(La traducción del texto es de Anna Aguilar)

Trans characters in the entertainment business, like in real life, are treated as secondclass individuals. Our voice and our reality is labeled as ‘capricious’ or ‘individual decision destined to a sad future’. Yet, in a short period of time, trans rights and the visibility of trans minors and their families has seen a considerable improvement. The pathologisation of trans people, the rights, and the myths and stereotypes we are fighting to debunk are being discussed today more than ever.

What about trans characters?
In a short period of time, the representation of trans people in fiction has experienced a drastic turnaround. Other than for some honourable exceptions, trans characters in the 90s and 2000s were characters of mockery, repulsion, or perfidious, insane and selfish. Jim Carrey showers and washes his face after realising he’d kissed a trans woman, the protagonist of The Crying Game (1993) throws up when he realises the sensual woman
he’s fallen in love with, Dil, has a penis, and Buffalo Bill kidnaps and skins women to make his own female body in The Silence of the Lambs. Trans characters were reduced to the still common ideology of being ‘men who want to be/dress up as women’. Other than Boys Don’t Cry (2000), and perhaps other few exceptions, the representation of boys born with a vagina was inexistent.

Felicity Huffman played the protagonist of ‘Transamerica’

Flash-forwarding a few years we find more complex characters, even protagonists. Lilly Elbe in The Danish Girl (2015) give us an account of the discovery of her true identity, battling with unwritten rules of what a woman and a female body entails and how that in turn affects her relationship with painter Gerda Wegener in the 20s’ artistic world. Transamerica (2005) takes us through the multi-layered transformative journey Bree experiences when she learns that she has a child merely a week before his genital intervention. This was one of the few fictions at the time in which a female actor interpreted a trans woman, since the few trans men roles that existed were usually played by women and trans women were played by men, such as Jared Leto’s Academy Award winning role as a sexual worker suffering from HIV in Dallas Buyers Club (2013).

Penises and penalties
Recently, actor Paco León was criticised for the advert of Netflix’s La case de las flores, in which he plays a trans woman. He published the provocative and tacky advert, showing him sat on the toilet with chest hair and a dramatic wig on his Instagram, leading to hundreds of comments on a debate that has been taking place for a few months: why aren’t trans actors playing trans roles? At this point, I will acknowledge why this struck me on a personal level. I worked as an actress in a theatre play (Lisístrata, directed by Jerôme Savary, 2010) for the Mérida Festival. It was my last job due to the fact that, despite going to castings as an actress (without the trans adjective), a rumour amongst the gossipers of the profession spread stating I had a penis. After finishing this project, I received many offers in which the ‘characters’ (in quotes, since the majority of these roles could barely be defined as characters) I played would have to, at some point, show their genitals, making them little more than ‘penises with boobs’ which served as a shock factor, created curiosity and expectation… and little more. It was a typical case of typecasting. Shortly after, I abandoned the acting world convinced the despite overcoming my lack of confidence as the woman I am and the obstacles of going to a casting having begun to socialise as a women later than the rest, there wasn’t a place for someone like me.

Transgender actress Jamie Clayton plays the role of Nomi (right), a hacker in a lesbian relationship

Everything for ‘the trans’, without ‘the trans’
I want to believe things are changing. There are complex characters in relevant fictional stories. The TV series world is a powerful contender for deep character development of trans characters, featuring series like Sense8 or Orange is the New Black with multidimensional characters. The trans community continues to raise its voice and make itself heard. Actress Leticia Dolera apologised after being recriminated on twitter for associating having a penis with being a man in her famous phrase of ‘fields of nobs’ in the Goya, and public figures have to give explanations for putting their foot in, whereas before they wouldn’t have even considered it. Nevertheless, the debate continues. Paco himself, now a film and TV series director, stated the most important thing is the increase of ‘trans’ characters, and constricting the interpretation of these roles to a certain group of people would only limit the freedom of creative vision. At the end of the day, the magic of fiction consists in making the fake believable.

This debate intensified last July after the announcement of Scarlett Johansson’s casting for a leading role as a trans man. After the angry response of the trans community on social media, Johansson decided not to interpret the role of Dante ‘Tex’ Gill in Rub & Tug. She had already suffered from the white-washing accusations regarding her role as Mayor Kusanagi, an asian character, in the film adaptation Ghost in the Shell (2017). The film was suspended after losing the backing of a such a popular actress. Back in 2014, the representation of a trans woman’s reality in Transparent received a positive reaction from the community despite the Maura’s role being portrayed by a cis actor. Yet the issue of representation has since then greatly evolved, and the debate is more alive now than ever before. As Sense8 actress Jamie Clayton states, “trans actresses and actors are never in the conversation: nobody places us in roles that aren’t trans, we can only audition for trans roles. And we’re not present in these either because there’s always more acknowledged actresses and actors who, by chance, aren’t trans yet are able to portray trans characters”. Even with the brutally harsh reality of the labour market for trans people, unemployment being at a piercing 80%, it turns out we can’t access those jobs which incise in the representation and symbolism of our own reality. The counter-arguments are the same as those used in Shakespeare’s England so that female roles would be interpreted by men and black characters were interpreted by white men in blackface.
1. There aren’t any trans actors with talent. In other words, we don’t get through the auditions because we don’t have the necessary aptitudes or preparation. Perhaps, similar to the glass ceiling faced by women, it’s a question of inexistent opportunities.
2. The actors who ‘sell’ projects aren’t trans. Of course—there are barely any famous trans actors due to the same lack of opportunities. Laverne Cox, actress of Orange is the New Black, made history for being the first trans woman to be nominated to an Emmy. Daniel Vega, protagonist of Una Mujer Fantástica, made history for being the first trans woman who went on stage at the Academy Awards. Two years before that, singer and songwriter Anohni, first Academy Awards nominee, announced she wouldn’t go to the gala due to the existing discrimination of trans voices in the entertainment business.
3. Trans actors can’t play cis characters because they don’t ‘pass’ as men and women: trans women have masculine bodies and voices, whilst the men aren’t convincing enough. This is a hairy issue because it’s a matter of widening the collective’s,i magination regarding the possible shapes and forms of being a woman, a man, etc. It could be that in some of these stories the ‘trans’ adjective isn’t the central focus of the characters conflict but rather one of their many enriching circumstances, adding dimension. The erroneous assumption that hinders this progress is that there is only one existing form of trans corporality. In any case, would anybody doubt that this actress could interpret a character that isn’t trans?

Nicole Maines, a young actress who will play the role of the first trans superhero for the tv series ‘Supergirl’.

4. It would be the same saying all gay and lesbian roles should be played exclusively by gays and lesbians. It is worth remembering that even today, in certain star systems of the entertainment business (which is a fruit of the capitalist and individualistic society—but that’s a topic for another long debate on the legitimacy of the term) famous figures are scared to make their sexual orientation public for fear of being typecast and consequently unable to land roles. In 2018, they are still at a disadvantage compared to their heterosexual colleagues.
Nevertheless, this comparison is pertinent beyond the fact that ordinary mortals do not distinguish between the ideas of sexual orientation and identity, ignoring, for example, that a trans person can be heterosexual, amongst others. The issue is with ‘the body’ and what is symbolises. If the bodies and expressions of male homosexual characters weren’t reduced to campness, if lesbians stopped being portrayed as truck drivers, perhaps then when we’d talk about trans representation we would reduce it to the representation of bodies with certain male or female characteristics. Or, like a journalist threatened recently after an interview, “if you don’t want poster to say that you’re trans but rather to state your profession, either you or someone body else will have to say that you are trans, because otherwise it will go unknown”. That is, the body has to be read as ‘trans’
according the social imaginary ‘Manolo’ associates it with. Hence, ‘trans’ people are only ‘trans’: ‘trans’ in profession, ‘trans’ in voice, ‘trans’ in expressions… trans in essence.
Yet things continue to move
The fiction industry and the artistic sectors (many are annoyed by the denomination of  ‘entertainment’, yet the major leagues of interpretation rely precisely on entertainment) keeps moving. It moves because we move, because we say stop, because we make ourselves heard, and also because we find allies with decision-making power who are willing to listen and learn. It is necessary for us to, above all, push towards the complex representations of trans people that go beyond stereotyping. The most primordial necessity is that we tell our own stories: screenwriters like Our Lady J, writer and producers like Janet Mock, film directors like Silas Howard (yes—the USA empire is at an advantage compared to Alba’s weak role in the Spanish show La que se avecina) have come together as a talent team with the ‘trans’ adjective to tell the stories of this community in the extremely valuable Pose (2018), piloted by almighty show runner Ryan Murphy. Pose is a fiction about LGTBI communities and the trans AIDS crisis in the 80s, where we discovered the truly talented actors: MJ Rodríguez, India Moore, Dominique Jackson… We have unknown realities that deserve to be told, researched, and fictionalised by us. A rich imaginary that is timidly becoming known and deserves to reach the general public. An opportunity to tear down myths that oppress us. And, why not? We need more opportunities to interpret all of that which has, up to now, been told and interpreted by other people.

*Aitzole Araneta
Basque. Sexologist, responsible for the department of equality of the Pasaia town hall.
Trans activist, feminist, and fighter of lost causes.