ELLE's transgender columnist Rhyannon Styles has her word on the film industry's latest offense:
Roll film. Lights, camera...
Pause.
Oh wait, is that a man? Is that a man wearing a dress and pretending to be a woman? Is it pantomime season already?
The film industry might perceive this as a non-issue, but for the trans community, the repeated casting of non-transgender actors in trans roles is tedious and offensive.
Last year, I wrote about Eddie Redmayne; cast as trans woman Lili Ebe in The Danish Girl. The year before, I spoke to my trans friends about Jared Leto playing a trans character in Dallas Buyers Club.
I understand the Hollywood machine – it's a business. Top actors are employed to sell movies and make people rich.
But, I'm angry.
Last week it was announced that, not one, but two new films have cast non-trans actors in trans roles. Not one, but two new films include a transgender story line, which is great, but then why not cast a transgender actor.
If this wasn't bad enough, one of the films is called (Re) Assignment, in which an assassin is forced to undergo gender reassignment surgery by a rogue doctor.
Bang.
Yet another trans character and storyline reduced to surgery and made all about genitalia.
If anyone is still of the opinion that a gender transition is as simple as a flick of the surgeon's knife, you are grossly misinformed.
Gender Reassignment Surgery is not something to have on a whim – it's a decision which takes years, an operation which takes months to recover from and a transition for which you need to psychologically and physically prepare yourself for for years, using hormones and therapy.
But, Hollywood thinks differently and have cast Michelle Rodriguez in the role of the post-op trans woman.
I don't care how stringent production teams think they have been about involving trans voices. The fact is, not enough trans faces are in front of the camera.
On the same day, Mark Ruffalo revealed he had cast Magic Mike XXL Matt Bomer is his new film Anything, in which Matt will play a sex worker.
Ouch.
So often, trans characters are stereotyped as hookers, waitresses, drug addicts, mistresses and fetish objects. Why are we continually portrayed this way?
When this news originally broke, and the trans community quite rightfully had something to say, so Ruffalo tweeted this:
This isn't a conversation, it's a one line script which hasn't been updated for years.
A trans woman is a woman. So Matt Bomer, has been wrongfully cast. He can't wear a dress and simply be 'transgender' – it doesn't work like that.
Discovering your own trans identity can take years, and it's only an experience which a trans person can relate to.
What I discovered over the four years I've transitioned, is that it isn't about clothes and make-up. I could have as many pencil skirts as I wanted, but it didn't make me female.
At the end of the day, once I've removed all my clothes and gone to bed naked, my trans identity and gender is my body.
Don't get me wrong, that fact that trans story lines are appearing more in the mainstream is the only silver lining to this discussion. But, it needs to change.
I'd like to see one of the many professional, trained, capable trans actresses cast in the leading role. As a woman, nothing else…
Is that such an impossibility?
Action!
Watch Rhyannon chronicle her road to gender reassignment surgery below:
