My own experience of dating cis-hetero men has really been a challenge, because of the stigma they have to endure for attempting to love us.
When you see white, cisgendered, heterosexual men having conversations about gender identity where they go, 'Oh, those are your pronouns? OK, great. Let's get back to work,' it allows other people to say, 'Maybe if they can do it, I can do it.'
When gay, lesbian and bisexual individuals come out, their friends and families, for the most part, understand what it feels like to love and to lust. Cisgender people have more of a challenge when it comes to transgender identities. I discovered that analogy of homesickness in conversations with my parents, in trying to bridge that empathy divide.
There's a lot of healing that needs to happen between the LGBT community and the cisgender heterosexual world. There's a ton of misunderstanding.
What's infuriating is when cis people think celebrating me is celebrating transness.
I think people don't really actually talk about what their real issue is, which is that white, cis men - not straight men, but cis men - have had their hands on the narrative ever since filmmaking has begun.
We rarely see cisgender heterosexual men in positions where they're nurturers. We only paint femmes, trans women, and cis women as nurturers, and because of toxic masculinity, men are taught not to be that way.
I feel like so much of mainstream feminism springs from the second wave, which was essentially a discourse spearheaded by white, cisgender, upper middle class women. I feel - especially as I'm trying to negotiate this new female space with the feminism that's available to me - there are a lot of places where I'm disenfranchised.
I have straight married friends that other friends think are gay, and I have gay friends who don't throw that vibe at all. I know there's a full range out there, but I feel that gay men who aren't flamboyant are underrepresented on-screen.
Because trans people are marked as artificial, unnatural, and illegitimate, our bodies and identities are often open to public dissection. Plainly, cisgender folks often take it as their duty to investigate our lives to see if we're real.
Cisgender actors don't take trans roles out of malice. I think it's just failure to realize the context behind having cisgender people play transgender characters because we don't see the same issue with sexuality.
I have friends who are trans advocates, and they were upset that Jared Leto played a trans person.
I think that trans women have endured a lot and they compromise a lot when dealing with cis hetero men.
I would not be unhappy were I the last cisgender male to play a female transgender on television.
Oftentimes, I feel like, because of my cisnormative look or my aesthetics, that sometimes my talent might get overlooked.
There's been a huge history of cisgender success on the back of trans stories, which is something I'm deeply aware of. My take on it, I suppose, was that I do think actors should be able to play anything.
You know, sexism in the punk scene - or just in rock and roll in general - is so easily demonstrated by the amount of women or queer people that you see on stage versus the amount of cis males that you see on stage.
