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Hues of pink and blue flooded the Sunset Strip outside Netflix on Thursday as a “Trans Takeover” picket drew at least 200 writers and allies to address concerns about trans employment and how the trans community is portrayed in popular culture concerns.
“Transgender people are workers, too. We stand in solidarity with the labor movement around the world, and we’re emerging in ways that we’re not usually portrayed,” said author Jacob Tobia, whose credits include the Showtime pilot “Sissy.” “The strike is your moment to redefine who is at the table and we want to make sure we send a very strong message to the world that we are at the table now and we want to stay at the table.”
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Tobias and others point to hostile resistance to LGBT rights, especially for trans and non-binary people, in states such as Texas and Tennessee, as part of a series of concerns about this marginalization. But what happened after the burgeoning community TV series and movies.
“Hollywood put us on a pedestal and kind of dumped us, quite frankly. If you want to stand with us, you need to stand with us. You can’t just put us on some TV show and then Stop green-lighting our projects when things get difficult and people start paying attention,” Tobia said. “You have to make a commitment to our community and show that you really care about our dignity, our lives and our economic viability.”
Sydney Baloue, whose credits include the CW series “Tom Swift,” emphasized the importance of representation when trans stories are told in mainstream media.
“You’d never have a white showrunner create a black show without a black writer, then hire a token black person, and say, ‘Hey, can you give us the green light for this black story,'” Baloue said. “Why would a cis show host do this to a trans and non-binary writer? We have the right to tell our own stories.”
Examining the areas where trans characters are welcome and unpopular has been eye-opening, Baloue said.
“We don’t have a ‘Will and Grace’ that’s trans or non-binary.” We’re not in a sitcom. We don’t even have actual transgender movie stars yet,” Baloue said. “We want to write those characters for those people. This is the civil rights movement of our generation. “
Actor Jen Richards, who starred in AMC’s “Anne Rice’s Witches of Mayfair” and FX’s “Better Things,” says she still feels trans people in Hollywood have a lot of work to do to check diversity and inclusion requirements.
“Sometimes it feels like they’re giving us enough work so they can pat themselves on the back and be happy with the diversity, but never actually get our show on the air,” Richards said. “There are a lot of trans and non-binary young people today. They are the audience of the future, and we want to show that audience that gender can be a realm of expression, play, creativity, and joy, not fear and loathing.”
What’s more, Richards and others say, it’s important to allow trans creatives to spread their wings outside of LGBT-centric narratives.
“We all got into this industry because we’re storytellers and we have a lot of human experience,” Richards said. “When there’s so much we can do, we often just relegate to this aspect of our identity.”
Netflix was targeted by Trans Takeover pickets in part because Comedian Dave Chappelle’s comments spark controversy in 2021 Widely read as anti-trans and transphobic in the stand-up special “The Closer.”
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