every once in a while i hop back on here to browse my archive, 99% convinced that at some point i reblogged an image i want to use as a tattoo reference at some point. except every time i do this, the deeper i get into my archive, the less sure i am this image not only ever existed on tumblr, but ever existed in the way i imagine it in the first place. also browsing my archive is always upsetting since i was on here for so long through some very upsetting & embarrassing times, so this is for future me whenever i decide to do this again that perhaps, uh, just, don’t.
The book Adam by Ariel Schrag is being turned into a movie which has been named as one of the most exciting LGBTQ films of the year. You should know before watching that the book is about a cis boy who pretends to be a trans man in order to persuade lesbians to sleep with him.
Yeah… you read that right.
Book plot summary:
boy spies on his lesbian sister having sex
boy decides to pretend to be a trans man (gross)
i.e. pretends to have a vagina because he thinks lesbians will want him then (he literally wants to fuck lesbians because he watched his lesbian sister have sex wtf)
he does get a lesbian to sleep with him, he straps his penis down using ace bandages and uses a strap on.
all the actual trans dudes we meet identify as lesbians this basically implies that trans men are not real men (lesbians i.e. women)
another time they have sex again only he uses his actual penis but tells her its a strap on. that’s literally rape, she didn’t consent to an actual penis.
he confesses that he’s been lying to her this whole time but she doesn’t break up with him. she even says its okay cause she fantasised about him being “a real boy"
that’s a direct quote. massive transphobia. huge. not to mention this is now the “lesbian is cured by dick trope” which is disgusting and that trope leads to real lesbians and bi women being raped to “fix” them.
he leaves new york, they’re long distance. they get in an argument and he calls her a slut and a whore among other things and then she dumps him
eventually they get back in touch and she has a new cis boyfriend so yep, she’s been “cured” woo she’s actually straight and he helped her realise that yay (massive sarcasm)
It is deeply deeply transphobic. To imply that our identities are just costumes for other people to put on erases who we are as people. More than that, to imply it is done to trick people into sex is a dangerous lie that literally gets us killed.
It is also deeply lesbophobic. To fuel this narrative that lesbians can be “fixed” by having sex with a man leads to real corrective rapes happening.
This book gives out incredibly harmful notions about trans men and lesbians that are used to hurt them in real life. It’s so entrenched in the narrative that I don’t see how the film can possibly be any better.
I do not say any of this lightly. it’s very very rare for me to call out a piece of fiction or for me to decide that a story is unfixable. But this… there’s no excuse for the bigotry in this.
I’d like to tell people to boycott it but I can’t tell you what to do. So instead I’m going to ask that you share this because it being named as an exciting new LGBTQ film is going to make LGBTQ teens want to see it. And they should know beforehand how hurtful it could be. They should be able to arm themselves with that knowledge.
Don’t make queer kids see this film believing it will represent them only to be exposed to this hatred of their identities.
Please reblog.
a couple of things.
1) I am old enough to remember when this book came out. it was just another piece of work involving trans people - written by a cis author - that trans people found offensive, and nobody else really cared and the book did well anyway. I am so tired of that trope. it’s 2019 and trans people should be writing their own narratives. every month it feels like I have to reiterate some version of that. trans masculine people in particular are by and large almost completely absent from artistic representation in this way, so the fact that this is the only film with a trans director getting this level of release this year (aka the only film on this level anybody was willing to greenlight) should be a point of shame, not pride.
2) i am getting very annoyed at people encouraging me to “just see the film before passing judgement” … let’s break this down: you cannot divorce something from its offensive original source material if the same author also wrote the screenplay. It doesn’t matter what the director did or if the film is good or not if the original author is contributing to and profiting from its current iteration. if somebody wrote a book about Jews that the Jewish community hated overall, but then someone like me directed the feature film version and i was like “no y’all you haven’t seen it give it a chance i flipped the narrative bc i myself *am* a Jew” but then it turns out the same person who wrote the antisemitic original text *also* wrote the screenplay and everyone was like “that seems weird, we don’t want to see that” would people be calling that a war on nuance ? I don’t think they would. I think they would see it as tokenism and as a disappointing loss of an opportunity for me to direct a compelling feature that wasn’t predicated on making something less offensive out of a book my community hated. which is how I feel about this. take whatever projects you want but don’t try to convince people they’re being reactionary and obtuse for not wanting to see them.
seriously please please please don’t call nonbinary people “enbies” unless the individual explicitly says you can. it comes across as incredibly infantizing and condescending and it makes me and many others very uncomfortable
srsly do NOT call me that i fucking hate the term ‘enby’ like great if yr into it but it makes me feel like y’all think nonbinary is some like cutesy child gender shit & i’m almost 30 like fuck off w that kthx
Old people can"t understand when younger people are willing to cut a whole relative off. They have lived their entire lives in guilt or based on some sense of loyalty to someone based on blood. People will abuse you betting on that fact, just because ya’ll are blood that means you have to accept it. No, you don’t.
Remember boys, girls, and nonbinaries, the phrase isn’t blood is thicker than water.
It’s actually the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.
Which literally means the family you choose is and always will be more an important than the family you were born into. So you do you.
Update: he finally got the cat to the vet to see if she had a microchip
I was already on board with his sweet wholesome open-to-love-and-nurturing heart but I was fully unprepared for getting to that last tweet and seeing how off the hook HOT dude is
