I have chosen to discuss the Arts Issue that is ‘are there enough opportunities for Transgender individuals in mainstream media?’ the reason that I want to discuss this issue is because I am extremely passionate about the topic, due to the fact that I am in fact a transgender individual and I am aware of the fact that there is a limited amount of opportunities for my community within mainstream media. This affects me greatly as I want to take up a career in acting in the future, and I fear that I won’t be able to receive fair treatment when auditioning. I will be talking about four main points, that all relate to my issue, including ‘Transgender Stereotypes’ ‘Cisgender people playing Transgender roles’ ‘Lack of Trans people being cast in film’ and ‘How a lack of trans people is effecting society’ I have gathered a variety of both secondary and primary evidence to be able to both support and contradict my own opinion.

My first point that I will be discussing is the issue that Transgender people are usually stereotyped within media, often is negative ways. I have witnessed many circumstances where transgender people are associated with negative connotations, they’re seen as deceptive, overly sympathised and are often the ‘butt’ of the joke, especially in many comedies. An example of this would be when I was looking into the TV show family guy, where they dealt with a transgender character in one of their episodes. The episode had an instant where, after one of the characters discovered that the women he had sex with was a Transgender woman, he proceeded to vomit continuously on the floor. Obviously, this specific TV show isn’t afraid to make fun of any group of people, however this is still a clear example of setting up the idea for an audience that transgender people are disgusting and that they are not seen in the same light as cisgender women. In fact throwing up after finding out someone is transgender is actually more common than people assume in films(such as Ace Ventura and The Crying Game) A YouTuber named ‘Rantasmo’ discussed this episode and pointed out that ‘transgender characters, particularly trans women, have an unfortunate history of being portrayed, not only as objects of disgust, but deceit’ this is a fair point that he has raised, and is very accurate particularly when it comes to either very comedic pieces of media, or overly dramatized films regarding transgender people. He further explains that ‘their identities are used as plot twists, and in the most malicious examples, they’re portrayed as traps that straight, cisgender men fall into’ Having seen these tropes in television as a younger transgender person, has definitely impacted the way I view my own gender, as well as I’m sure it effects many other people as well. I personally feel disheartened at some of the crude ways in which my community is represented, and I feel as though I’m being seen as disgusting and the ‘butt’ end of a joke.

The man in the video did bring up the example of a Thriller film called The Crying Game (1992) and he actually argues the point that he ‘actually feels like this is probably the most sympathetic example of this trope to date. Like, yeah, Fergus does the barfing thing, but he gets over it relatively quickly and he even ends up staying in the relationship. The whole thing’s framed as more of a misunderstanding than an outright deception’ After watching the movie, I can agree that this movie has handled the idea of transgender women better than other pieces of media, as she isn’t treated solely like someone who is disgusting and deceptive. However, to argue my point, I would like to point out that perhaps if there was an actual transgender person involved in the making of this movie, the throwing up scene could have been taken out leading to a less offensive stereotype placed onto the community. The final point he raises is that ‘there are a lot of reviews from ’92 calling Dil (the trans woman) a transvestite or a gay man in drag’ This is because the movie doesn’t try and differentiate the difference between someone who is trans and someone who is a man in drag, and to this date there are still misconceptions about trans women just being men in drag. Fortunately, there is more of a distinction now, where programs such as ‘Butterfly’ are being made to show that difference, however there is still a way to go.

I read an article from The Guardian who wrote about a transgender woman called Aneesh Sheth, and her experience with not fitting a stereotype of a transgender woman. When auditioning for the part, she got a call from the director saying that her skill set was fine but she ‘wasn’t masculine enough’ for the role and ended up casting a man. After this occurrence, Sheth said herself ‘you spend all this time developing your sense of self. Then you go into the room, and the criticism is not about your work. It becomes about your identity.” The fact that Sheth had to deal with this is a clear example of how the media accepts transgender people to fit a certain ‘look’ and often promotes damaging misconceptions about trans identity.

I created a poll for my primary research where I asked the question ‘do you think the media gives an accurate representation of transgender people in film?’ 70 out of 71 people stated that they didn’t feel that the media represents the transgender community accurately. Due to the fact that these people were directly connected to the LGBTQ community, tells us that they’re not being represented in a way that is accurate. To find out if other people thought the same way (as I can identify that perhaps these opinions are biased) I decided to give out another questionnaire which included the same question, the majority of people said that they were unsure, a quote from one of these people said that ‘it’s not really something I know about however they do seem to stereotype as with many other characters in film’ this shows that many people do not know much about the issue at hand, which not only shows that there isn’t accurate representations, but also shows that there is a lack of media pieces that actually show any representation at all of transgender people.

My final view on this point is that I believe that media has come far in regard to its representation towards transgender individuals. However, I still believe that there needs to be improvement, and there needs to be a more accurate representation of trans people in the media, having more trans people involved in the making of movies to make sure that these directors create a more accurate view on the transgender community.

For my second argument I would like to discuss some of the issues with cisgender (meaning someone who isn’t transgender) people playing transgender characters, and how this is affecting aspiring Transgender actors. Firstly, I would like to look at the primary evidence that I was able to collect to see what people think of cisgender people playing transgender roles in movies. When giving a questionnaire to multiple individual (most who weren’t a part of the LGBTQ community) I asked the question ‘Do you think a transgender character should be played by a cisgender individual?’ Surprisingly, when looking back at the results, there was an equal amount of people who answered both yes and no to this particular question, which shows that it is definitely a topic that has divided opinions. When people said that trans characters could be played by cisgender people, the majority of people used the argument that it should be about the actor’s skill set and not the fact that they’re transgender, for example someone wrote in their answer ‘Surely it should be about the acting abilities of the actor rather than their gender. Isn’t it up to the actors and directors to research etc. so they play a character accurately’ Personally I do believe that this is a valid argument, and definitely something that I would’ve opposed immediately before creating this research. I do believe that if someone was a terrible actor they shouldn’t be cast just because they were transgender, on the other hand, in regards to the research that this quote talks about, I believe that by maybe not having a transgender person playing the part, but rather having a transgender director or someone who is able to put their input forward about how to go about transgender issues, so that there is less misleading views on transgender people. When looking at a quote from one of the people that though transgender people should play transgender characters they said that ‘a transgender person would have the experience and insight to convey the correct attributes for that character. Basically, they are living the life every day and so would be the best person for the job’ I also agree with this statement, as it is obvious that a transgender person would be able to bring more of the emotion to their performance, perhaps making it more believable as they have gone through it themselves. It is definitely ideal for a transgender person to play a transgender role as they would have that extra knowledge on issues such as gender dysphoria and what it’s actually like to be transgender, whereas a cisgender person wouldn’t truly know what it is like to experience such a thing.

When looking at some of the secondary research that I was able to gather, I came across a certain article that was titled ‘Hollywood Has a Long History of Casting Cis People as Trans Characters’ where it gave a list of movies where a cisgender person would play a transgender character, as well as include the feedback these movies got. Two movies I would like to mention are Boys Don’t Cry (1999) and The Danish Girl (2015). Hillary Swank, a cisgender female was cast to play the role of a transgender boy named Brandon Teena. This sparked a huge amount of backlash, protests and debate about its representation and many critiques pointed out that the film constantly mis-gendered Teena and it highlights the violence against the transgender community whilst failing to educate its audience on how to address such a crucial issue the film so heavily covered. From watching the film I can see how this would definitely scare a lot of young trans people watching from coming out, due to the focus on such violent acts that do in fact happen, which is fine to add an arc within film, however I believe that if a transgender person was involved in the making of the movie, there would have been an addition to the movie, explaining how to handle these situations, as they would have been more educated about being transgender. On the other hand, when looking at The Danish Girl, the main transgender character was played by Eddie Redmayne, who when researching the role of his character he went out there to interview 6 different transgender women as well as reading the characters biography ‘Man Into Woman’ this definitely helped his performance as a whole as he was extremely respectful, and captured the emotion felt by the actual person whom this movie was based on, there is the issue that critics did focus on, being that The Danish Girl centres more heavily around David Ebershoff’s fictionalised novel based on the woman’s experience than it does her autobiography. Personally, I believe that overall this is one of the greatest representations of a transgender woman in film, and I can say that Redmayne portrayed the character with the upmost respect, which has been able to shift my overall opinion slightly on the idea that all trans characters should be played by transgender people.

To elaborate more on this point, I want to look at a list I found when trying to find out if there is a lack of actual transgender actors (https://www.imdb.com/list/ls072599514/) I discovered, that there is a high amount of talented transgender actors that are able to fill these parts of trans individuals in film. There is no excuse for not casting these individuals, as not only are they skilled actors and actresses, but they also have the experience and emotions behind what it is like to be transgender, making a more believable representation of the community. After discovering this list, I was left with the question, ‘why aren’t more trans actors portraying these trans characters, when there isn’t a lack of talented trans people out there?’ and from seeing many of these people perform, I can say that many of them have the talent to be able to act well, to answer the question; I believe that this is because, linking to my past point, many of them do not fit that ‘stereotype’ of transgender people.

Overall, I still think that it would be ideal for a transgender person to play a role of a transgender character, and through my research I have found that there are many actors within the community, to which they could really influence younger trans actors who want that representation. However, I do believe that an actor should be skilled to play the role, and if those skills happen to belong to a cisgender actor, I don’t see why that should be an issue, as long as there is a transgender person involved with the making of the film, or have the actors (Such as Eddie Redmayne did for his role in The Danish Girl) talk to people who are in fact transgender. An example of a not transgender show that did this would be the company in charge of Key Change, who interviewed and gathered information from women who were in a female prison, to create a more accurate performance. By having the same research about a transgender topic would greatly decrease the insensitive material that is sometimes produced by these media producers, as a transgender person would know what is disrespectful to the community.

Thirdly, I would like to discuss the issue that there is a lack of transgender people, as a whole, within film and media. For this point I am going to be primarily focusing on the lack of transgender people being cast for any role within the media, rather than previously where I talked primarily of cisgender people taking roles of transgender individuals. For this I looked at statistics from TheGayTimes, showing the lack of LGBTQ representation within media over the last few years. I discovered that there hasn’t been much progression in the depiction of LGBTQ characters since 2014, where in the past three years – out of 400 popular films – only one transgender person appeared. So, despite acceptance within society, improving in certain ways, and the belief that there is more representation of transgender people shows to be far from the truth. The fact that there was only one transgender individual in film over three years, shows the fact that the public isn’t being shown the appearances of transgender people as much as the community would like, meaning that there aren’t enough opportunities for transgender people within film, and we still have a long way to go in regards to opportunities for not just transgender people, but the whole LGBTQ community.

When looking at the Guardian, there were other stories and quotes from different transgender actors, talking about the lack of transgender people being cast in roles within the media, for example the article talks about how the trans actors interviewed said it can be a struggle to get auditions for trans or cis roles, that they get offered two dimensional characters that perpetuate stereotypes and that they sometimes face offensive comments about their appearances, bodies and identity. This shows that the issues don’t just sit with trans people not playing trans roles, but it is also a challenge to receive any role if someone is found to be transgender.

When looking at my Primary evidence, many people agreed that there wasn’t enough representation of transgender people within the media, both trans characters as well as just trans actors having the opportunity to act in film. When giving out a questionnaire to the public, 14 out of 21 people stated that they believe there isn’t enough representation of transgender people in film, showing the majority feel as though there should be more trans people being cast. A quote from one of these people said that ‘It took me a while to even think of a film or programme with a transgender actor/actress… Having said that it is becoming less taboo, so this may change’ This quote shows that there is in fact a lack of transgender people being cast within film, and although this person said that it is improving, from the statistics that I found previously, it shows that is not necessarily the case. On the other hand, you could argue that it is in fact becoming less taboo, and people might not know if someone if trans when watching a movie because they are not out as such.

Overall, I believe that there is still a lack of transgender people within the media, and there needs to be more support within the industry so that younger transgender actors do not fear going to an audition. Although I can accept the fact that there is improvement regarding the appearances of transgender people in media, especially the news and other forms of non-fiction, I still believe there is a lot of room for improvement regarding the openness of allowing trans people to be a part of the acting community, and giving them roles that expand further from the stereotypes given to transgender individuals.

My fourth point is focussing on the effect that the lack of transgender people in the media is causing within society as well as individual people in and out of the LGBTQ community, to try and support this argument I went and found articles and statistics that look into people’s overall views on gender and the Trans community. An article written by Tea Uglow (Thursday 8 March 2018) takes society’s ignorance to gender and compares it to peoples understanding of the Universe, a quote from the article says ‘Five hundred years ago, people believed the sun orbited the Earth. Today we are just as ignorant about transgender people’ after reading this, I found myself asking questions about why people are able to accept the unknown aspects of space, which we our unable to see with our own eyes, but people are confused about people being a different gender than what they were born with. The argument is that, us now think that people who believed in old ideologies of space, were ignorant and didn’t know how the world works, and how the same applies to people who are transgender; people who view transgender as wrong and think that people shouldn’t ‘choose’ this path, are full of the same ignorance of people that denied the observations of the universe. Now the question is, how did people become more aware of space? Through research, being talked about and being shown in media such as books. This is why it is almost necessary to give more opportunities for Transgender people to be in movies and the media, as I believe it will affect society greatly, as it would allow them to see these transgender individuals as normal people, and the more the media normalises trans people i.e. allowing them to play any roles and not having such a dramatization on the issue, the more people will understand that this community exists and are not harming anyone. Additionally by having more transgender people in the media, society will realise that ‘Trans identity is not new – it is only a surprise because we suppressed it for so long’ 

Further research that I collected was from an article written by German Lopez, where he has collected statistics from people in the US and what their views are on Transgender people. The first question that was asked is the one that personally I believe to be the most important, and it was asking how favourable are people’s views on certain communities within society, although the majority of Americans held favourable opinions of members of all noted groups, ‘they tended to hold more unfavourable views towards trans people’ this is a continuous occurrence throughout the article, where the majority think that ‘gay people are born that way while trans people are not’ and although respondents stated that they wouldn’t be upset if their child came out as transgender there were ‘more negative views for trans people’ This is why we need more accurate representations of transgender people within the media, to change these opinions to be more in favour of transgender people.

When gathering my Primary evidence, I wanted to find out how the lack of transgender people being cast for roles affected some people. I first asked people related to the LGBTQ community, about ‘How has the lack of Trans people in the media affected you personally?’ and I have discovered that everyone who answered said that having a lack of transgender people in movies has affected some people’s confidence and own personal lives. For example, a quote from one of the participants said ‘My mums transphobic so it would be nice if there was more trans issues covered in tv shows so she can get used to the fact that we’re good people’ This could apply to both having trans characters being shown in film, as well as just having transgender actors playing roles, as it would raise the possibilities of  people like that getting used to the idea that trans people do exist and that they are no different from other people. Additionally, someone stated that the lack of transgender people being cast in films ‘makes me feel more alienated than I already feel.’ which is something that many younger transgender people feel already (knowing from experience and communicating with other trans individuals) and by just having a transgender actor present within a piece of media would definitely increase my own confidence in the acting community.

Overall, I believe that people not being aware of transgender people is due to the fact that there is a lack in the normalisation of transgender communities within media. To which I mean, there needs to be more people playing roles that either aren’t about a transgender person, or that shows the normality of being trans and how it shouldn’t have to effect the people watching. By having more representation, not only will this occur, but more young trans actors won’t have to fear going to auditions and they wouldn’t feel like an outcast from the rest of society.

I set out to research the question that is ‘Are there enough opportunities for Transgender individuals in mainstream media’ and how this issue effects people that are a part of the community, as well as people who may be less familiar with the topic. I have researched into the stereotypes of Transgender individuals, as well as how many Trans people are actually in media, and has it been improving.

By gathering all of this research, I wouldn’t say that my opinion on the matter has changed entirely as I still believe that the film industry has a long way to go in regard to allowing more trans actors to play parts in movies, and through my research I have seen that a lot of people feel the same way as myself. On the other hand, I feel as though I am more lenient in the fact that Cisgender people can play Transgender characters, as people who brought up this point raised a good argument saying that, any actor should be able to play a role because it should be reliant on their skill set rather than who they are as a person. While my opinion has changed, and I am more open to that idea, I do still strongly believe that a Transgender person should be present when writing a film script so that there is a clear understanding on how to go about the issue in a respectful way that doesn’t deceive their audience. I also still believe that there needs to be more opportunities for Transgender actors in general, to play either Trans parts or ‘normal’ roles, as there is still a fear in the Trans community that they may be shut down for a role because of the fact that they are Trans (which I discovered through my primary evidence)

I don’t believe that when combining both my secondary and primary evidence there was a lack of information that I was able to find as I got a wide variety of views that can help with creating more statistics that fill in the gaps of my Secondary evidence. However, as I said before I wasn’t able to find many opposing views within my secondary evidence, which lead to me having to rely more on my Primary evidence for that sort of information, and I believe with more time I may have been able to discover a wider range of information about my four main points.Overall, I am happy with the amount of information that I found, and I believe that I was able to create an accurate argument that involve a wide range of views.