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| Mtf Transgender Writer Lady J |
According to Outward: Back in October, things got a bit testy between Jill Soloway, the creator of Amazon’s wonderful series Transparent, and Jenji Kohan of Orange Is the New Black during a New Yorker Festival panel on the state and future of LGBTQ TV. At issue was the question of whether one’s identity necessarily had any connection with one’s skill at producing art related to that identity—a rather ancient bugaboo in art criticism, but one made newly relevant by the sudden (and greatly welcome) advent of transgender characters in the media. Soloway insisted that she could not imagine continuing to make a show about a trans woman (Maura, played by Jeffrey Tambor) without having a trans woman on the writing staff, arguing that “it’s absolutely necessary, and it’s gonna change the show.” Kohan, while valuing diversity in the writers room, bristled at the idea of hiring a writer because of her identity rather than her skillset: “What you are in life shouldn’t automatically make you what you do in your art. It doesn’t necessarily translate,” Kohan said.
Let's be careful out there folks...we trans peeps just might have a little more insight into our lives than you think!!!
