Queer Character, Queer Actor

When I first came across Queer Character, Queer Actor, I take it to be used in the same way as Disabled Character, Disabled Actor, in that the character and the actor should be at a somewhat similar location on the LGBT+ spectrum, so the following hypothetical example would definitively count:

• In The Adventures of Alice and Bob, Alice, a lesbian, is played by the openly lesbian Clara.

In the following case, I would read that as close enough to work:

• In The Adventures of Alice and Bob, Alice, a lesbian, is played by the openly bisexual Clara.

However, on the trope page, I noticed a few examples like the following:

• In The Adventures of Alice and Bob, Alice, a lesbian, is played by the openly nonbinary Clara.

Would the latter really be in the scope of this trivia trope? I personally don't think so, since homosexuality and nonbinary gender are not all that similar, but I admit I'm not all that familiar with the LGBT+ spectrum to decide on this. Can anyone here please give me some guidance?

Scientia et Libertas | Per Aspera ad Astra Nova

You're correct that sexual preference (and romantic preference), and gender identity are different axes on the spectrum, of which I think it is most accurate to recognize six: sex assigned at birth, actual physical sex, gender presentation (i.e. what they prefer to look like with clothes on), gender identity (generally correlates to pronoun preference), sexual preference, and romantic preference. (The last two tend to be the same but aren't always: there are even rare cases like heteroromantic homosexual where a person becomes romantically attached to people of the opposite sex but is sexually aroused by the same sex.)

A while ago I made this breakdown of some fictional characters in Ask The Tropers to help with the discussion that eventually spawned the character pronouns thread:

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So, getting back on topic, while technically it is accurate that an other-than-straight character played by an other-than-cisgender actor is an LGBT+ or "Queer" character played by an LGBT+ actor, they're queer on different axes of the spectrum, which does seem a little odd to me.

Edited by StarSword on Nov 4th 2022 at 2:31:31 PM

Something I've noticed that goes beyond this wiki is that people are so used to the LGBT(etc) acronym that they act as if LGBT is all one thing, when Tness is entirely independent of LGBness. I've also seen individuals be referred to as LGBT, when they usually aren't T, and L, G, and B in this context are mutually exclusive. This also causes cognitive dissonance when lefties, particularly on social media, encounter transphobic gay people; again, they are so used to lumping together everybody who isn't cishet in one group that they have trouble with the idea that LGB people might not approve of T people.

The issue Sam raises is a manifestation of this. Progressives and lefties use the term LGBT so much that they don't realise the letters stand for different, orthogonal things, and mentally divide the world into cishet people and non-cishet people. So when someone writes an example like "Alice, a lesbian, is played by a transwoman", they don't realise those two things have nothing to do with each other - after all, lesbians aren't cishet and transwomen aren't cishet, so it's the same thing, right?

Star Sword's breakdown is extensive and pedantic, which is good (pedantic should not be a dirty word).

Hmm. I kind of feel like the trope could do with being split in two, one for shared sexual/romantic orientation, and one for shared gender identity/expression.

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I, uh, certainly wouldn't just attach this to "progressives and lefties" since I'm pretty sure a majority of people do in fact understand that being trans and being gay are two different things. That's not the problem we have and it's honestly a very baseless and rude claim to make, especially without actual evidence.

The problem is that the trope lumps everything together, so thus far there's nothing that's actually stopping anyone from using examples like these even when they don't make sense. It's the trope's broadness that's at fault, especially if there's no measures in place to make sure people don't do these kind of things... Since technically speaking, these examples aren't actually misuse.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

OK, I'll amend my statement to "a portion of lefties..." (right-wingers tend not to even recognise transgenderism and nonbinarity as existing. Iran does, but only to deny the existence of homosexuality).

In any case, the page shows that such confusion is clearly happening.

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Again, I don't think there's any evidence to support the idea that people are confused, I just think people like these LGBT+ related tropes and like to shoehorn the concepts everywhere, even when the result is ultimately nonsensical or waters down the actual meaning of the trope (as we saw with things like Badass Gay and Bi The Way). Combine that with the broadness of the concept, and...

I mean, we're using the term "queer", which is a broad term that could even be considered a general umbrella term at times. If being trans and being gay are both considered being "queer" in some way, then it only makes sense that people would think the trope allows for such connections to be made.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

The sister trope, Disabled Character, Disabled Actor, doesn't seem to have the same problem. I don't see any instances of "This Deaf actor played this blind character" or "This diabetic actor played this paraplegic character". Regardless of who is making such a mistake outside of our editors, it is more useful to discuss how to reduce such misuse, since we seem to agree that this is a mistake.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

I say we require that whatever "queer" aspects apply to the character need to also apply to the actor.

Edited by badtothebaritone on Nov 3rd 2022 at 3:32:14 AM

"The casting directors may not have been actually looking for someone queer to play such roles, but the actors were deemed best for the roles which may be because of the genuine portrayal. Note that though the actor and character may both be queer they may not identify the same way. In this way, the trope may be downplayed or sometimes invoked because of the casting directors wanting an openly queer actor in the role and settling for whatever they can find."

So, yeah, the trope in it's current state openly allows for mismatching connections. I think this would need a TRS fix.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Do we really want to be so exact? I am wary of being so detail oriented about a creator's sexuality, which might not even be clear to them let alone the public. I have no doubt the lesbian experience is different from the bisexual experience, but if they were just looking to cast a WLW role...?

That's a good question. I was mostly stuck on the trans part, which is obviously different from sexual orientation and shouldn't be lumped.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

I think an actor being a different sexuality than their character (so long as they're not straight) is an okay difference, but the trivia item should specify transgender characters being played by transgender actors or agender characters played by agender actors. Or simply, sexualities can be mixed and matched and gender identities can be mixed and matched, but the trope shouldn't mix the two together (unless the example is about multiple identities like a transgender lesbian character played by a transgender lesbian actor).

Maybe just adding a sentence or two like that would be enough to curb misuse?

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Disabled Character, Disabled Actor does have a few examples of "character has OCD, actor has Parkinsons." But definitely Queer Character, Queer Actor suffers more from incidental examples rather than something chosen in tandem with the actor. Perhaps we need a clarification to try and keep the labels in the same direction, like a distinction between sexual preference and gender identity, but if it doesn't work maybe a split is needed.

Do you not know that in the service one must always choose the lesser of two weevils!

Disabled Character, Disabled Actor I think has a terrain advantage of being a subtrope of Written-In Infirmity: either the actor's disability is so obvious it couldn't possibly be confused with anything else (e.g. a paraplegic actor playing a paraplegic character), or it's using an actor with one disability to portray a different disability with similar symptoms (e.g. The Good Wife with Michael J. Fox's Parkinson's written in as Louis Canning's tardive dyskinesia).

Whereas with Queer Character, Queer Actor, the actor might not actually be the combination of sexuality and gender identity they portray, but they might have the expertise to do it convincingly, while still letting the studio dodge accusations of Unfortunate Implications by casting a straight actor.

Currently, I don't think splitting the trope is a good idea yet. We should just put in a Rule Zero in the trope description that requires the choice is explicitly (if not a match) or implicitly (matches mostly fall into this, especially if the creator is already out of the closet about it) used to improve the veritas of character portrayal.

However, if there's no improvement, or otherwise the page is long enough for a split, then split, first on the gender preference and gender identity axes.

Edited by SamCurt on Nov 3rd 2022 at 7:05:02 AM

Scientia et Libertas | Per Aspera ad Astra Nova

Explicitly or implicitly what, exactly? What is "this", aside from the basic concept of "the character and the actor have similar identities and backgrounds"? If you're saying that it needs to improve the portrayal, then that's adding meaning that doesn't currently seem to exist (or at least, meaning that isn't the end-all-be-all of the concept).

Also, not really what Rule Zero means...

Edited by WarJay77 on Nov 3rd 2022 at 10:11:45 AM

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Of note is that advocacy for separating the "T" from "LGBT" is pretty popular among transphobes, and a number of LGBT groups have pointed out that all letters of the acronym share common struggles in clashing with sexist and heteronormative societal expectations (even when accounting for the distinction between sexuality and gender identity), so I worry that the proposed split for Queer Character, Queer Actor would send the wrong message.

Edited by bowserbros on Nov 4th 2022 at 3:34:45 AM

Be kind.

Yeah, I don't think we need to split the page. I just think it is worth discussing whether examples of a sexually queer actor playing a genderqueer character or vice versa are valid. This page was supposed to be part of Actor-Shared Background, I believe.

Edited by StarSword on Nov 4th 2022 at 6:55:47 AM

I decided to do a wee wick check.

• Trivia.West Side Story 2021: Nonbinary actor plays trans character.
• Trivia.But Im A Cheerleader: Unclear
• Characters.The Umbrella Academy 2019 The Hargreeves Siblings: A character becomes transgender due to their actor coming out as trans.
• Trivia.VS Tabi Ex Boyfriend: Pan actor plays bi character.
• Trivia.Bombshell2019: Lesbian plays a lesbian.
• Trivia.Gia: Bi actress plays lesbian.
• Trivia.Bo Jack Horseman: Lesbian voices a lesbian, ace actress voices an ace character
• Trivia.The New Mutants: Unclear; Blu Hunt is only described as "queer"
• Creator.Olivia Thirlby: Bi actress plays lesbian and bi characters
• Trivia.Happiest Season: Gay actors play gay characters
• Trivia.Tick Tick Boom: Gay actor plays gay character
• Trivia.Lizzie: Bi actress plays lesbian
• Trivia.Madagascar A Little Wild: NB actor plays NB character
• Trivia.Euphoria: NB actor plays an NB character, trans bi actress plays a trans lesbian
• Trivia.Femme Fatale 2002: Bi actress plays a bi character
• Trivia.For The People: Pan actress plays a lesbian
• Trivia.Fear Street: NB actor plays a lesbian.
• Trivia.Trinkets
  • Elodie: Bi actress plays a lesbian
  • Sam: Unclear, as example just says "queer"
  • Sabine: NB actor plays a lesbian
• Trivia.Lilting: Gay actor plays a gay man
• Trivia.Lovecraft Country: Two-spirit actress plays two-spirit character.
• Trivia.Wynonna Earp: Unclear, as it doesn't say what their characters are.
• Creator.Jamie Gray Hyder: Bi actress plays bi characters.
• Trivia.The Magical Christmas Tree: NB actors play NB characters.
• Characters.The Other Side: WLW actresses voice WLW characters.
• Trivia.The Kids In The Hall: Gay actor plays gay man.
• Trivia.Duck Butter: Bi actress plays bi character.
• Trivia.And Just Like That: NB actress plays NB character, bi actress plays bi character.
• Trivia.Pete The Cat: Gay actor plays a gay man.
• Trivia.In The Dark: Unclear. One actress is just described as "queer", and the other one is referred as a lesbian but is also NB. Can NB people be gay, bi, or hetero?
• Trivia.Congeria: Unclear
• Trivia.The Crying Game: Lesbian plays a trans woman
• Trivia.Guilty Gear: Trans actress voices a trans character
• Trivia.Fire Emblem Fates: Gay actor voices a bi character
• Trivia.Cruella: Gay actor plays a gay man
• Trivia.Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 The Black Order: Bi actress plays a bi character
• Trivia.Ellen: Lesbian famously plays a lesbian
• Trivia.Empire: Unclear, doesn't say which type of queer
• Trivia.The Birdcage: Gay actor plays a gay man.
• Trivia.Queen Sugar: Bot-het actors play non-het characters.
• Creator.Gillian Anderson: Bi actress plays bi character.
• Trivia.Elementary: Trans actress plays trans character.
• Creator.Kate Siegel: Bi actress plays a lesbian
• Trivia.Battle Of The Sexes: Bi actor plays a gay man.
• Series.Supergirl2015: Trans actress plays a trans character.
• Trivia.Two Sentence Horror Stories: Trans actors play trans characters.
• Trivia.Sasaki And Miyano: Unclear; actors are just described as "queer"
• Creator.Jackson Lennon: Gay trans man plays a trans character and a gay character.
• Trivia.Steven Universe Future: NB trans actor plays NB trans character.
• Trivia.For All Mankind: Appears to be a lesbian playing a lesbian.
• Trivia.Rugrats2021: Bi actress voices a lesbian.

Most of these do look to be "LGB actor plays LGB character" or "Trans/NB actor plays trans/NB character", with just a couple of "Trans actor plays LGB character" or vice versa. Based on that, I withdraw my position that the trope should be split.

That said, my impression is that "Non-cis actor plays non-het character" and vice versa at least aren't in the spirit of the trope.

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Regarding "can NB people be gay, bi, or hetero": that's one of the reasons I used "-philic" adjectives in post #2: it describes what a person is attracted to independently of their own gender identity.

That said, I know a trans woman who transitioned while married to a woman and uses the term "translesbian".

I hear more lesbian trans women use "transbian" to describe themselves.

Anyways, while I don't think a split would be appropriate, I do support the suggestions that whatever queer aspects apply to the character should also apply to the actor, with some degree of flexibility such as a bi actor playing a lesbian character or an agender VA voicing a genderfluid character.

Edited by bowserbros on Nov 5th 2022 at 12:46:26 PM

Be kind.