Scarlett Johansson will play a transgender. Everyone criticizes her - because she is not a transgender

However, perhaps her heroine was not a transgender ¯_ (ツ) _/¯

On July 2, Deadline reported that Scarlett Johansson will play a major role in the film called Rub & Tug. The plot is based on the biography of Lois Jin Jill, the Pitsburg adventurer, who called Dante “Tex” Jill and, possibly, was a transgender. Rupert Sanders, director of the Ghost in Armor, will be removed, where Johansson also played the main role. The news of the launch of Rub & Tug in production caused a lot of criticism in the United States: according to a number of journalists and bloggers, transgender characters should play transgender actors.

The choice of Johansson for the role of a transgender character was criticized by journalists and bloggers. They believe that this is offensive

The reason for the indignation was that the actress intends to play a transgender, being a cisgender woman; Producers and director, in turn, were accused of not casting among transgender artists, but simply chose a famous actress. On Twitter, they wrote that “Scarlett Johansson needs to stop going so naive to the choice of roles, and the studios need to work better”, and also that “there are a lot of transsexual women in the world ( probably the author had in mind transgender men - approx. Medusa ), and Hollywood just needs to be better sought.”

The author of Vice Connor Gerrel accused not only Johansson, who agreed to the role, but also the media, including Deadline. He considers it wrong that the film is described as the story “about a woman who has identified herself as a man,” and not about a transgender man. In addition, Gerelet emphasizes that the actress was already criticized that in 2017 she starred in the film “Ghost in Armor” and played a heroine who, according to the plot of the comic book of the same name, should be a Japanese woman. According to the journalist, "Johansson has not learned anything from the last time."

Another argument of the VICE journalist is that “a cisgender actor is unlikely to ever understand all the difficulties and nuances of translue experiences-and the lack of experienced personal experience can hardly be covered with a wig and makeup.”

Slate journalist Evan Urkvart, who himself is a transgender man, wrote the column “Why Scarlett Johansson, playing a transgender man, is not only offensive, but also not necessarily.” The main argument that Urkvart cites is as follows: most viewers are already convinced that transgender are not real men, but women who pretend to be men, and the fact that women play in the cinema, only fuel this false belief.

“Johansson, a cisgender woman known for her sexuality, is a very bad choice for this role,” writes the author of Slate. He also offers a solution to the problem: ordinary women should play transgender women in the cinema, and transgender men, including in the film “Rub & Tug”, are ordinary men; Only in this way, spectators will be able to believe that they need to be treated as real women and men.

The author of the publication Screen Crush Transgender I. Oliver Whitney, who prefers the gender neutral appeal “They” (“they”), writes that the scriptwriter of Gary Spinelli is to blame for the incorrect choice of the actress for the role. He described Jill as a homosexual woman, while she identified herself as a heterosexual man, which supposedly “testifies to a quick search in Google”.

The hero of the film has a dizzying biography. But whether she was definitely a transgender, unknown

A few publications about Lois Jin Jill mainly went out in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Jill was born in Pitsburg in 1931. In the 1950s, she worked in the stable of the local Shenli Park: she hid the horses that visitors to the park rode. In the 1960s, Jill was engaged in various small businesses, which, perhaps, covered her illegal activity. Later, in the criminal case, Jill wrote that already in 1964 she provided the services of prostitutes with Pitzburgic men.

In the 1970s, Jill began to control a network of three massage salons in Pitsburg, which served as a cover for illegal prostitution (the term “RUB & Tug”, made in the name of the film, indicates salons where customers not only do massage, but also offer sexual services). For many years, the police tried to gather evidence against her-The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette wrote that in 1978, when the inspectors came to one of the Jill’s salons, the owner launched the cake in the face of the officer.

In 1984, Jill was still arrested-on charges of concealing income and tax evasion. She was threatened by 13 years in prison, but the judge agreed to reduce the term of up to three years if the defendant closes all three of his massage salons within 24 hours. Jill agreed - and left prison in 1987. She lived up to 72 years and died in 2003.

It is reliably unknown whether Jill was a transgender man. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette necrologist emphasizes that in all the stories about Dante “Tex” Jill, who went out in the newspaper when Jill was alive, she is called “a woman who prefers her to be called a man.” She was short, she wore men's clothes, she cut her hair briefly and, “perhaps even passed the initial stages to change sex” (it was not possible to find this in open sources “Medusa”). In another publication, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette calls Jill an open lesbian: she made a marriage in Hawaii with her partner Cynthia Bruno, and then parted with her.

The cousin Jill Barry Paris in one of the interviews notes that in his youth Jill "was an anomaly for her time, because she was forced to hide her sexuality, being a single woman inside the transgender community, which was then underground."

This is not the first time that actors and actresses are criticized for playing transgender people. This was with Jared Summer

On July 3, representatives of Scarlett Johansson handed over to Bustle to the actress’s response to criticism: “Tell them that they can turn to the representatives of Jeffrey Tambor, Jared Summer and Felicity Huffman.” All of the listed actors played transgender heroes in cinema or on television. According to Independent, all three encountered reproaches that they played transgender people, being civilian people, and all later publicly admitted that to some extent this criticism was fair.

Huffman, who in 2005, played a major role in the film "Transamerica" ​​about a man who dreams of changing the floor, said in 2014 that she understood and supports the belief that transgender characters should play transgender actors. Summer, in 2014, who received an Oscar for the role of a transgender woman in the Dallas Club of Buyers, in 2018 admitted that if he had been offered this role now, he would have refused it. Tambor, who in 2016 received Emmy for the main role of the father of the Transgender family in the series “Obviously”, said at the presentation of the award: “I would not be very upset if I became the last cisgender on television that played a transgender.”

Alexandra Mirror