No, Veronica, We Really Aren’t. We just Want You To Stay In Your Lane...

Let’s admit it: cisgender people are really curious about us trans women. They want to know things such as: what’s it like to have a surgeon rearrange your genitals? How did you know you were really a girl all along? Does it suck having to be on the downside of sexism now?

As a 'cis woman' (translation: normal, genuine female) I can honestly say I'd rather not know any of those things, any more than I'd want to know the details of any other mental patient's delusions. But since the driving force amongst so much of the trans lobby is narcissism...

For our own part, trans women are curious about cisgender folk, too. We want to know things like: do you actually think I’m female, or am I just a deluded guy in a dress to you? If I try to have a beer at your bar, will you violently assault me? Am I ever going to get to use a public bathroom again?

The answers are: the latter, probably not, as a genuine female I'm not physically aggressive, and yes, of course you can, but it should be the gents. 

This column is, of course, generated because of the 'documentary' where Will Farrell goes on a road trip with his old friend who is now believing himself to be a woman. Some friend you are, Will. If he was an alcoholic, you'd no doubt be taking him to a distillery.

... throughout the movie, she is game to answer any of the questions the cis world has for her, and she even gives Ferrell complete carte blanche to ask her anything whatsoever. She doesn’t give any indication that she feels the sense of violation that many of us do feel at such personal invasions.

Because the driving force for this trend appears to be severe narcissism; it's the thing that all 'trans men' appear to have in common. 

I understand that intense desire to make yourself comprehensible to the world, to have it hear the story of your life that has been hidden for decades, to share all the pain you’ve tucked away. When I watched Will & Harper, I really wished that Ferrell might have stopped to ask himself why his friend seemed so eager to tell him about every last personal detail of her life and why she was willing to expose herself to one dangerous situation after another during their road trip.

Because narcissism, 'Veronica', that's why. 

I was one of the fortunate ones who managed to reclaim my pass back into humankind, and now I have the immense privilege of getting to decide who exactly is safe enough to inform about my past. Those who aren’t that fortunate have to do their best to find a place in a world where we’re a widely misunderstood, stigmatized and increasingly vilified 1% of the population.

The Eternal Victim... Move over Scousers, there's a new one in town.

Oh, Now You Want Proper Journalism?

I am going to go out on a limb and say that most Guardian readers who watch a BBC documentary called America’s New Female Right are unlikely to be in accord with the views espoused therein. We are not going to empathise with statements such as: “Women getting the right to vote has led to every form of degeneracy,” “Feminism was absolutely created to destabilise the family [and] western civilisation,” and: “Feminism is a thousand times more toxic than the ‘toxic masculinity’ we hear so much about.” We are unlikely to agree that “Satan’s agenda” is to destroy the nuclear family structure in order to control society.

But since you're the 'Guardian's TV critic, watch it you will, despite your reflexive cringing at the attitudes therein.

It’s a fascinating subject that deserves attention and rigorous interrogation of all the factors at play, especially with subjects as bright, articulate and confident as these (again, especially Faulkner). What we get instead is a cheap, shoddy programme apparently thrown together in 10 minutes, presumably on the grounds that everything and everyone is so obviously awful and evil and bad-bad-bad that it is enough just to film them, show Wright’s pained face occasionally and have her lob in a few wet questions to show that she is still listening and still on the side of right (which is, of course, left, not right).

Well that sounds like most of the ‘Guardian’s’ output, so it should be familiar!  

Sinister music is played in certain scenes, in case we are in danger of forgetting which side “we” are on – all of us, without doubt, without question, without occasionally wondering if the “other side” might have half a point buried in there that might be worth pulling out and examining in the light.

Only a Sith (and a ‘Guardian’ columnist, it seems) deals in absolutes. There’s never any chance of conceding a point from the other side. 

If you are going to interview people such as McMichael, Hutcherson and Faulkner, you need a presenter who is capable and unafraid of going toe to toe with them. These are people with sincerely held beliefs. You need someone with the intellectual and temperamental firepower to challenge them – someone who is not afraid to, in British terms at least, be “rude” to their subjects and see if they can really defend assertions that are otherwise allowed to stand as truth.

Why do you want to challenge them, when any attempt to challenge a left-wing viewpoint is treated as if heresey against truth come down from the mountain on tablets of stone? 

Go Woke, Get Broke!

Yes, Disney, that applies even to you.

Disney’s $300m-plus reboot of Snow White has generated a slew of headlines for all the wrong reasons. First, given the original relied on the outdated social mores of the 1930s, it rapidly became engulfed in a row over sexism, a debate over whether or not to keep the original seven dwarves and was plunged into the center of America’s bitter culture wars over race. Its lead star, Rachel Zegler, said she “hated” the original 1937 film and branded its story “weird” with a stalker-like Prince Charming character who steals a kiss from a girl in a coma who could not give consent. Then a row broke out over whether Disney should have seven dwarves as characters. Then America’s right wing piled on because of Zegler’s Latina background; the original Snow White was conceived as having very pale skin.

It is, in fact, the very reason for her name.  

All in all, it showed how the temptation of instant brand recognition could be trumped by the problem that many 1930s movies contain racial and other stereotypes that are simply better left alone.

But Hollywood is in a 'remake' fix, because there seems to be a lack of talent to do anything else. And so it will always run up against today's snowflake audiences. And as if that wasn't enough of a kiss of death, there's the casting....

But last week, just to add to the movie’s woes, Snow White also found itself embroiled in a fight between its two biggest stars over Middle Eastern politics. Zegler is an outspoken advocate for Palestinian rights and Gal Gadot, who plays the Evil Queen, is a high-profile Israeli actor. Not surprisingly the two have very different takes on the bloody conflict in Gaza.

"Let's throw this snake and mongoose together, what could possibly go wrong?" 

Alia Malak, of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, wrote in an email to the Guardian that people should boycott Snow White because of Gadot.

Save your ink, Alia, I don't think anyone's rushing to see it anyway!  

So What..?

The comedian Katherine Ryan has lamented the lack of...

Oh, god! Free HRT treatment? Audiences forced at gunpoint to laugh at her jokes?  

...female late-night chatshow hosts in the UK in an interview for Grace Dent’s Comfort Eating podcast.

Oh, Well, so what? Personally I'm not a fan of chat shows, so whether they are hosted by a man, a woman or an orangutan, I couldn't care less.  

Ryan, a standup comedian who has appeared in UK panel shows and sitcoms, including The Duchess on Netflix, said men appear to be handed late-night shows while women tended to feature more in daytime TV.

So, has it never happened? Reader, it has. And it didn't work:  

Charlotte Church had a late-night talk show for two years from 2006 to 2008 on Channel 4, while Davina McCall’s attempt in 2006 on the BBC lasted just eight episodes and was branded a “flop”. The Mrs Merton Show, with the late comedian Caroline Aherne performing as the eponymous host, was popular in the 1990s but was a radical take on the format.

Maybe that's why women aren't getting the gigs, Katherine?  

These Aren't The Films And TV I Grew Up With...

Foster revealed how she had also challenged pervading gender stereotypes in her own family.

Talking about raising her children, whom she had with her former partner Cydney Bernard, and now raises with her wife, Alexandra Hedison, she said: “There was a moment with my older one when he was in high school, when, because he was raised by two women – three women – it was like he was trying to figure out what it was to be a boy.

“And he watched television and came to the conclusion: oh, I just need to be an asshole. I understand. I need to be shitty to women and act like I’m a fucker.

“And I was like: ‘No. That’s not what it is to be a man! That’s what our culture has been selling you for all this time.’”

Really? I grew up with pretty wholesome tv and films, where this decidedly was not the norm. Where masculinity was something noble, protective. I grew up with 'Lassie', 'Champion The Wonder Horse', 'Skippy The Bush Kangaroo' on TV, and films like 'A Matter Of Life And Death', 'The Guns of Navarone' and 'Shane'. What has changed?

And should Foster perhaps be looking in the mirror to find out?