also a million other characters, but i saw someone arguing silence of the lambs wasn’t transphobic the other day so that’s on my mind
also a million other characters, but i saw someone arguing silence of the lambs wasn’t transphobic the other day so that’s on my mind
the character still perpetuates negative image of transgender people, the intent of the author is irrelevant.
it’s literally an evil man dressing in womans clothing and killing women out of jealously. it’s basically the plot of Psycho
it’s also heavily suggesting that a doctor is the only person who can determine if someone is transgender, and not the individual themself, which might have been the prominent scientific thought at the time, but it’s a slimey feeling now considering how many trans people are gatekept from transition and dismissed because they’re faking it
Yeah, that’s why I said that part. Also, a point that is stronger in the book might just be unnoticed in the film, which is what most people know.
The part about the doctors is not that they determine being trans, but that sex reassignment surgery is not done on a whim and doctors have to be convinced that the person is trans and will not regret the decision at a later point. At least for me it gave a glimpse on the process and made a clear distinction: whatever he is or does has nothing to do with being trans.
Even a good will from the author might completely backfire, so I can’t judge about the result. I just thought his intentions do count towards judging him, separated from the character he created.
imo good will doesn’t matter when the result is so harmful
good will arguments are always such a privileged take to me
like, its incredibly important that we don’t judge the creator for the results of their work for some reason? like there’s this great need to make sure no one has the wrong idea about this particular person who just so happens to be more relatable to the commenter than the groups affected by their work? i genuinely don’t understand the motivation behind arguments like that other than because you want to re-assure yourself that if, in the future, you end up offending somebody or furthering the hurt of a minority group, you can wash your hands by saying you didn’t intend it
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no one has argued we should beat the author to death, and in fact you were the one who started defending his honor. i don’t know why you’re acting like we tried to cancel him. the final product is incredibly transphobic regardless of intent and quibbling about whether the author is a transphobic piece of shit or not (he was! it was the 80s, lots of people were!) is ignoring the actual issue at hand, which is the material harm caused by the book and its adaptation
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you started off by saying “oh in the original book the author said he wasn’t trans”, then acknowledged “now his character might still be detrimental to the perception of trans people,” but still only say it MIGHT cause problems and follow it up by further defending the author. you then ignore everyone talking about how buffalo bill not being trans doesn’t make it better and continue to defend the author despite the fact that you’re the only one who cares about the author
regardless of your intent all you’re doing is defending transphobia. just admit it’s transphobic and move on! it’s a 36 year old book, it doesn’t matter! stop trying to defend it when that’s exactly what the original post was about!!!