# data[].attributes.body
This article is written by a transgender woman who feels that Eddie Redmayne's portrayal of his transgender character is horrible. It plays into stereotypes surrounding transgender women. I'm going to use this to discuss the portrayal of Lili in the movie and how it creates a limited view of her.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Regressive, Reductive and Harmful: A Trans Woman's Take On Tom Hooper's Embarrassing 'Danish Girl'

People like to ask me why I hate Eddie Redmayne.

Earlier this year, Redmayne won an Academy Award for portraying Stephen Hawking in James Marsh's biopic "The Theory of Everything." When you watch him, it's easy to see why. His mannerisms, physical movements and speech patterns are all perfectly calibrated to give us the closest approximation to Hawking's disabilities one could possibly ask for in a fictional portrayal. It's impressive to watch... as an impression. Redmayne can twitch and mumble and spasm his way through "The Theory of Everything" with precision, but without all of those exaggerated physical ticks, what is left of the performance? Nothing.

You are always aware of his performativity, but he imbues his obviousness with so much exaggerated, visible effort, it's no wonder Academy voters and audiences love him. Redmayne is an actor who wants you not to discover deeper insight into his characters, but rather for you to see every ounce of effort he puts into portraying them. In that sense, he's both an engrossing performer and a brilliant conman; all the razzle-dazzle, with nothing to deliver-the feel of Stephen Hawking rather than the real thing.

In a way, he was perfect for Tom Hooper's "The Danish Girl," a heavily fictionalized account of the romance between 20th century painters Gerda Wegener and Lili Elbe that's being sold as a "revolutionary" depiction of a "transgender pioneer". The timing of this film's release could not have been more opportunistically lined up with not just the rise in transgender visibility in the media, but also my very own life.

For context: I had only recently discovered I was a trans woman since March of this year. In June, I started going out and presenting as a woman. I've still not come out to my family, who I'm currently living with, and before going outside as my true self, I drive to a secluded spot so I can change in my car, putting on a wig, make-up, and different clothes to align my presentation, drive off to where I need to be, hang out with friends, have a good time, then drive back to said spot and change back before I can return home and ensure my family that their totally cisgender heterosexual son has returned safe, unharmed, and uncorrupted. My life, as it is, is difficult. But it works. For now.

Then in September, the trailer for "The Danish Girl" debuted on the web, with Eddie Redmayne, my nemesis, already being touted by cis media for the bravery of his transformation. It's discomforting as hell being so early in my own transition and seeing words like "bravery" and "heroism" used to describe Redmayne, even though he'll be able to shed off the experience after his probable Oscar win, all the while having it be a matter-of-fact point of life for me and millions other trans women like me. But as much as I was dreading the inevitable thinkpieces by cisgender writers and the inevitable praise that Redmayne's style of performance would garner from critics and Oscar-voters... I was so damn curious.

So I watched it with a cisgender friend, and we were both aghast that, even with our low expectations, it was worse than we could've predicted: a boring slog with director Tom Hooper's typically ugly visual style and a laugh-out-loud embarrassing conclusion. It's well-intentioned, but every movie's well-intentioned in every directors' heads.

That isn't to say it's entirely without merit. Alicia Vikander steals the entire film with her more nuanced, magnetic performance; and bad as Redmayne is, he and Vikander share a palpable romantic chemistry that makes scenes of Lili and Gerda's acceptance of each other somewhat moving. And it's admittedly hard to distance myself from this movie when I see some of my own experience portrayed in it: the secret walks outside, the stares of other men, the longing looks at the mirror, the debilitating dysphoria, all played out here like they're part of a transgender playbook, ticking out the checkboxes. But when I see the form that that experience has taken in this film, and the lens with which Hooper uses to depict it, the emotional connection is lost, replaced only with discomfort.

"The Danish Girl"'s struggle to portray Lili Elbe's story magnifies not only the most glaring weaknesses of both Redmayne and Hooper, but also the cisnormative gaze of the transgender community. You get this in Redmayne's performance, of course, only instead of approximating a single individual, he's approximating femininity itself, ratcheting his exaggerated, nervous physical ticks to 11 when playing both Einar and Lili. As Einar, he's doing a proto-Stephen Hawking, with shaking hands, sad eyes, a sickly complexion, and a breathy voice. As Lili, he performs womanhood by way of stereotype. Amy Nicholson describes it very well in her LA Weekly article: it's "exaggerated, simpering body language, all head-ducking and languid caresses, which she learns studying a peep-show stripper-someone who is herself playacting a faux femininity for men."

That peep-show scene actually happens, and it's even more embarrassing to watch onscreen. Redmayne's Einar examines a cisgender stripper's exaggerated body motions and then mimics them perfectly, as if learning how to sensually caress the back of your hand against your cheek will teach him how to be a "real woman". His femininity is reduced to caricature. If the comparison isn't already clear, Redmayne is that peep-show stripper, only he's bringing it full-circle by presenting, instead, a faux-transsexuality for cis people.

Redmayne's work is one thing, but the way Hooper and his DP Danny Cohen shoot him adds a grosser layer to their portrayal of Lili. Like Redmayne, Hooper exaggerates and conflates feminine imagery to the point of parodizing them. His camera doesn't linger, or observe, or examine-it leers.

When Gerda is putting make-up on Lili, Hooper splices in extreme close-ups of the lipstick rubbing against Redmayne's lips. When Einar touches a dress for the first time, we get more extreme close-ups of the fabric rubbing against Redmayne's skin accompanied by heavy breathing and operatic strings courtesy of Alexandre Desplat. In the soon-to-be-infamous tucking scene, Hooper closes us in on Redmayne's naked body and slowly moves his camera down, treating the tucking of his penis like a gigantic reveal that he-and thus the audience-gawks at.

This hyperbolizing of femininity is never given to Alicia Vikander's Gerda, or any of the other cisgender characters. It is only for Lili. Intentionally or otherwise, Hooper's intrusive camera doesn't invite empathy, but only further otherizes Lili. Compare this to the way Celine Sciamma shoots a scene of self-reflection in her 2011 film "Tomboy," about a young, gender-questioning child named Mickäel who presents himself as a boy to his new friends. Sciamma allows us to examine him just as he's examining his own body in the mirror, but she never once calls attention to tiny details that isolate Mickäel's masculinity. Her patient, observant camera allows the audience to reflect on the body presented in the same way Mickäel is reflecting, and thus, empathy is created.

Hooper, on the other hand, will shove his camera right in the face of any feminine aspect of Lili. Especially her clothes. Another trans writer named Rani Baker wrote a terrific article about Lucinda Coxon's script (from when it was leaked) and how the descriptions of fabrics, dresses, and stockings (so many stockings) border on fetishistic. The finished film is no different, the costumes and the way they congeal with Redmayne's skin given the same kind of ogling Hooper gives to Redmayne's tucked genitals. It's no surprise that a cis male director would focus so intensely on a trans woman's choice of fashion, as "sad man in drag" is just as easy a transgender stereotype as any mention of The Surgery.

Speaking of which, after Lili's first surgery to remove the male genitalia, she finally feels comfortable enough with herself to live full-time as a woman and both her and the film's true colors start to show. In "becoming a woman", Lili gives up painting to become a department store salesgirl, where she teaches old ladies how the French put on perfume, becomes gal pals with her coworkers, and starts a close relationship with a depressingly wasted Ben Whishaw.

At this point, Lili's finally happy as her true self, but we the audience are left wondering...what is that true self? Hooper and Redmayne have spent so much time and effort leching and leering at Lili's femininity, we're never given an insight on what else she really wants besides being a woman. What they give us instead are the stereotypical tropes of a housewife-simple retail job, gossiping with the girlfriends, desperately wants to have kids of her own-with nothing else to define her. Like the rest of the film, her ultimate form of femininity is a simplification, a caricature.

Vikander's Gerda even questions her on this. Lili responds, "I want to be a woman, not a painter." Gerda's cheeky response: "Well, some people have been known to do both."

From what we know of Lili's life, she actually did give up painting, but not out of "wanting to be a woman instead", but because she considered that to be so closely tied to Einar that she couldn't do it anymore. This could've made for an interesting dialogue about identity and action, but is here reduced to Hooper, Redmayne and Coxon's close-enough approximation of what they believe it means to be a woman. And wouldn't you know it, they made it so the only person who has any "rational" sense of femininity is Gerda, the cisgender female. Because of course.

As these varying stereotypes of womanhood are given immense focus, it becomes all the more glaring what Hooper decides not to closely examine. The Male Gaze is presented in one scene for less than a minute, and then never brought up again. The owner of Lili's department store mentions how the type of femininity they're selling is "all about performance", but the film never once engages with the idea of performative femininity-taking part in it entirely, instead. The difficulties of womanhood are glossed over, making room instead for the pity of Lili's trans-ness, and her being unable to partake in the very simple, womanly pleasures as presented in the film.

For a film that's being touted as a progressive step up for "transgender
visibility", everything about its view of trans women and women in
general is regressive, reductive, and contributes to harmful
stereotypes: the cisnormative idea that a trans woman is simply a man
performing faux-femininity, as Redmayne twirls and vogues his way into
womanhood; the reductive portrait of a trans woman as a figure of pity
whose tragedy stems from being a man unable to "practice womanhood",
rather than accepting her womanhood as natural fact; the arguments that
TERFs (trans-exclusionary radical feminists) love to perpetuate that
trans women only reinforce outdated gender stereotypes; the leering at a
trans woman's body as something unnatural and abnormal instead of
inviting the audience to understand our dysphoria. What should've been a
celebration of a very complex, compelling transgender figure is instead
transmisogynist, and just plain-old misogynist in general.

We end with Lili's capital-T Tragic death a mere few hours after her second surgery to receive ovaries, played like a "Tropic Thunder"-esque parody of Oscar-bait social-issues movies by having her slowly lose breath just as she's staring at the sunrise, hand-in-hand with Gerda. Afterwards, we conclude with the hilarious denouement of Gerda and Hans (Lili's childhood friend) visiting the location of one of her landscape paintings in her memory. One of Lili's scarves is blown by the wind, and just as Hans is about to go after it, Gerda stops him: "No! Leave it... Let her fly." The final shot is of the scarf being carried by the wind. Smash cut to me simultaneously cackling and barfing.

Funny as it was (to me, at least), it was the most fitting end to this film. Hooper and Redmayne define so much of Lili by their own shorthand feminine archetypes, that it was only appropriate to have her end this film not as a woman, but as a piece of frilly fabric being flung out to who-cares. That is clearly how they see her, and that is clearly how they define us. An artificial texture, careening through empty air.
Follow Carol Grant on Twitter.
Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Regressive, Reductive and Harmful: A Trans Woman's Take On Tom Hooper's Embarrassing 'Danish Girl'

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Regressive, Reductive and Harmful: A Trans Woman's Take On Tom Hooper's Embarrassing 'Danish Girl' People like to ask me why I hate Eddie Redmayne. Earlier this year, Redmayne won an Academy Award for portraying Stephen Hawking in James Marsh's biopic "The Theory of Everything." When you watch him, it's easy to see why.

# data[].attributes.body
This review argues that Gerda is the character whose story stands out and emotions actually show. It argues that Lili doesn't have enough dimension to her to let the audience into her mind, which results in her being overshadowed by Gerda's experiences. This source helps with analysis of character portrayal and the overall effectiveness of the movie.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Image

Eddie Redmayne, left, and Alicia Vikander in "The Danish Girl." Credit Credit Agatha A. Nitecka/Focus Features

" The Danish Girl," Tom Hooper's new film, is a story of individual struggle that is also a portrait of a marriage. In this respect and others it resembles " The King's Speech," Mr. Hooper's earlier historical drama, a multiple Oscar winner a few years ago. In that case, the union of George VI and Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, was the foundation on which the tale of George's elocutionary striving was built. Here, the marriage is bohemian rather than aristocratic, but the stakes, while personal, are every bit as profound and consequential as the matters of state that drove the monarch to the microphone.

When we first encounter Gerda and Einar Wegener, played by Alicia Vikander and Eddie Redmayne, they seem perfectly matched. Both are painters, living amid the soft colors and sea air of Copenhagen in 1926. Gerda is a portraitist, while Einar's landscapes - drawn from his childhood memories of the fjords and marshlands of Vejle, a town on the Jutland peninsula - have brought him a measure of fame. Like many couples who share a profession, they provide each other with support as well as a bit of competition. Their best friend, Ulla (Amber Heard), a dancer, marvels at their mutual devotion, which combines the easy, egalitarian warmth of friendship with the heat of sexual attraction.

But their relationship turns out to rest on a false premise. Through a process that is by turns wrenching and exciting, Einar discovers that the man the world has always taken him to be is not the person he truly is. What begins as an experiment and a bit of a game - dressing as a woman for the Copenhagen artist's ball, wearing one of Gerda's camisoles under his clothes - becomes an existential transformation. For a while, Einar and Gerda pretend that Lili, his female persona, is Einar's cousin, visiting Copenhagen from the countryside. Henrik (Ben Whishaw), a self-described "romantic," falls in love with her. But Lili is not Einar in disguise: The truth is exactly the reverse.

Written for the screen by Lucinda Coxon and based on David Ebershoff's novel of the same title, "The Danish Girl" is a fictionalized biography of Lili Elbe (as Einar Wegener came to be known), one of the first people to attempt sex reassignment surgery. Lili's encounters with prevailing medical wisdom, culminating in her meeting with a sympathetic doctor (Sebastian Koch), form a harrowing subplot. And her bravery makes this film a welcome tribute to a heroic forerunner of the current movement for transgender rights. It's impossible not to be moved by Lili's self-recognition and by her demand to be recognized by those who care most about her.

Video

Tom Hooper narrates a sequence from "The Danish Girl" featuring Eddie Redmayne and Alicia Vikander. Credit Credit Focus Features

But it's also hard not to wish that "The Danish Girl" were a better movie, a more daring and emotionally open exploration of Lili's emergence. As it is, the film, like its heroine for most of her life, is trapped by conventional expectations and ways of being. If, that is, Lili is really the heroine at all. The film's title phrase is uttered on screen once, by Einar's childhood friend Hans (Matthias Schoenaerts), a Paris art dealer, in reference to Gerda. And it is Gerda's ordeal that provides the narrative with its emotional center of gravity.

When "The Danish Girl" was shown at the Toronto International Film Festival this year, Kyle Buchanan, writing for Vulture, complained that it was part of a trend of "queer and trans films that are actually about straight people." Not that the emphasis on Gerda's experience is illegitimate. She is called upon to support the man she loves as he erases himself from her life, and Ms. Vikander registers the anguish and ambivalence, as well as the passionate loyalty, that Gerda feels as Einar gives way to Lili.

But unlike Jill Soloway's Amazon series "Transparent," which embeds gender transition in a dense and detailed weave of family relations, "The Danish Girl" takes place in the airless, elegant atmosphere of quality filmmaking. Every scene is wrapped around a neat nub of feeling. The dialogue is carefully balanced between modern sensibilities and the imaginary language of Fancy Old Europe, which is really just English spoken in a variety of lovely and heterogeneous accents.

Mr. Hooper's tasteful, earnest, didactic style - magnified by Alexandre Desplat's decorously overwrought score - does the film no favors. And the asymmetry between the central performances doesn't help, either. Mr. Redmayne is a master of technique, adept at significant gestures, freighted glances and the kind of showiness that masquerades as subtlety. As a result, the passage from Einar to Lili is almost entirely a matter of artifice and surface. Einar's fingers brush against the ballerina's dresses hanging in Ulla's studio. Mr. Redmayne alters the angle of his neck, the rhythm of his walk, the timbre of his voice and the set of his mouth. It's all very impressive, as it was when he traced the progress of Stephen Hawking's neurological illness in "The Theory of Everything." But like that much-praised performance, this one does not take us where we need to go, which is inside the character's mind and spirit.

Ms. Vikander, in contrast, acts from the inside out, with an openness and spontaneity that is especially rare in movies like this one. Whether she is painting, smoking, embracing her husband or offering her hand to the woman who replaces him, Gerda is the one figure onscreen who seems to breathe the sharp air of reality. The others have been painted, with practiced skill and impeccable intentions, by numbers.
"The Danish Girl" is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). Sex, not to be confused with gender. Running time: 2 hours.

The Danish Girl

Writers

David Ebershoff (Novel) , Lucinda Coxon

Stars

Eddie Redmayne , Alicia Vikander , Amber Heard , Ben Whishaw , Matthias Schoenaerts

Genres

Biography , Drama , Romance

Movie data powered by IMDb.com

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page C8 of the New York edition with the headline: An Emotional Transformation for a Man and a Marriage. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Review: 'The Danish Girl,' About a Transgender Pioneer

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
" The Danish Girl," Tom Hooper's new film, is a story of individual struggle that is also a portrait of a marriage. In this respect and others it resembles " The King's Speech," Mr. Hooper's earlier historical drama, a multiple Oscar winner a few years ago.

# data[].attributes.body
This article touches on the real life Lili Wegener and how her diaries influenced the film. Using the diary descriptions it defends "The Danish Girl" from some of the stereotypes that people accuse it of portraying. I will use this to show a counterargument to some of the stereotypes being portrayed.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
By Stephanie Bunbury

Save

Save articles for later

Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time.

Got it

Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size

Last week, a clip of Aretha Franklin singing (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman went crazily viral. She sang this 1967 hit in honour of its author, Carole King, who was overwhelmed by the tribute. United States President Barack Obama, standing in the audience, wiped away a tear as the 78-year-old Motown diva launched into the familiar opening lines.

It was splendid, obviously, but 40 years on, those words may give us cause to pause. What is that feeling? What is "a natural woman"? What does it mean to say you have been born into the wrong body, that you appear to be a man but that you are, in fact, a natural woman?

These are big, endlessly elastic questions that probably don't have definitive answers. Perhaps they never need answering, now that surgery and hormone treatment make it possible for people to be what they want to be - or, more correctly, what they feel they already are. They are convinced. The opportunity to change exists. They get on with it. Their situation has a recognised name, so there is no need to flounder for explanations.

There are transgender celebrities: this was the year of Caitlyn Jenner on reality television and Laverne Cox starring in Orange is the New Black. There is greater acceptance and there are fewer sneering games of spot the difference among the comfortably cisgendered​ (those who identify with the gender they were assigned at birth) when they see someone in the street who doesn't quite pass. All this feels new.

Lili Elbe (Eddie Redmayne) and Gerda Wegener (Alicia Vikander) remain close, living together as two women. Credit: Agatha A. Nitecka

It came as a surprise when the first stories came out about The Danish Girl, directed by Tom Hooper, to discover that sexual reassignment surgery was being attempted in the 1920s.

The film, based on a novel by David Ebershoff​, is a fictionalised telling of the story of Lili Elbe, who was born Einar Wegener​ in Copenhagen in 1882, and was a highly regarded landscape painter during his early life as a man. Her diaries reveal that after living largely as a woman for more than 20 years, she was so frustrated and discouraged by doctors who refused to recognise her nameless condition that she was contemplating suicide. It was at this extreme moment that she was directed to the Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin, set up in 1919 by Magnus Hirschfeld, who wanted to develop the study of human sexuality as a serious discipline. It was Hirschfeld who came up with the word "trans-sexual" for those who wished to become, rather than simply appear to be, the opposite sex.

Not much is known about the surgical procedures conducted by Hirschfeld or later in Dresden, where Lili was treated by a doctor called Kurt Warnekros​, because the Nazis destroyed the institute's clinical records. What is certain is that she died in 1931, 14 months after her first operation. Her body had rejected an attempted implant of a uterus and ovaries. She had fervently hoped this would allow her to become a biological mother.

The legalities of undergoing a sex change required her to divorce her wife, Gerda, who was also an artist and bohemian and who, as a fashionable painter of women in the art-deco style, had paid for her husband's operations. They remained close companions, however, living together in Paris as two women. The film shows her at Lili's side when she died.

Eddie Redmayne researched his role as Lili Elbe in The Danish Girl for a year. Credit: Universal

Eddie Redmayne, who plays Lili, researched the role for a full year before filming began. "I was incredibly ignorant," he says. We are at the Venice Film Festival, where curiosity about whether last year's Oscar winner can cut it in a dress has made it the week's must-see. "The idea that sexuality and gender are two different things is something I had been ignorant enough to not really understand or really think on beforehand," he says. "Or to know about the across-the-board violence against transgender people, that in the United States in 32 states you can be fired for being transgender or that the suicide rate is 41 per cent. The simplest thing, finding a way to be your real self, is actually made incredibly difficult and complicated by society."

But what is that real self? How is it different from the self everyone can see already? In The Danish Girl, we see Lili watching women to see how they move and what they do with their hands when they are sitting still. We feel her confusion as she becomes the object of male appraisal when she walks into a room. The real Lili Elbe recorded these moments in her diaries, but there is a curious parallel with acting: she is learning how to look like a woman.

"I know. It is a very interesting question," Redmayne says. "One of the trans women who became a good friend of ours in prepping this film described it as hyper-feminisation. When you're beginning to investigate using make-up, perhaps you use too much. Perhaps you exaggerate your walk too much or wear clothes that are too, I don't know, sexual. She described it as being like a teenage girl's adolescence, that time of discovery."

Hooper says he kept reminding Redmayne that he was not imitating a woman, but revealing the woman who lay beneath. At the same time, Lili had to recognise the latent femininity, whatever that is, already within her.

Transition, Redmayne points out, even when it is the comparatively superficial transformation of an actor, does not happen overnight. Becoming Lili was a gradual accretion of mannerisms and emotions. "There was no one moment when I was done up and there she was. It was very much piece by little piece."

There did, however, come a moment of presentation: that was unnerving."The first day I walked onto the set as Lili, I had never felt such scrutiny. That was by a mostly male crew, and you don't know whether you are judged for whether you are passing or whether you look ridiculous, but there is that idea of being judged."

Of course, he was not experiencing the same fears. "I was in an incredibly safe environment, so it was nothing compared with what they must feel, given the danger of assault," he says.

The ambivalence of his feelings, however, did ring true. "I read a book by Jan Morris (renowned British travel writer, formerly James) called Conundrum, where she describes, as a man, having been used to being given a wine list, and suddenly that didn't happen any more. And there was a very confused reaction to that: on the one hand elation, and on the other hand, `What is this patriarchy we live in?' That's intriguing."

Director Tom Hooper with Alicia Vikander on the set of The Danish Girl.

Alicia Vikander​, whose role as Lili's wife, Gerda, is as prominent and arguably as dramatic as a story of change and acceptance, found a book she says "was like a little Bible": My Husband's a Woman Now by Leslie Fabian. "I called her and said, `My name is Alicia and I'm an actress ...'," she laughs.

"Her book is extremely honest. The thing is that, above all, you will support this person with unconditional love, but that doesn't mean it's not a bumpy road ... She is still with her spouse, who transitioned fully four years ago now. There have been hard times, she said, when she felt so lonely because people don't realise that the partner is transitioning too. That was a key thing for me to hold on to."

The Wegeners' story was first told in a book, Man into Woman, which drew heavily on Lili's diaries, notes and letters, and was published in 1933. It seems astonishing now that no one has tried to film it before, but even seven years ago, when Hooper first read the script and started talking about filming it, "there were definitely people around me who were negative about me doing the project," he says. "The fact that this year people seem to think it's an obvious film to have done marks an extraordinary cultural journey. The next step, I would imagine, is that it's not newsworthy in itself, and one would talk about this film as a love story that happens to have a trans character, but that is probably a while away."

It is also a subject fraught with political and personal sensitivities that have erupted in response to the first reviews of A Danish Girl. Many declared transgender readers of The Guardian welcomed a film that was "beautiful" and "accessible" as a path to understanding, but others lambasted everything from the use of gendered pronouns in the reviews to the failure to cast a transgender actor in the role of Lili. There was also fury that the film was presumed to be perpetrating unwanted stereotypes.

"Let's see ... transgender woman presented as cross-dressing man? Check. Turned on by women's clothes? Check. Pressured into presenting as a woman by pushy, oversexed partner? Check. Female persona presented as entirely separate identity? Check."

Chief among the cliches, apparently, was the scene in which Gerda asks her husband to fill in for an absent model by posing in a dress and stockings, thus creating strange stirrings in him as he smooths out the silk skirt, except that this scene was recounted by Lili herself. "I cannot deny, strange as it may sound, that I enjoyed myself in this disguise. I liked the feel of soft women's clothing," she wrote in her diary. "I felt very much at home in them from the first moment."

As for the despised suggestion that the transgender person is switching identities, it was Lili who described feeling like two people in the same body fighting for supremacy. Those people were, as she saw it, quite different. Einar Wegener was solid, dependable, cerebral and authoritative. He was also a competent, hard-working painter. Lili Elbe was, according to her own notes, a "thoughtless, flighty, very superficially minded woman" who cried easily, barely spoke in front of men and could not paint at all.

Einar felt he was being conquered by Lili. "I am finished," she wrote in 1930. "Lili has known this for a long time ... And consequently she rebels more vigorously every day."

She had no frame of reference, of course, no internet to consult, no transgender "community" to share, interpret or reshape her experience. Her idea of "a natural woman" was one who could bear children. Like all of us, she was a product of her times.

Gerda was as revolutionary a figure as her husband, Hooper says. "People are talking about gender fluidity in relationship to Lili, but Gerda was pushing the boundaries of how her gender is defined. She was a working artist and, in a male-dominated world, she was very fiery and, in a way, a feminist." Photographs show a broad-shouldered woman who clearly enjoys dressing up and looks into the camera with frank cheekiness. There was some suggestion that she was a lesbian.

"It's interesting how gender is constructed," Hooper says. "For many centuries, men defined how they wanted women to be, and it didn't include having vibrant professional lives. We have broken down that gender stereotype, thank God, but what's so tricky about talking about gender is that there is also an aspect that is culturally constructed. The idea of talking about gender as a spectrum is kind of interesting for me. It sort of says we're all a bit of a mixture."

A mixture of what, though? We are no closer, after our discussions on this Venetian afternoon, to knowing what feeling like a natural woman actually means, but it doesn't seem to matter. Redmayne says he hopes the film helps to improve the world for the transgendered: people who just want to live their own lives. That's simple enough: it's what everyone wants.
The Danish Girl opens on January 21.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Danish Girl: an exploration of gender, sexuality and cultural expectations

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Sexual reassignment surgery was attempted as long ago as the 1920s, but it wasn't until very recently that a film tackling the subject was deemed acceptable. Based on a true story, The Danish Girl is an extraordinary tale of love, commitment and revolutionary behaviour.

# data[].attributes.headline
Transgender Representation in Offline and Online Media

# data[].attributes.subject
Transgender Representation in Offline and Online Media

# data[].attributes.body
This study interviewed LGBTQ youth to gain their perspective on how transgender people are portrayed in offline media (movies and T.V.) as well as online media (social media, internet). Within the discussion it is also mentioned that all representations of transgender people in media has an impact on transgender youth because it informs how they see their identity and often reflects how society sees their identity as well.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Transgender Representation in Offline and Online Media

# data[].attributes.headline
How Trans Actors are Rewriting the Rules of TV Acting

# data[].attributes.subject
How Trans Actors are Rewriting the Rules of TV Acting

# data[].attributes.body
This article talks about the lack of variety in roles available to trans actors. Most roles are specifically written for transgender people, rather than allowing trans actors to play cisgender roles as well. It does discuss a few outlying roles however that have no specification of gender, which gives the audience a chance to see them as a person, not a trans person.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Image

Jen Richards, seen here in "Blindspot," is one of a small but growing number of transgender performers playing characters that weren't explicitly identified as trans. Credit Credit NBC

Although Jen Richards is transgender, the character she played in the NBC series "Blindspot" was not - at least not on the page.

Richards was approached last year by the showrunner Martin Gero to play, she said, an "aggressive, duplicitous C.I.A. agent," in a two-episode arc that aired in January. "He saw something in me and liked me," she recalled, adding that she wasn't asked to audition for the part.

She had recently picked up Gotham and Peabody Awards for "Her Story," a web series she starred in and helped write about a pair of trans best friends juggling their personal and professional lives. The six-episode drama was hailed as a landmark moment for L.G.B.T.Q. representation - a rare chance to see trans lives depicted honestly and authentically.

But when Gero reached out to Richards for the role of Sabrina Larren, it was because he had seen her guest star as a therapist in an episode of "Nashville" and admired the "ease, strength and empathy in her performance," he wrote in an email.

While her character in "Nashville" was also transgender, "Blindspot" doesn't specify Larren's gender identity. Gero didn't discuss the fact that Richards is transgender with Andi Armaganian, the director of one of the episodes, because it wasn't pertinent to the role she would be playing on screen.

"Her gender identity is irrelevant to the story," Richards said of the character. "Her past is irrelevant to the story."

Trans actors say such casting opportunities should be more routine. That is seldom the case. While television has made great strides in L.G.B.T.Q. inclusion with shows such as "Orange Is the New Black" and "Pose," when trans actors are called in to read for a project, they still find they are only considered for parts specifically written for transgender people.

Image

Richards, left, and Aaron Abrams on "Blindspot." "Her gender identity is irrelevant to the story," the actress said of her character. "Her past is irrelevant to the story." Credit Peter Kramer/NBC, via Warner Bros.

This handful of roles amounts to an extremely small pool of available jobs each year. A recent report by Glaad, an organization that studies gay, lesbian, bisexual and trans representation in media, determined that there were just 26 trans regular and recurring characters across broadcast, cable and streaming networks in 2018.

Performers like Richards and the actress Bea Cordelia, who won a Streamy Award for "The T," a web series she produced, directed and starred in, are filling in the gaps by creating their own projects. There are "maybe a handful" of "big, juicy, complex, compelling roles" open to trans actors each year, Cordelia said, as opposed to the countless parts cisgender people have the chance to audition for.

But recently, Cordelia was invited to audition for a walk-on role in "The Red Line," a CBS show that premiered this month. A law clerk in the district attorney's office, the character only has one line.

What made the tiny part unique is that the casting call permitted anyone - regardless of gender or race - to audition.

"There were people of all kinds of identities in the waiting room," she said, noting that the part was eventually cut before broadcast. While waiting to audition, she ran into a performer who played one of her romantic interests on "The T."

Taking this fluid approach to casting serves to challenge the ways in which certain groups of people are viewed as the default on screen. When a character's gender identity isn't mentioned in a script, it's often assumed the part is cisgender, a term used to describe individuals who identify with the gender they were assigned at birth.

Trans actors say they want the ability to be seen as all kinds of people, even characters whose background isn't part of the story. While casting cis actors in trans roles - Jared Leto in "Dallas Buyers Club," for one - may suggest their identities are just a costume, allowing trans people to play everything from a helicopter pilot to Barista No. 2 sends a powerful message. It says that they are part of the everyday fabric of society, just like everyone else.

Hari Nef in "You." Credit Lifetime

Some in the industry are beginning to take note. In addition to Richards, the actress Hari Nef recently played a supporting role as a pretentious grad student on the first season of "You," the Lifetime thriller that became a cultural phenomenon after it hit Netflix. Although Nef is trans, Blythe's gender identity isn't mentioned in the show, nor is it discussed in the Caroline Kepnes book series on which "You" is based. (Nef, who was unavailable for comment, has clarified on Twitter that "the character isn't trans.")

Elliot Fletcher, who played a trans teenager on "The Fosters," is set to appear in six episodes of the upcoming TNT drama "Tell Me Your Secrets." Fletcher describes his character, Jake, as the "puppy dog" role he's used to playing: "loyal," "sensitive" and "smart." Notably, that description doesn't include the word "transgender." While he is grateful for the chance to allow trans youth the ability to see their lives and experiences reflected on screen, Fletcher wants to also be able to show the full range of his talent.

"I don't want to just be seen as a trans actor," he said. "There are a lot of trans performers who I know that feel that way. Oftentimes we're looking for auditions where [the character is not] specified or assumed to be cisgender because we want to break out of whatever box we've been put in."

Tearing open those boxes in which trans actors are often placed doesn't just create greater opportunities in the television industry; it can also encourage others to live more openly.

Brian Michael Smith had appeared in small roles on shows like "Girls" and "Person of Interest" for several years before coming out for the first time in 2017 while playing a trans character on "Queen Sugar." What kept him in the closet until then, Smith said, was the fear that being honest about who he is would limit future career opportunities - if there's still little space on TV for trans people, there's even less elbow room for black trans men.

On "The Fosters," Elliot Fletcher played a trans teenager. On the upcoming drama "Tell Me Your Secrets," the gender identity of Fletcher's character isn't specified. Credit Tony Rivetti/Freeform

"Of the very few trans masculine roles that are out there, they're mostly white and young," said Brian Michael Smith, seen here in "Queen Sugar." Credit OWN/Warner Bros.

"Of the few roles for trans characters that are out there, most of them have focused on trans feminine narratives," he said. "Of the very few trans masculine roles that are out there, they're mostly white and young."

But to his surprise, Smith's "Queen Sugar" role didn't set him up for being typecast as the "token trans guy." Shortly after he came out, Smith landed roles on "Chicago P.D." and "Homeland." He said casting directors responded to the vulnerability he brings to his work, even though the characters were originally written for cis actors.

By giving trans actors the chance to show what they can do, Smith said it also gives audiences an opportunity to see them as more than just one thing.

"I think the most important thing is to change this perception that trans people are trans before they are people," Smith said. "When you see us playing any role, it reinforces that in a very powerful way."

While television still has a ways to go before trans actors are on equal footing with their peers, the performers interviewed for this story say things are changing - often through their own advocacy.

Richards often goes out for parts she knows she will never get, she said, just so she can meet casting directors and encourage them to consider trans actors for roles they never thought of them playing. Each time she's brought this conversation to the table, she has watched "light bulbs go off."

"It wasn't that they had been actively discriminating against trans people, it just hadn't occurred to them," Richards said. "I've never met a single casting director who wasn't open to that idea."

But while some of the showrunners she's been working with don't think of her characters as transgender, Richards still does - her gender identity is too central to who she is to leave that part of her behind when she walks on set, she said. "What's really lovely is that it doesn't matter."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How Trans Actors Are Rewriting the Rules of TV Casting

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Although Jen Richards is transgender, the character she played in the NBC series "Blindspot" was not - at least not on the page. Richards was approached last year by the showrunner Martin Gero to play, she said, an "aggressive, duplicitous C.I.A. agent," in a two-episode arc that aired in January.

# data[].attributes.headline
Demographic and Health Characteristics of Transgender Adults in California

# data[].attributes.subject
Demographic and Health Characteristics of Transgender Adults in California

# data[].attributes.body
This article highlights some of the biggest studies recorded involving the transgender community in order to learn more about health disparities present. It found huge impacts on mental health of transgender people most likely due to the violence and discrimination they often face.

# data[].attributes.body
This shows the evolution of the stigma surrounding the transgender community. It discusses the separation that occurred between the transgender community and the LGB community due to the placement of gender identity disorder in the DSM, which I found interesting. It also talked about the availability of health care services specific to the transgender community.

# data[].attributes.headline
Transgender Women in San Francisco (pgs 7-28)

# data[].attributes.subject
Transgender Women in San Francisco (pgs 7-28)

# data[].attributes.body
This article discusses the wide range that the term "transgender" covers. It also talks about the evolution of the medical definition of transgender and its controversial placement in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Discrimination towards trans people that occurs outside of the medical community as well as within health care facilities was also included in the paper. I will be using this document to talk about the evolution in dialogue surrounding the diagnosis of "gender dysphoria syndrome" or gender dysphoria.

# data[].attributes.headline
Analysis of Transgender health (1900-2017)

# data[].attributes.subject
Analysis of Transgender health (1900-2017)

# data[].attributes.body
This article basically compiles all accessible publications surrounding transgender research or scholarly articles between 1900 and 2017. In the discussion it shows a shift in the increase of research that is being conducted, as well as a switch in direction that the research is going. It helps show that there is more of an interest in the trans community which could lead to greater acceptance and improved healthcare.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Analysis of Literature in Transgender Health

# data[].attributes.body
This analysis talks about how "The Danish Girl" takes on a more cis-normative as well as hetero-normative adaptation. Compared to the novel the movie is based on, the movie skims over the fluid nature of Gerda's sexuality. It also represents transgender as being binary to make it more acceptable to the cis-normative society, rather than portraying the entire spectrum that the term transgender covers.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Female Trouble, Representing Transwomen in The Danish Girl

# data[].attributes.headline
Film Industry has "problem" with Transgender Actors

# data[].attributes.subject
Film Industry has "problem" with Transgender Actors

# data[].attributes.body
The director of "The Danish Girl" discusses that a change is needed in Hollywood that allows "access for trans actors to both trans and cisgender roles". He expresses that there is a large talent pool of trans actors but no available roles for them to take. This shows that the normalization of transgender people is needed, rather than focusing on their "otherness" like most of society does.

# data[].attributes.body
Discusses the sudden increase in media exposure of trans community in 2010s, including celebrity representation. Also touches on statistics of suicide and assault in trans people. Highlights the political climate change with the take over of the Trump Administration in the White House, which can be used to talk about the importance of increased positive representation of the trans community to gain public support.

# data[].attributes.body
I found this article both interesting and appalling. It is written from a conservative (and somewhat aggressive feeling) viewpoint of the transgender community. I thought reading this would be a good opportunity to see a viewpoint that differs from my own, especially since it is not a viewpoint I typically associate myself with. There was one argument mentioned about the ethical aspect of gender affirming treatments on seemingly healthy people despite numerous risks involved, I could use this as a counterargument to the push for gender affirming medicine. Overall it is also an example of a viewpoint that does not support transgender equality and acceptance.

# data[].attributes.headline
How Far Has Transgender Health Come Since Stonewall? 

# data[].attributes.subject
How Far Has Transgender Health Come Since Stonewall? 

# data[].attributes.body
This article discusses the changes in dialogue surrounding the diagnosis of gender identity disorder (now gender dysphoria) throughout the years. It also talks about moving away from the binary model of transgender and that more research and training is needed in order to make changes in health care that will make it more inclusive for the trans community. This can be used as an example of gaining acceptance within the medical community and a push to further improve that acceptance.