I’m a little upset that they (Lifetime, and Sony Pictures) have chosen a male actor for the role of Gwen Araujo. I just don’t get the point of it – why not have a girl play her? Gwen did not experience 20 years of testosterone, and she never lived as a man at all. Maybe as a boy, but even that – very briefly. Shoot, she didn’t get to live long at all, much less as either gender.
Not only does it make me sad but it frustrates me, too. I just think, after all she went through, we might have given her that. But of course, not everyone agrees with me.
The guy they cast may do a good job, but still.
Years ago I wrote a paper about how I was tired of books about women where the heroine of the story died at the end. I think I’d just read Chopin’s The Awakening, but it could have been lots of others. When do strong women get to live? was the final line of the paper, and now, (ahem) years later, I find myself asking the same thing about transpeople in movies.