China’s most popular TV hostess, often dubbed the country’s Oprah, was recruited to be part of the Chinese military’s dance troupe at the age of 9. She lived as a boy at the time.
Pink News reports:
She now hosts her own weekly series, The Jin Xing Show, drawing an estimated 100 million viewers.
It’s not been entirely smooth since she transitioned, however. Being trans isn’t illegal in China, but the government has done little to support or defend trans rights.
She was even dropped from a TV talent show in 2011 because she was trans, amid speculation that the government itself had blocked her appointment.
I’m glad that she has built such a succesful career for herself, despite living in a place where being trans can be even more difficult than it is over here <3
I really hope that she has nothing but good luck and success in the future as well! <3
A comment on this article. This is what stories are for, this is what representation is for. We need storylines like this so that 13 year old girls can know that it’s okay and beautiful to like girls and not boys. We need storylines like this so that these girls have an opportunity and a situation in which to bring this up with their family, to start the conversation. We need storylines like this so that every family reacts just as positively as this one to news like this about their child.
I was honestly not expecting the amazing coming out scene we got in tonight’s Supergirl ep. It surprised me with its candor, its sincerity, its REALNESS. I know it resonated with a lot of people, and it certainly resonated with me. It certainly resonated with this 13 year old girl. So thank you Supergirl, thank you to the writers, to Chyler and Floriana. You did good tonight.
a big thumbs up to Thunderbirds Are Go for a) including a character with a disability, b) having the character’s disability be visible but not remarked on, and c) casting an actor with the same disability to voice him
I wanted my first-year film students to understand what happens to a story when actual human beings inhabit your characters, and the way they can inspire storytelling. And I wanted to teach them how to look at headshots and what you might be able to tell from a headshot. So for the past few years I’ve done a small experiment with them.
Some troubling shit always occurs.
It works like this: I bring in my giant file of head shots, which include actors of all races, sizes, shapes, ages, and experience levels. Each student picks a head shot from the stack and gets a few minutes to sit with the person’s face and then make up a little story about them.
Namely, for white men, they have no trouble coming up with an entire history, job, role, genre, time, place, and costume. They will often identify him without prompting as “the main character.” The only exception? “He would play the gay guy.” For white women, they mostly do not come up with a job (even though it was specifically asked for), and they will identify her by her relationships. “She would play the mom/wife/love interest/best friend.” I’ve heard “She would play the slut” or “She would play the hot girl.” A lot more than once.
For nonwhite men, it can be equally depressing. “He’s in a buddy cop movie, but he’s not the main guy, he’s the partner.” “He’d play a terrorist.” “He’d play a drug dealer.” “A thug.” “A hustler.” “Homeless guy.” One Asian actor was promoted to “villain.”
For nonwhite women (grab onto something sturdy, like a big glass of strong liquor), sometimes they are “lucky” enough to be classified as the girlfriend/love interest/mom, but I have also heard things like “Well, she’d be in a romantic comedy, but as the friend, you know?” “Maid.” “Prostitute.” “Drug addict.”
I should point out that the responses are similar whether the group is all or mostly-white or extremely racially mixed, and all the groups I’ve tried this with have been about equally balanced between men and women, though individual responses vary. Women do a little better with women, and people of color do a little better with people of color, but female students sometimes forget to come up with a job for female actors and black male students sometimes tell the class that their black male actor wouldn’t be the main guy.
Once the students have made their pitches, we interrogate their opinions. “You seem really sure that he’s not the main character – why? What made you automatically say that?” “You said she was a mom. Was she born a mom, or did she maybe do something else with her life before her magic womb opened up and gave her an identity? Who is she as a person?” In the case of the “thug“, it turns out that the student was just reading off his film resume. This brilliant African American actor who regularly brings houses down doing Shakespeare on the stage and more than once made me weep at the beauty and subtlety of his performances, had a list of film credits that just said “Thug #4.” “Gang member.” “Muscle.” Because that’s the film work he can get. Because it puts food on his table.
So, the first time I did this exercise, I didn’t know that it would turn into a lesson on racism, sexism, and every other kind of -ism. I thought it was just about casting. But now I know that casting is never just about casting, and this day is a real teachable opportunity. Because if we do this right, we get to the really awkward silence, where the (now mortified) students try to sink into their chairs. Because, hey, most of them are proud Obama voters! They have been raised by feminist moms! They don’t want to be or see themselves as being racist or sexist. But their own racism and sexism is running amok in the room, and it’s awkward.
This for every time someone criticizes how characters of color and female characters of color especially are treated in text and by subsequent fandoms. It’s never “just a television/movie/book”. It’s never been ”just”.
“…and by subsequent fandoms.“ <— bless this addition.
This one is always worth reblogging. When I say, “Representation matters,” it’s not just the presence of PoC, women, PwD, LGBTQIA, in narrative, it’s the roles are those characters are occupying.
The hall of mirrors that is the interplay between fiction and real life becomes a negative feedback loop with real consequences, because we internalize things and then we act them out.
Storytelling is a powerful thing. What stories are we telling, and why?
I’ve drafted an outline for a bestselling young adult novel. It features
a transgender school dropout with autism who meets a self-harming
vampire with a heart of gold, hell bent on bringing peace to the world.
Together they embark on a magical quest to find an ancient crystal with
the power to render all weapons useless. Oh, and the protagonist’s
mother makes a living selling legal highs to illegal immigrants.
male writers writing male characters: This Bruce Killshot. He has over 10000 confirmed kills and is the top leading spy in the Super Hard To Get In Spy Organization Of The World. He is a master of every martial art and can use virtually any weapon with ease. He’s not only a Real Gruff Man but a Ladies man who smokes cigars while Having Sex With Beautiful Women but he never gets attached. He’s a hard Whiskey Drinking Man who once killed an elephant with a toothpick and bottle of glue.
Men: this is so realistic wow such a complex character….
A woman: This is Angela she’s the chosen one of this story and has a natural knack for magic and can-
men: this fucking self insert mary sue this is fucking trash are you kidding me
The slightly longer answer: That story you used to tell yourself, about the awesome girl who was totally pretty and everyone liked her and she maybe had magic powers and also like fifteen skills that you wished you did and also her hair never did that, you know, THAT THING your hair always does? And she was in your favorite fictional (or real person fictional) world, and all the characters or people that you loved the most loved her, and she married them or solved their problems or saved them or made them awesome food or held them when they cried? That story was a Mary Sue story, and that girl was a Mary Sue. Sometimes people write those stories down and post them. (AND THAT IS FINE.) Often the stories have limited appeal beyond the author and maybe her friends. (BUT THAT IS ALSO FINE.)
The “Sorry, you kind of touched a nerve” answer: While we can all identify our own Mary Sues, even if we’ve never written them down, people tend to spend a lot of time figuring out if other people have maybe written a Mary Sue, and checking every female character for potential Mary Sueism. In fandom times of old, the letters “OC” (original character) in a story header were a giant flag that meant Potential Bad Story Here, and the letters “OFC” (original female character) were translated as Guaranteed Bad Story Here. So people mostly stopped putting original female characters in their fan fiction.
But that couldn’t stop the inexorable progression of the Mary Sue Hunt. Canon female characters in fan fiction became the focus of intense scrutiny. Is this character being, perhaps, idealized? Is she better than she should be?
It was surprising how often she was better than she should be.
I mean, it’s one thing if we write John Sheppard being brilliant and solving a Millennium Problem while being extra super badass and a sharpshooter and extremely hot and having a troubled past and also he can play the piano and small children love him and he rides a horse. It’s one thing if we write Stiles as a badass motherfucker who can hack and do MMA and make small explosive devices and he saves everyone, and also it turns out he’s a surprisingly sexually skilled virgin, and also there’s this scene where he wears skintight leather and he has two boot knives. It is fine to write those things. (AND IT IS.) You could give Sheppard’s horse a telepathic soulbond with him and have Stiles elected president of universe (because he is awesome), and you’d still potentially have a significant and delighted readership. (WHICH IS ALSO FINE. Who doesn’t sometimes like a President Awesome with a Psychic Horse story? Give Sidney Crosby a psychic horse and you’ve got my click.) That’s just having fun and extrapolating from the canon. (Or, in the case of the telepathic soulbonding horse, it’s a crossover. From real actual published original fiction. And people call us strange.)
But if a female character does one of those things in fan fiction, she’s declared a potential Mary Sue. It’s out of character, it’s over the top, it’s wish fulfillment (as if there’s something wrong with wish fulfillment), it’s a self-insert. And that. That is less fine with me.
And the Mary Sue Problem is not limited to fan fiction. Turns out Mary Sues are also surprisingly prevalent in the canon itself! A tiny sample of the female characters I have heard described as Mary Sues:
Hermione Granger
Nyota Uhura
Natasha Romanov
Haruno Sakura
Rose Tyler
Bella Swann
Katniss Everdeen
Buffy Summers
Basically, think of any female character who gets more than eighteen lines, from any popular canon. Someone has called her a Mary Sue. Because she’s competent, because she’s smart, because she’s talented. Because she can do stuff, or because she tries to. Because she loves someone, or because someone loves her. Because she thinks she’s interesting. Because the author thinks we should care about her.
Mary Sue, in short, has become another way of dismissing female characters. Of telling women that we can’t be awesome. Of drawing the line between people who do (dudes) and people who are done to (ladies). Yet another entry in the long list of All the Unacceptable Female Characters. Yet another way of viciously scrutinizing every woman, real or imaginary, and either finding her excessively flawed (and therefore terrible) or excessively without flaw (and therefore terrible).
And also, of course, if the author of the Mary Sue story is a fan fiction writer, we make fun of her.
Which is why my actual definition of the term Mary Sue is: it’s a phrase that is useful for describing a certain common tendency in fan fiction that, taken to an extreme, is often pretty repetitive and uninteresting (but not, let me note, actually criminal or anything). Unfortunately, it has, over time, warped into a tool for knocking down ladies who write, and also other ladies, so I’m trying to learn not to use it any more. (But that is hard. Because see above about usefulness. Almost everyone has dreamed up at least one or two of these, and it’s so nice to have a name for them!)
This is a beautiful explanation of why I hate the term “Mary Sue” like I hate fire ant sandwiches.
i think its mostly just the ya dystopian novels bc theyre all like the same and there isnt much character depth?? idk thats more what ive seen
How many female-led YA dystopian novels/franchises really are there, though? There’s The Hunger Games (the big hitter), Allegiant, Uglies (yet to become a movie), Mortal Instruments (?) and…that’s kind of it as far as the really well-known ones go.
But dystopian stories with a man in the lead total hundreds. And a lot of them are completely ridiculous cliche-fests with a straight, white, able-bodied Chosen One/Only Sane Man as the lead. You know the type. Women fawn over him (there may even be a love triangle involved), his enemies grow to fear him, he ultimately succeeds in his overthrow of the authorities. Hell, just in the last couple of years tons of these male-centric dystopian movies were released: count ‘em! And well, when you get really down to it, well…a lot of them are the same and they don’t have much character depth.
But a handful of female variations, some of which are sub-par, and boom! Mockery, and hand-wringing from a particular genre of movie critic, and lots of discussion about do we really need Tris if we have Katniss and endless jokes along the lines of “Hi my name is [something inane] and I have to overthrow this evil government but I can’t because A BOY LIKES ME!” as if you couldn’t reverse the genders of that and essentially get the plot of 1984. This isn’t to say the new female-dominated dystopia trend doesn’t have problems, it does (it’s overwhelmingly white and straight just like its male counterpart) but it’s very obvious that the world doesn’t much like female Chosen Ones.
