essentially cis-person talk for “I am transphobic and I’ve got absolutely no clue what it means to be transgender but I’m making a film about it anyway”.
So you can take from this what you will – it’s up to you whether you see the film or not, and whether you do so legitimately (thus supporting those involved and the industry), or illegally (thus circumventing financially supporting this transphobic director).
also the director literally refers to the character as a “girl” and misgenders him
do cis people really have that fucking hard of a time seeing why that is transphobic lol