A pivotal moment
Another thing stolen from women:
The category is: making history. Mj Rodriguez has become the first transgender performer to pick up an Emmy nomination in a major acting category.
Rodriguez is nominated in the lead drama actress category for her fierce and formidable portrayal of house mother and nurse Blanca Rodriguez on FX’s ballroom culture period drama “Pose.” It is her first-ever attention from the Television Academy.
“I do believe this is a pivotal moment. There’s never been a trans woman who has been nominated as a leading outstanding actress and I feel like that pushes the needle forward so much for now the door to be knocked down for so many people — whether they be male or trans female, gender nonconforming, LGBTQIA+, it does not matter,” Rodriguez told Variety. “A moment like this extends and opens and elongates the possibilities of what’s going to happen and I believe the Academy is definitely making it possible and their eyes are more than open. Yes, I do believe they’re going to continue, and I also feel like we’re going to keep speaking and encouraging and informing and educating people around the world. I think that’s the most important thing.”
That’s a nomination that a woman won’t get, because a man got it. The door that’s being knocked down is the one that kept men out of women’s Emmy nominations, which is a door that didn’t need knocking down. Women have enough trouble just getting parts at all, let alone award nominations; there is no need for men who identify as women to grab some of those few nominations. Giving a woman’s award nomination to a man is not a yay hooray progressive move, it’s a punch in the face to women.
This nomination marks a significant step for LGBTQIA-plus representation — and specifically trans representation — at the Emmys.
No, it marks a significant backward step for female representation.
I’ve always thought contests that do NOT involve physical strength shouldn’t separate the sexes anyway. It’s wrong to give a man a woman’s spot, but I think it’s condescending and unnecessary to have separate women’s spots in acting contests, as if we couldn’t fairly compete against men in them.
I know the point is that hopefully good interesting roles will be written for women if there are separate women’s acting awards, but it pretty clearly doesn’t work that way.
Well no I think the point is that if there were no separate categories for women, women would win zero awards.
I would agree with Ophelia, since so many of the awards that are single category are almost never won by women; the first woman winning a Tony for best director was recent, and I think there have only been 2 others. Screenwriting rarely goes to women for Oscars, and playwriting awards rarely go to women.
It isn’t that we can’t compete on a fair playing field; it’s that the playing field is not fair because the deck is stacked for men.
This also compounds the issue of female actors who age out of screen roles. While Christine Baransky continues to get roles, and a few others, women tend to not get offered roles once they have passed their “last fuckable day” as parodied in a clip by Amy Schumer, Tina Fey, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Patricia Arquette.
https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2016/05/amy-schumer-last-fuckable-day
These “groundbreaking hero” men who get women’s roles will not have a last fuckable day since their womanhood is all an illusion as it is. I think we all know that older men like to get cast with love interests who are much younger than themselves and producers go along with it. It won’t be an issue for actors like MJ because men won’t see him as a love interest for anyone.
Sidenote: On Netflix Judi Dench stars as a spy in the movie “Red Joan.” There are flashbacks in which her character is played by a young woman whose eventual husband is a middle-aged man. It marred for me what was an otherwise excellent movie.
This is wrong, but it feels much less bad to me than the elbowing out of women from competitive sports, for various reasons. One is that acting awards are subjective in a way that sporting awards aren’t. Another is that men don’t have the same physical advantages in acting that they do in sport. (Though I take Ophelia’s point that the system is tilted in favour of men.) But more to the point I wouldn’t be so sorry if Emma Watson, say, missed out on an award because it went to a trans woman instead. It might bring home to celebrity airheads the injustice involved.
I actually think that makes them worse in a way. It gives men a way to elbow women out without actually having to demonstrate they are “better”. Women can just be removed, and don’t have a way to contest the award, like having speed records or anything else.
I do think transwomen are not likely the future of acting, as most people are not going to accept an obvious male body in a female role except when they are trying to mock women. That’s been commonplace. Or perpetuate a stereotype, like ugly, enormous feminist women.
Right. The difference between acting and athletics is that in a world blind to sex, statistically an equal number of men and women would win acting awards, and men would win nearly all the athletic awards. But we do not live in such a world, and never have, and perhaps never will. (Maybe in 800 years, if there's still a world.)
Well, it was standard in Shakespeare’s time. We’re going backwards.
Consistency only works in one direction for TRAs.
Knickers are twisted, nails were broken, and suicides reach record levels at the mere thought of a (shudder) woman being cast as a trans character. Only trans can play trans, we are told.
Fine, let them have their win. Trans roles for trans actors, womens’ roles for female actors.
Roj, while we’re at it, only doctors can play doctors. Only killers can play killers. Only custodians can play custodians. Only Nazis can play Nazis.
This could go on forever; reductio ad absurdum for fun or profit.
Is this why Howard Stern played himself in Private Parts?
Questionnaire: If a movie were to be made of your life, which actor would play you?
Me: That’s a Mikephobic question and I refuse to answer it.