I'm kinda okay with a cis woman playing the lead, because first of all I'm a realist, this is Hollywood, they need big names to get funding to make it in the first place, and the lead character is pre-transition, so it's not as blatant of a problem as portraying a post-transition person who's been full-time for years with a cis actor/actress because it doesn't grossly misrepresent what we look and sound like as much.
I do think it's great that they're actually making a story about the transition of a trans guy. You guys get like NO representation in media whatsoever because society is so fixated on the transitions of trans women.
Everything else about the movie screams bad things to me, though.
The director's comments calling the lead character "a girl who is being herself" and "a girl who is presenting in a very ineffectual way as a boy" is hugely problematic in sending up red flags that the director doesn't actually understand trans people at all.
And judging by the trailer, which seems to make it seem like the ENTIRE movie is about the character's transition, I'm really afraid that this is going to share a lot of the same problems that the whole "Gender Novel" thing has in the book world... they're written by cis people for cis people about what being trans is like, although with no actual understanding of what real-life trans people are like.
http://thewalrus.ca/rise-of-the-gender-novel/One of the things I loved about more recent trans-themed shows/movies like "Boy Meets Girl" and "Transparent" is that they weren't just about transition, being trans was just one aspect of their lives, and not some grandoise Hercluean quest for self-acceptance with transition itself being the end of the hero's journey. Give the trans person some hopes, dreams, aspirations, defining personality traits where their gender is just one part of that. Acknowledge that transition is just the treatment of a medical condition that isn't the end goal of your life, it's the beginning of your life where you can finally pursue your life's purpose because gender doesn't constantly interrupt it anymore. Acknowledge that there's still struggles even after transition. Don't just make it some "oh poor me, I'm just fighting to be who I am, this is all I've ever wanted, I'd be so happy if you'd just let me do this ONE thing, PLEASE accept me" thing where it's meant to do nothing but engage the audience's sympathies.
Ever since I saw the Youtube video posted by the trans guy who was rejected from American Idol, (
http://tinyurl.com/p4j67z2 ) I can't help but think that Hollywood is basically cashing in on our stories because we're a trend right now, and they deliberately have a very specific type of trans person they're looking for because it's a type that their audience can "accept" and feel sympathy for even though it completely does not challenge their views on gender or sexuality or, you know, accepting gender diversity for what it is, a spectrum, rather than only showing the stories of those who are white, middle-class, fit into a narrow box of gendered stereotypes, always felt that way, and are completely compliant woobies who don't challenge or lash out at the big bad system, they're just little puppy dogs that just want your acceptance, oh socially-progressive white cis viewing audience. Accept me! Please!
Those are my problems with it. Show me some defining character traits and diversity that go beyond turning the character into a walking token trans person where being trans is the only aspect of their character, and show me that the writer actually understands what it's like to be trans, they're not just writing a "trans story" that liberal Hollywood can pat itself on the back for for being so "progressive" when in fact it grossly misrepresents what it's actually like to be trans, and then I'll be excited.
