Last week, news broke that Disney had cast a biological male who “identifies” as a woman for a role in the upcoming Star Wars series The Acolyte. The new series, which I won’t watch, is set to premier on Disney+ sometime next year.
According to Screenrant, 30-year-old actor “Abigail” Thorn (I don’t know his birth name) is a British YouTuber, and he will play a character named Ensign Eurus. Whether that character is supposed to be a male or a female is not clear, but seeing how this is Disney, I fully expect that he will portray a female character. Disney/LucasFilm previously did this in their ill-fated series Willow, in which a biological male was cast to portray a queen (and mother) of one of the primary characters of the ensemble cast. The latest Disney/Pixar film, Elemental, includes a non-binary character that goes by they/them pronouns. Disney’s Strange World also featured a same-sex teen romance.
Willow was canceled after the first season, and has since been removed from the platform entirely, as have other woke shows on other platforms. Elemental had one of the worst-ever openings for a Pixar film, and Strange World similarly bombed with an $18.6 million five-day opening.
Perhaps Disney and LucasFilm haven’t gotten the hint.
So the question is, why is casting a transgender-identifying actor or actress for a role portraying the opposite a problem? Conservative columnist David Marcus argues there’s no problem at all. “I don’t see any issue with this,” he tweeted Monday. “There’s no reason people who ID as trans can’t have jobs.”
But that really isn’t the issue, is it? When biological males are cast in female roles, it not only perpetuates the notion that a biological man can transition into a woman but also deprives actual women of acting opportunities. While gender identity disorder is rising fast amongst young girls, this phenomenon was, for a long time, largely limited to men who believed themselves to be women. Consequently, women are currently more likely to face disadvantages in the acting industry due to this trend. It isn’t terribly different from the sports debate — especially if these men are winning awards under the women’s category. While nobody is explicitly stating that transgender people should be barred from employment, this new trend in Hollywood is bound to result in women once again being disproportionately disadvantaged in the name of “inclusivity” and woke ideology.
Also for our VIPs: How Same-Sex Marriage Launched the Trans Movement, and the Warning Signs We Missed
This isn’t Elizabethan theatre or Ancient Greece, when women weren’t allowed to perform. There are countless actresses looking for their shot, and when a role for a woman is given to a man, it’s not right. If there’s anything the transgender movement has proven, it’s that women — and I mean real women, with XX chromosomes — are the ones who lose out.
For sure, acting involves assuming a fictional identity, but there’s a world of difference between an actor reading lines and wearing a costume and a male portraying a female. While Disney likes to do race swaps in its remakes, you wouldn’t have a white actor (or actress) portray a black character. In fact, it’s generally agreed that doing so is offensive — regardless of context. Having biological males portray women should be considered equally offensive. Women deserve to have their roles and identities respected, rather than being appropriated by men for the sake of a studio’s attempt to prove its progressive values.
