{"id":368454,"date":"2019-09-30T07:00:22","date_gmt":"2019-09-30T11:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newmusicusa.wpengine.com\/?p=368454"},"modified":"2021-06-04T16:45:56","modified_gmt":"2021-06-04T16:45:56","slug":"towards-a-framework-for-responsible-trans-casting-part-4-the-framework","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newmusicusa.org\/nmbx\/towards-a-framework-for-responsible-trans-casting-part-4-the-framework\/","title":{"rendered":"Towards a Framework for Responsible Trans Casting Part 4: The Framework"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brin Solomon & Aiden Feltkamp<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is Part 4 of a four-part series. We strongly encourage you to read Parts 1<\/a>, 2<\/a>, and 3<\/a> before continuing.<\/em><\/p>\n

Preamble<\/strong><\/p>\n

We\u2019re almost done. Having laid out some trans theory and heard from trans practitioners, we\u2019re about to lay out a framework for responsible trans casting in singing theater.<\/p>\n

We intend this to be a minimal framework, in two senses. First, we have kept the number of guidelines to a minimum, balancing thoroughness with flexibility to produce something that is clear and concrete while also being adaptable to a wide variety of on-the-ground circumstances. Second, however, we want to emphasize that this is not a maximum standard to aspire to, but a minimal bar that must be reached. Following this guide cannot guarantee you will make good<\/em> trans representation, but it will hopefully help you avoid making bad<\/em> trans representation.<\/p>\n

We recognize that as culture changes, so do the boundaries between the acceptable and the reprehensible.<\/div>\n

We recognize that as culture changes, so do the boundaries between the acceptable and the reprehensible. Swastikas mean something different on contemporary US white-supremacist rally flags than they did in 12th-century Buddhist iconography. We know how things stand where and when we are; we do not know how things are in every single other place, nor can we anticipate how things will change in the future. We offer this guide to those who share our cultural context; writers working outside it will need to adapt it to the specifics of their own surroundings.<\/p>\n

Please don\u2019t refer to this as the Feltkamp-Solomon Test or any similar moniker. We may be the two people putting these words in this order, but this guide has grown from innumerable conversations, formal and informal, with other trans people over the course of years of our lives. This document is inseparable from the community it emerges from.<\/p>\n

That said, we are under no illusions as to the unity of trans communities. We anticipate that other trans people will disagree with us\u2014indeed, the writers do not even agree with each other<\/em> on all things trans related. We welcome this disagreement and look forward to engaging with it. We offer this guide as part of an ongoing conversation, an attempt to publicly draw together numerous threads into a document for others to remark upon, critique, and add nuance to.<\/p>\n

In particular, we know that not all trans people will agree that cis people have any business writing trans characters at all.[1<\/a>] While we are sympathetic to this position, and while cis writers\u2019 track record is far from exemplary here, we feel we must disagree. Trans actors need jobs. Cis writers should not be exempt from the work of dismantling transphobia. The stories you see shape the worlds you can imagine, and we do not wish to encourage cis people to keep imagining worlds in which we do not exist. To forbid cis writers from writing trans characters is, in some ways, to forbid cis writers from imagining trans people as real, complex human beings, which, we feel, casts trans people as an unknowable Other. We find this profoundly dehumanizing.[2<\/a>]<\/p>\n

Cis writers should not be exempt from the work of dismantling transphobia.<\/div>\n

This obviously raises the much larger issue of which writers are \u201callowed\u201d to tell which stories. Discussions of this question frequently lack even a rudimentary understanding of structural power imbalances between marginalized and non-marginalized groups. This lack inevitably dooms them to confusion. To put it bluntly, asking who is \u201callowed\u201d to write which stories without analyzing the power imbalances at play is rather like doing a harmonic analysis by looking only at the bass drum part\u2014you\u2019re simply missing critical information.<\/p>\n

Analyzing the underlying power imbalances reveals facile accusations of having unfair double standards\u2014if cis actors can\u2019t play trans characters, why can trans actors play cis characters?\u2014for the vacuities that they are. These purported equivalencies fall flat because cis people and trans people are not equivalently situated in society: cis people have far more structural power. Trans actors cannot have stable careers if they aren\u2019t cast by cis directors. Trans writers cannot reliably get their work produced without cis producers. Trans artists of all stripes depend on the support of cis-led institutions. The most prominent stories about trans lives, stories that have real consequences for how safely we are able to live those lives<\/a>, are overwhelmingly created and controlled by cis people. In all cases, the reverse is not true. Until this changes\u2014until we root out transphobia at every level, dismantle these pervasive inequities, and create a society truly founded on Justice\u2014it is absurd to propose there is any double standard to questioning cis writers\u2019 ability to write trans characters without also questioning trans writers\u2019 ability to write cis characters.[3<\/a>] Build utopia, then we\u2019ll talk.<\/p>\n

This brings us to the scare quotes we have been putting around \u201callowed.\u201d That phrasing crops up often, but it is fundamentally misleading. There is no all-powerful trans cabal whose permission you must secure before undertaking a new work. No one can stop you from writing whatever you want. Indeed, judging by Tootsie<\/a><\/em>\u2019s Tony nominations and American Opera Projects\u2019 continued pride<\/a>[4<\/a>] in Three Way<\/a><\/em>, you may even be richly rewarded for it. The success of these shows (and many others like them) should put to rest any fears from cis people that they will not be \u201callowed\u201d to write about trans people.<\/p>\n

If you do not care whether your art hurts people, we cannot help you.<\/div>\n

A better framing of this question is to ask not who is allowed<\/em> to write what, but who is able<\/em> to do so without hurting members of a marginalized group<\/em>. If you do not care whether your art hurts people, we cannot help you. Nor can we help you if you refuse to believe trans people when we tell you what hurts us. But if you do<\/em> care, and if you are<\/em> willing to listen, we hope that the guide below will help you tell trans stories responsibly.<\/p>\n

The Framework<\/strong><\/p>\n

This framework has two tiers. The first tier is a bar to clear\u2014any production that cannot meet it may be presumed transphobic with no further analysis. The second tier is a series of questions, each of which is a common red flag. The more you answer yes to, the more likely your show will hurt trans people. If you answer no to all of them, you are likely fine. If you answer yes<\/em> to all of them, you should almost certainly not proceed as planned.<\/p>\n

There is a difference between playing with a single match over your kitchen sink and playing with a flamethrower in a propane factory.<\/div>\n

As will be discussed at more length below, it is possible to handle most of these things well, and we certainly don\u2019t mean to imply that any show that does any of these things must<\/em>, necessarily, be transphobic. But there is a difference between playing with a single match over your kitchen sink and playing with a flamethrower in a propane factory. Handling these things well is difficult<\/em>, and cis people, not having lived these experiences, are starting at a considerable disadvantage. Attempt them at your peril.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

Tier 1: The Bar To Clear<\/strong><\/p>\n

Any trans character in your show must be played by a trans actor, and, where applicable, that actor\u2019s assumed gender at birth must match the character\u2019s assumed gender at birth.<\/em><\/p>\n

Any trans character in your show must be played by a trans actor<\/div>\n

The reasons why it is unacceptable to cast a cis actor in a trans role have been<\/a> covered<\/a> extensively<\/a> elsewhere<\/a>, so we will not reiterate that reasoning here. If you still feel that you do not understand why this is important, we ask that you simply believe us when we tell you what we need.<\/p>\n

The second clause, however, requires explication. In recent years, there have been several instances where a trans man, for example, has been hired to play the role of a trans woman. We are surprised that cis<\/em> people need to hear that men and women are, in fact, different, but here we are: Men and women are different, and one cannot simply be subbed in for the other. As Brin has articulated elsewhere<\/a>, doing so not only confuses cis people about what basic terms like trans man<\/em> mean (thus undoing countless painstaking educational efforts by trans activists) but also encourages audiences to misgender the actor, the character, or both.<\/p>\n

Human beings are complex creatures, however, and we wish to respect that complexity. Insisting that an actor\u2019s gender exactly match<\/em> their character\u2019s would trample this complexity, potentially forcing, for example, a transmasculine actor to hide his nonbinary identity lest he be precluded from playing a trans man in a new show. Such rigidity would also give rise to interminable, unanswerable disputes about whether, say, a transfeminine agender person is the same gender as a transfeminine neutrois person, disputes that would only grow more intractable when it comes to contemporary actors playing historical figures. While grouping trans people by gender assumed at birth may, understandably, be uncomfortable for some, we believe that this approach strikes a reasonable balance between respecting the differences among different kinds of trans people and allowing for the multifaceted fluidity of specific individuals.<\/p>\n

That said, there are many situations where a character\u2019s assumed gender at birth may be nonexistent or irrelevant. Your show may involve a Biblical angel, the Personification of the Abstract Concept of Forgetfulness, or a singing loaf of bread\u2014all cases where gender assumed at birth does not apply. Or your show may involve a character that must<\/em> be nonbinary, but whose gender assumed at birth does not matter to the drama at hand.[5<\/a>] Your show may well read differently depending on whether you cast an AFAB or an AMAB actor in such cases, just as your show may read differently if you cast a bombastic actor to play your villain or a calculating one. Every individual actor will bring a unique energy to the roles they play; that energy will naturally be shaped, in greater and lesser ways, by many different aspects of their being. We cannot anticipate every possible production of every possible show; we trust creative teams to know what they need in their actors for the dramas they are creating to make sense.<\/p>\n

Tier 2: The Ten Questions<\/strong><\/p>\n

These ten questions represent the most frequent and pernicious possibilities of bad trans writing.<\/div>\n

Tier 1 had more to do with casting than writing. In Tier 2, we\u2019ll reverse that. These questions are not presented in any particular order, and nor do they exhaust the possibilities of bad trans writing. We included ten questions because ten is a round number, and we included these<\/em> ten because they represent the most frequent and pernicious tropes that the actors and writers interviewed for this series complained about. Here they are:<\/p>\n