Hollywood is so owned by SJWs that it needs to be put out of business anyway. And it's fun to watch the SJWs eating their own young.

I don't suppose it's occurred to any of these morons that, if they were fair and consistent (yeah, right), they just locked all transgendered performers into a tiny niche market.

Following this logic, no transgendered actor should ever be allowed to play a cisgendered character.

And by extension, since transgendered activism has hopped onto the idiot gay rights movement, no gay performer should ever be allowed to play a straight character.

Quick. We must boycott "How I Met Your Mother" in syndication since Neil Patrick Harris plays a straight horndog.

Hope none of you watched the live action version of "Beauty and the Beast," since openly gay Luke Evans played Gaston.

No "Big Bang Theory," since Jim Parsons plays the socially inept, but hetereosexual Sheldon Cooper.

And we need to boycott the Roseanne spinoff, The Conners, since Sara Gilbert is playing hetereosexual Darlene Conner.

Gosh, that's quite a list. May as well just boycott everything in which Ricky Martin, Portia de la Rossi, Zachary Quinto, Alan Cumming, T. R. Knight, Jodie Foster, Ellen Page, David Hyde Pierce, and a ton of others, play straight people.

And no more watching old Rock Hudson movies, or reruns of Bewitched where Darrin is played by Dick Sargent.

Want more Trump? Because this is how you get more Trump: pretending that gender identity is the most important thing ever.

Ahead of clean water, the economy, unjust wars and corrupt politicians suborning the FBI.

More than forty percent of TV programming now contains some kind of LGBT issue, according to GLAAD, when the identified groups might be about 5% of our population. The rest of the nation probably isn't buying the idea that they are horrible people eager to "smear the queer", OR that YOUR sex life is important to anyone else.

Funny thing about that Variety article

The movie is about a trans man, a bio woman living as a man

They quote upset trans women actresses, bio men living as women

People who under this theory wouldn't be considered for the role of a trans man because they are not trans men

Are gay men starting to feel "cotton ceiling" pressure the way lesbians are?

This makes me mad, sad, and it makes my head hurt because it's so frickin' illogical. A WOMAN (biological) is EXACTLY who should play this role. If Scarlett in real life were to announce tomorrow that she was actually trans, that she would now be known as Rory Johannson, and cut her hair short and began to wear suits---she'd be the literal equivalent of "Dante," the trans-man she was set to play. So why is it inappropriate or mis-casting for Scarlett to prepare for her role by cutting her hair, wearing men's suits, and ACTING as a trans-man?

Exactly Rigeldog!

Though in terms of casting maybe a Melissa McCarthy or that actress who plays Boo on OITNB would probably be better. But it wasn't about that. Because those are women too and there would be the same issue.

Interesting piece: http://www.afterellen.com/general-news/561449-why-attack-scarlett-johansson-the-real-problem-is-media-rewriting-butch-lesbian-history-again

I'm with JdGalt. Just laughing on the side lines. Lysette is right that Hollywood is f-ed. But not for this reason. Quite frankly most of what they put out isn't very good. It's kinda like potato chips. After you eat one you want another. But if you stop for a while you aren't that interested in starting again.

>> rewriting lesbian history

Thanks for linking that article Amy. I was going to comment on the same issue.

Gill was a proud lesbian and never regarded herself as a man or Trans anything. This whole incident is an example of Trans activists stealing someone's identity to promote themselves and attack lesbians.

It's also an example of a pernicious trend of labeling cross-dressing homosexual as Transexuals when they are not and don't want to be.

I don't see this ending well.

You may not be interested in the tranny mob, but the tranny mob is interested in you.

Movie making is a business. Name on trans actor that could pull in the audience that Scarlett Johansen could pull in. Just one. No?

Barbara: I don't see this ending well.

I think the best possible ending is the one that Amy predicted: this film will never be made. I know I refuse to see it.

But let's keep in mind that Scarlett Johansson is on the hook for "Ghost in the Shell" in which she played an Asian character. The backlash against that caused the film to bomb. She didn't need that to happen to her a second time. I do agree that it shouldn't have been a problem for her to play a transgender character.

Very good point, Fayd.

And I still think Jennifer Finney Boylan makes pretty good points here:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/06/opinion/why-scarlett-johansson-shouldnt-play-a-trans-man.html

For starters, why does practically no film critic argue, anymore, that certain other lines should still be crossed freely? (See the first four paragraphs.) I don't know if the very conservative critic John Simon does make that argument, but if so, I'll be a bit surprised. (I'll explain why later.)

Also, note that in the last third of the op-ed, Boylan shows a certain understanding.

I do think that if there turns out to be a shortage of truly talented trans actors, the producers should be able to pick anyone they want. Bad actors will drive away audiences over time. Who cares about Brooke Shields anymore?

And, on the flip side, Sir John Gielgud once said:

"I am an actor.

"Of COURSE I can play a heterosexual!"

(Of course, that was back when there were few positive gay roles to play anyway - and even poor straight actors would often refuse to take the roles. Also, Hollywood clearly couldn't afford to lose half its biggest moneymakers just because of homophobia, so Gielgud, Hudson, Clift and others were "tolerated.")

One Times Pick comment:

AG
Reality LandJuly 7

"Trans here. Don't care about this relative non-issue. Play who you want to play. I care about my civil rights which are dwindling by the day."

And:

CL
BrooklynJuly 7

"Most important, cast trans actors in more roles so that they can develop a career that allows them to be financially relevant. Secondly, if you must cast a cisperson in a trans role, please cast a cismale as a transmale and a ciswoman as a transwoman. Unless the character is all about their pre-transition life and the movie ends with them realizing they are trans, there's no other reason to do that. A cisman is going to be much closer to a transman than a ciswoman and vice versa."

And:

Marcia Stephens
Yonkers, NYJuly 7

"Many Americans, especially southerners, were incensed when a young English woman was hired to play Scarlett O'Hara in the movie Gone With the Wind in 1939.
The actress was another "Scarlett" named Vivien Leigh. If you watch some of the screen tests of the American actresses (also Bette Davis and Katharine Hepburn wanted the part) you would be glad that none of them got it.
Leigh worked like crazy learning a southern accent, acting in almost every scene and (sorry for this, but) simply being more beautiful than the others.
If you look at her own life story it is easy to believe that Vivien Leigh would have been able to identify with this fictional southern character..."

What she didn't mention is that SOME Southerners did say: "Better an English girl than a Yankee." But at the same time, it does say in the first sentence of the book: "Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it..."

Btw, I know that in "Will and Grace," Sean Hayes is gay but Eric McCormack is not and very few viewers complain about that. However, I'd say being trans is more profound. For one thing, I assume it means giving up your reproductive abilities - after the operation, anyway.

(I DO remember viewers complaining about the fact that you didn't see Will kissing other men much - if at all - or see him shirtless in bed with a man. Since he's the lead gay character, why the reserve?)

If Mary Martin can play Peter Pan then Scarlett Johansson can play Dante Tex Gill.

Gill was a proud lesbian and never regarded herself as a man or Trans anything. This whole incident is an example of Trans activists stealing someone's identity to promote themselves and attack lesbians. ~ barbara at July 14, 2018 7:23 AM

"Historians see a film and ask how accurate it is. Filmmakers ask: How accurate does it have to be?"

Hollywood historical films are to history what Caesar's Palace is to ancient Rome - totally unrelated.

• Milk whitewashed Harvey Milk's habit of outing gay people. He outed Oliver Sipple, the former Marine who saved Gerald Ford from Sara Jane Moore's assassination attempt, an act which contributed to Sipple's estrangement from his family, alcoholism, and an early death. Milk's cozy relationship with Jim Jones' Peoples Temple was also conveniently absent from the hagiographic biopic.
  
• Amadeus made Salieri out to be a murderer.
  
• U-571 has the Americans capturing the Enigma machine when, in fact, the British Royal Navy accomplished that feat before the Americans were even in the war.
  
• 300 has Xerxes and the Persians being effeminate weirdoes and having many slaves while the Spartans fought for decency and freedom - when, in fact, the Zoroastrian Persians had outlawed slavery and the Spartans were, truth be told, the biggest slave-holding people in ancient Greece and were quite open about their pederasty.
  
• Argo completely obliterated the fact that "90 percent of the contributions to the ideas and the consummation of the plan was Canadian" - that according to Jimmy Carter, president at the time.
  
• A Beautiful Mind made John Nash completely straight, ignoring his sexual liaisons with men. It ignored the fact that he was a jerk who was seriously disliked by his coworkers, many of whom he bullied and harassed. It also omits his abuse of his wife, who divorced him in 1963.
  
• And don't get me started on historical travesties like Midway, and Pearl Harbor.
  

Regarding the Ghost in the Shell thing, I thought the plot was the character was literally nothing more than a brain inside a fully mechanical chassis shaped like a human body

How the fuck can an artificial body be asian?

If Mary Martin can play Peter Pan then Scarlett Johansson can play Dante Tex Gill. ~ Ken R at July 14, 2018 9:41 AM

I made a similar argument during the dust up about a white actor playing a half-white / half-Vietnamese bartender in Miss Saigon - to wit, "if Orson Welles can play Othello and Denzel Washington can play Hamlet, a white guy can play a half-white guy."

...you didn't see Will kissing other men much - if at all - or see him shirtless in bed with a man. Since he's the lead gay character, why the reserve?) ~ lenona at July 14, 2018 9:33 AM

If I remember correctly, not having seen much of the original and none of the second coming, the character was quite reserved and only newly out. So, some reserve on the screen may have been intended to amplify the character's reserve and shyness to the viewer.

It also may have to do with the fact that while a straight actor then might have played a gay character, his career could be trouble if he actually did anything gay. Laura Dern reported that after playing Ellen's love interest, she couldn't find work for a "good year" after the coming out episode.

Today, straight Eric Stonestreet can kiss his on-screen husband with few, if any, career repercussions, but Eric McCormack may not have had that freedom.

That's a valid argument, lujlp. But you also have to ask, if that's the case, why they altered Johansson's appearance so that she looked slightly Asian.

This is going to suck for the aspiring trans actors/actresses because they are going to be relegated to obscure -and pretentious- indie films, and maybe the occasional direct-to-video horror flick.

The lucky ones might get something on Netflix/Amazon, but beyond that I can't imagine them in something bigger than a cheap-looking musical such as Fox's remake of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Six, due to physical characteristics, they were already consigned to that strata of movie-dom. A "woman" with an Adam's Apple is simply not going to get the kind of play that a Scarlett Johansson or a Charlize Theron or a Margot Robie is; at least not for a while.

This crap is where the convenience of abbreviations comes in. For example:

"SJWs can SMD."

See, that was easy!

@Patrick I agree that it's likely the film is in jeopardy. There just aren't any Trans actors with the talent or popularity to carry a major film.

But by 'not end well' I meant that the relationship of Trans activists to the larger LGB community probably isn't going to end well. As you see in the comments to that article, and recent events in London, there is a big fight brewing and I don't see how it can be reconciled. My prediction is that when we begin to see a rash of suicides and self harm by the current generation of 'trans kids', people will wake up and realize that they've made a grave mistake.

> but about all the other cast
> and crew who have been on hold
> or would have been hired for
> this...will the mob be chipping
> in for their mortgages and their
> kids' dental expenses?

Y'know, Hollywood movies are such fantastically sketchy financial investments, and composed with so little regard for enrichment of their audiences and markets anyway, that no particular project ought to be attacked or defended on this basis.

WGAF if this woman makes this movie or that one? People concerned with right and wrong have better things to worry over.

At a certain point, this is like those (Catholic?) admonishments against masturbation because each sperm deserves a shot at becoming a beautiful Baptised baby....

@Patrick I agree that it's likely the film is in jeopardy. There just aren't any Trans actors with the talent or popularity to carry a major film.

But by 'not end well' I meant that the relationship of Trans activists to the larger LGB community probably isn't going to end well. As you see in the comments to that article, and recent events in London, there is a big fight brewing and I don't see how it can be reconciled. My prediction is that when we begin to see a rash of suicides and self harm by the current generation of 'trans kids', people will wake up and realize that they've made a grave mistake.

My prediction is that when we begin to see a rash of suicides and self harm by the current generation of 'trans kids', people will wake up and realize that they've made a grave mistake.

Admitting fault leaves them vulnerable to lawsuits. They will either double-down on the BS or pass the blame onto others.

The scummier bad actors of this mess on the other hand will be like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton: They find even more ways to profit from this.

Barbara, there's already a whole "drop the T" movement. In particular, many lesbians are sick of being told they are transphobic bigots if they aren't into dick.

Admitting fault leaves them vulnerable to lawsuits. They will either double-down on the BS or pass the blame onto others. - Sixclaws

This is why doctors groups still endorse circumcision

"Are gay men starting to feel 'cotton ceiling' pressure the way lesbians are?"

I get the impression -- I could be wrong, and off hand I can't find any data -- that there are far more men-identifying-as-women than there are women-identifying-as-men. If this is true, it probably won't become an issue for a while yet, if at all.

About John Simon:

As I remember, he's flat-out opposed to black actors playing, say, Hamlet, unless it's an all-black "Hamlet."

But, regarding Othello, there is a LOT of debate as to his ethnicity. "Moor" has more than one meaning, after all.

More on that, from 2012:

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/ben-arogundade/othello-shakespeare-ethnicity_b_1444790.html

By Ben Arogundade

First half or so:

William Shakespeare’s character Othello is generally regarded as a black African. But is this true? Could he have been an Arab or a Spanish Moor?

With the World Shakespeare Festival just beginning in London, a myriad of interpretations of the Bard’s work will be on show, including my book, The Shakespeare Mashup. One aspect still being debated amongst some Shakespeareans is that of the ethnicity of Shakespeare’s Othello. The answer may seem obvious, but is it? The differences of opinion center around exactly what the Bard intended by his use of the term “Moor” in describing his character’s ethnicity. The word is believed to have originated from the Greek term mauros, which means black. It was first used to describe the natives of Mauretania — the region of North Africa which today corresponds to Morocco and Algeria. It was later applied to people of Berber and Arab origin, who conquered and ruled the Iberian Peninsula — the area now known as Spain and Portugal — for nearly eight centuries. From the Middle Ages onwards the Moors were commonly regarded as black Africans, and the word was used alongside the terms “negro,” “Ethiopian” and “Blackamoor” as a racial identifier.

With these different interpretations in mind, the question is, what was William Shakespeare’s intent when he wrote Othello in 1603? The apparent ambiguity that surrounds the lead character’s ethnicity makes one wonder if it was a deliberate ploy used by Shakespeare to leave things open to theatrical interpretation. This is the same device used by Emily Brontë in Wuthering Heights. The reader is rendered unsure whether the character of Heathcliff is actually black, white or Other. Brontë simply describes him as “a Lascar” (an Indian seaman) and a “dark-skinned gipsy,” leaving the rest to us to interpret.

In Othello’s case this interpretation varies considerably. E.A.J Honigmann of the Arden Shakespeare edition, suggests that within the Elizabethan consciousness, the term “black,” as applied to Othello, could have meant, not sub-Saharan African, as it means today, but “swarthy,” which conceivably could also have suggested that Othello was a light-skinned Arab. If written today, post-9/11, one could imagine Shakespeare unequivocally casting the Moor as a bearded Arab Muslim.

Peter Ackroyd, author of Shakespeare - The Biography, is in no doubt about Othello’s ethnicity. “It is a mistake to consider Othello to be of African or West Indian origin,” he states. “He was of Moorish stock, olive-skinned, and Shakespeare portrays him as ‘black’ for the purposes of theatrical emphasis and symbolism.”

Ackroyd, who sees Othello as a Spanish Moor, points out that in the period in which Shakespeare was writing the play, he was aware of much that was going on within the politics of Spain...

(snip)

And the Puerto Rican actor Raul Julia (1940-1994) played Othello more than once - starting in 1979.

Btw, I saw the 1965 film - with Laurence Olivier in blackface, in a theater, maybe in the 1990s. Very good performance on his part, of course, but I doubt that they'll ever show that in more than a few tiny theaters again.

"I get the impression -- I could be wrong, and off hand I can't find any data -- that there are far more men-identifying-as-women than there are women-identifying-as-men."

Just ask around World of Warcraft or the other MMORPGs about online characters. GIRL stands for "Guy In Real Life", because it's fun to imagine being some hot chick without the real drama.

In French I am called "noiraud" ("blackie"), I have light olive skin and dark brown hair. It isn't even really black. Vikings with names along the lines of "Bjork the Black" have black or dark hair, it doens't mean they are subsaharan African.