Social Studies
Despite years of progress, trans male representation in film and television has remained all but nonexistent. Now, there’s a new group of rising stars.
Credit…Andy Freeberg
1. First Time I Saw Me
Last August, at a premiere party at the NeueHouse on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, the actor Brian Michael Smith was biting into a slider when he turned around and there was Oprah Winfrey. Several years before, as a black transgender man struggling to break into Hollywood, Smith saw no obvious trajectory to a meaningful career. Even a college acting teacher said no one would cast him. “I saw zero representation of transmasculinity,” he says, using an umbrella term that means different things to different people but often describes trans men and nonbinary people who identify more with masculinity. “It was very isolating to grow up and have these dreams. I didn’t see how I was going to be able to do it.”
This is how dreams are murdered, but instead of succumbing, Smith told himself “to Oprah this situation” — meaning create his own path. And so he did. He now plays a trio of distinct trans characters on TV: Toine, the gentle cop on OWN’s “Queen Sugar,” whose 2017 coming-out episode coincided with Smith’s public coming out; Pierce, a political strategist on Showtime’s sequel to “The L Word,” which debuted in December; and a firefighter on Fox’s new “9-1-1: Lone Star.” At the premiere, Smith saw his opportunity to thank the woman whose name had become his own inspirational verb. He swallowed the slider, extended his hand — and you know what Oprah said? “I know who you are.”
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Credit…OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network
Smith, 37, tells me this story in a Los Angeles hotel lobby on a rare day off. He keeps his head shaved, his beard trimmed and a polished stone from a yoga retreat in his pocket. Something he talks about — something all the trans male and nonbinary actors I interviewed for this story talk about — is why visibility matters. “It’s necessary for people to see themselves onscreen,” says Shaan Dasani, who appeared in two 2019 web comedies, “These Thems” and “Razor Tongue.” “It’s necessary for people to see multiple versions of masculinity.”
In 2014, Laverne Cox appeared on Time magazine’s cover with the headline “The Transgender Tipping Point.” Since then, trans women have been working in Hollywood in increasing numbers, but that tipping point is only coming now for trans male and transmasculine actors and story lines. “We’ve been invisible,” says Nick Adams, the director of transgender representation at Glaad. He keeps an unofficial tally of trans men in film and television, dating back to a 1987 episode of “The Golden Girls.” The next entries come in 1999: an episode of the CBS series “L.A. Doctors,” about a teenager who abuses masculinizing hormones, and “Boys Don’t Cry,” about the life and murder of Brandon Teena, played by Hilary Swank. “Five years ago, the kind of roles I’m doing would have gone to cisgender actors,” says Theo Germaine, 27, of their recent parts as young trans men on Netflix’s “The Politician” and Showtime’s “Work in Progress” (Germaine identifies as nonbinary and uses both male and gender-neutral pronouns). Germaine is correct, but the reality is starker: Five years ago, these roles mostly didn’t exist. When a transmasculine character did pop up, he was often a victim, his story limited to and by trans trauma; Smith describes seeing “Boys Don’t Cry” while in high school as both affirming and terrifying.
But in the last year, we’ve witnessed more trans male and nonbinary actors onscreen than ever before. Even more important is what the actors and their roles represent. They are reflecting back the reality of trans male and nonbinary lives while mainstreaming long-marginalized characters and narratives. They are introducing multidimensional characters whose gender intersects with other facets of identity — race, class, sexual orientation, disability. Through their performances and social media, the actors are updating and expanding the very idea of the leading man.
Why is this vital? Let me start with the most basic reason: survival. The actors are creating characters that audiences have never seen before at a time when right-wing politicians are trying to strip trans people of not only their rights (the military’s recent restrictions surrounding transgender troops and recruits, for example) but their humanity (think of all the so-called bathroom bills). A paradox of America 2020: There’s been a swift advancement of trans visibility and equality, even as anti-trans violence has become what both the Human Rights Campaign and the American Medical Association call an epidemic, and an unprecedented acceptance of trans folks, even as the Supreme Court considers whether someone’s gender identity is grounds for termination from employment. More than half of trans male adolescents have attempted suicide, according to a 2018 study published in the journal Pediatrics. “There’s a reason for that,” says Scott Turner Schofield, who stars in Amazon’s new “Studio City.” “We’re raised to believe there’s something wrong with us. We’re raised to believe we’re the only one.” So when Smith’s character came out on “Queen Sugar,” Twitter lit up with the hashtag #FirstTimeISawMe. Progress — social, cultural, political — always begins with the self.
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Credit…Andy Freeberg
2. Superheroes
Two and a half years ago, Leo Sheng was in Ann Arbor, Mich., about to start a master’s in social work when a casting agent messaged him on Instagram. “Acting was not on my radar,” he says. Sheng flew to New York for an audition. As he boarded the plane back to Michigan, his phone rang: He got the part. In “Adam,” which premiered last August, Sheng plays Ethan, a young trans man so emotionally grounded that he becomes the ballast for the cis characters flailing all around him, thus flipping a trans narrative trope. Soon after, he was cast in “The L Word: Generation Q” as Micah, an adjunct professor of social work.
Sheng, now 23, recognizes the potential for social and political change in acting: Through characters like Ethan and Micah, he’s helping Hollywood revise its depictions of trans men, catching up to trans lives as they’re actually lived. Story lines are moving past transition into love, friendship, work, family — the everything-ness of a man’s life. Sheng and the other actors are portraying men not defined by crisis or fear, or hormones and chest-binding, but in the midst of full and (mostly) happy lives — “a type of happiness a lot of people want to know is possible,” Sheng says.
Sheng uses social media to further complicate the narrative, engaging in an ongoing deconstruction of who and what defines the male self. He posts about going to the gym and his evolving relationship to muscles. He wants people to see trans male bodies as they are, whether ripped or soft, hairy or smooth, boyish or dad-ish, scarred or not. Sheng recently posted about his period, a frankness that drew praise but also online attacks about his identity.
Something we can’t forget: Even as the actors appear in more and more celebrated projects, some people continue to deny their existence. The English actor, writer and director Jake Graf, 42, says in the past trans men were invisible, both onscreen and in broader society, in part because many could choose whether to disclose their identity: “Largely due to our physicality, we’ve been afforded the luxury of living that unseen, under-the-radar, stealth life.” Their reasons were complex and understandable (personal safety, social and financial stability, for example), but one consequence has been that there is now far less awareness of trans men than of trans women. Society has a long and unfortunate history of gazing at and fetishizing trans women, but that has been less the case with trans men. That’s a generalization, of course, but only in service of sharing a point many of the actors made to me: They now want to be seen; they now want people to know they exist. “Trans women have historically been more visible,” Graf says. “Trans men have been out there doing things much more quietly, which is great for them, but not great for visibility.”
Graf used to audition without disclosing his identity, and casting directors saw him as another guy in the gaggle. Only after coming out could he stand out, booking roles in 2018’s “Colette” and 2015’s “The Danish Girl” (based on a novel I wrote). With his square jaw and British charm, Graf embodies the classic leading man while also subverting the very notion. He started making short films, highlighting the fine-grain details of ordinary trans lives: a young man visiting his gynecologist; an older man recalling life before the queer and trans rights movements — a multiplicity of stories Hollywood is only now incorporating.
“There’s no one version of a trans guy in Hollywood anymore,” says Elliot Fletcher, 23. From 2016 to 2018, Fletcher took on three consecutive trans roles that, viewed together, proved groundbreaking. On MTV’s “Faking It,” he played a high schooler navigating his gender identity and sexuality. On Freeform’s “The Fosters,” he was the sweetly rebellious boyfriend. On Showtime’s “Shameless,” Fletcher plays an L.G.B.T.Q. activist who is simultaneously insulting, raunchy and endearing. The role he’d really love, though, is the next Spider-Man. With the right glasses, he could pass for Peter Parker. When I asked the actors about their dream roles, most said they want to play a superhero. A superhero implies someone elite, a status long denied to trans and gender-nonconforming people.
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Credit…Netflix
3. I Am My Own Masculinity
In “The Politician,” Germaine’s character, James, toggles between running the student-body campaign of his best friend, Payton, and sleeping with Payton’s girlfriend. “I was like, ‘Oh my God, people are going to hate me because I’m not playing a nice person,’” Germaine says. In fact, James represents an evolution of the trans male character beyond hero, saint or martyr to someone allowed to be ruthless and deceitful. The character breakdown describes James as trans, but his gender identity is never explicitly defined — it’s so unremarkable, it’s never remarked upon. It’s what makes the character so transformational; James refuses to take on the burdens of definition or explanation. If you look at him only through the lens of gender identity, he won’t engage. He transfers questions of identity from him to you. As a nonbinary actor, Germaine says they still feel some pressure to justify and self-explain but hope audiences are ready to move past fixed ideas of how a trans or nonbinary person should look.
Viewers seem to be. Germaine’s James takes us to a place beyond “passing” — a word the actors don’t like but also acknowledge as a real factor in how trans men are depicted. Hollywood still mostly employs actors who can be perceived as cis. On the one hand, this represents progress: The actors want casting directors to see them for any relevant part, whether cis or trans. But it’s also a privilege that excludes many. “There are so many different ways to express gender,” Sheng says. “I would love to see more nonbinary, genderqueer and trans folks who can’t ‘pass’ be given opportunities.”
Recently Chella Man, 21, joined the cast of DC Universe’s series “Titans,” playing Jericho, who is mute, biracial and bisexual. Soon after, Man, who identifies as genderqueer, modeled for Calvin Klein flexing his biceps in black boxer briefs. It’s a radical act, he says, “to showcase my flat-chested, penis- less body.” He says he received a lot of love and a lot of transphobia, neither of which surprised him. He posted on Instagram from the shoot with the caption: “No visible underwear bulge. Jewish and Asian history and representation in my DNA and on my skin. Top surgery scars out and proud. Visible cochlear implants paired with my DEAF AF tattoo.” Man followed this with an older image of himself — in track pants and shirtless, pre-top surgery. A bicep tattoo gives the photo its caption and meaning: “I Am My Own Masculinity.” Man is saying through image and ink that he can define his own masculinity, rather than let it define him.
This, then, is what comes next: shifting from a past where gender was handed to us by society’s cues and prompts to a future of expressing who we are in terms we control. “Masculinity stems from gender, which is socially constructed,” says Man. “Anyone has the potential to unlearn social constructs and/or redefine what they may mean to them.” Collectively, the actors are engaged in this conversation about gender and identity, leading us to a day when those conversations are no longer necessary.
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Credit…Erica Parise/Showtime
4. The Gates of Paramount
At the beginning of 2019, Jill Soloway, the creator of Amazon’s “Transparent,” invited Schofield, who declined to give his age, for a hike in Griffith Park. In the chaparral above Los Angeles, they discussed organizing a new group under the umbrella of 5050 by 2020, a strategic initiative working toward gender parity across all Hollywood professions that Soloway helps lead. Soloway, 54, who identifies as nonbinary, says that many trans men and nonbinary people have a unique perspective on the issues of equality, opportunity and the post-#MeToo discussion of masculinity and its privileges. Smith agrees: As he transitioned, he had to ask himself what kind of man he wanted to be, “examining that earlier on and more intensely than cis men.” He believes the importance society places on masculinity might be more problematic than masculinity in and of itself. Dasani, who also declined to give his age, echoed that with a story from his time in film school, before transitioning: In a study group with three film bros, he found himself ignored. After transitioning, he noticed what he said wasn’t devalued in a way he felt it had been before. “I remember clocking this — be the guy who makes room for other voices at the table.”
In April 2019, about 30 actors, writers, directors and editors met in a boardroom on the Paramount lot. They gathered around an imposing executive table, the kind that has long excluded them. The cohort’s goals are both practical (networking, professional development) and inspirational (support, friendship). For some, it’s the only time they’ve been in a space with so many like themselves. As far as anyone knows, it’s a first for Hollywood. “There’s so much tenderness in the room,” says Dasani of the now monthly meetings. The symbolism of the Paramount lot isn’t lost: For a long time, those gates have been closed to many communities. When I ask Dasani about this moment of increasing representation, he corrects me. “I hope it’s more than a moment. I hope it’s a cultural shift.” A shift to ensure the gates never close again.
Grooming: Christina Guerra and Hailey Adickes at Celestine Agency.