Scarlett Johansson backed down from playing the transman after all, and said that she's learning. One can doubt her sincerity and think that she did this to save her Black Widow movie. I'm still side-eyeing her. There's a lot of clueless internet comments from people thinking that she was "bullied" into withdrawing from the part and that "sensitivity" has gone amuck. But that's bullshit. She didn't even fucking look like the guy she was supposed to portray. Not remotely.
Hollywood has been making movies and TV shows about trans people for years now, profiting off them and getting Oscars and Emmys for the people that Johansson's rep listed in her stupid comeback. How many fucking years are trans people supposed to sit by watching all these great parts go to cis-actors, while they in turn don't get to play cis roles? I'm even appalled that Louie Anderson is playing a woman on the cable show Baskets; all I ever see is critics praising him for doing a brilliant homage to his mother, and not one person questions why the hell he's stealing a role from older actresses, who have to fight for any meaty good roles.
Yellow face and black face in Hollywood's past isn't acceptable anymore, and that's what we're talking about, privileged people stealing from underrepresented minorities who never had the chance to play the lead character. It's like fucking Luise Rainer getting that part in the Good Earth instead of Anna May Wong, who paid her dues for years playing stereotypes and dragon ladies. She had to go to Europe and China itself to get anything worthwhile, because of Hollywood's racism. I mean you wonder why it took 70 years to get the first Asian woman nominated as a lead actress in a drama series? It's because 1) they don't write that many lead roles for Asians, of either gender, and 2) even when they write them, Hollywood wants to cast white actors for those roles instead. Sandra Oh thought she was reading for the receptionist role, not the fucking lead. That's how crappy things have been. And in the meantime, on the comedy side, Constance Wu still has no Emmy noms.
So telling Scarlett to get her head out of her ass is not "bullying" her; it's telling her to fucking drop the mask of her white privilege and start being an ally. 'Cause fuck, I read recently that the London pride parade had been spoiled by transphobic women spouting that right-wing shit that transwomen are just men who want to rape women in bathrooms. This fucking nonsense needs to be eradicated, and it's not helped by having trans people constantly be played by the wrong fucking gender. When is Hollywood going to learn its lesson?
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