There is talk of the time when transgender films have to be brought to the movies. I think that is a good thing. Cinema, like any other medium, has to reflect reality. It is not an entirely new issue, we have already known characters in the Basque film. Like Katalina Erauso, by Esperanza Roy, in La Monja Alferez, by Javier Aguirre.

But doubt has been born. Not for the return of all time, but for LGTB entrepreneurs. They have denounced and censored that in order to represent men in general, female swans and male swans are taken to represent the transas. The controversy grew when Scarlett Johansson chose to represent the mafioso Dante Gill in Rub & Tug. The same has happened with Paco León, a transe woman in La casa de Las Flores, or with Fanny Ardant Andre transa in Lola Pater.

The question is whether zis men or zis women are right to represent transs-characters. My answer is that these roles have to be done by good actors, without looking at whether they're cis or trans. In the case in question, the suitability or otherwise of a role to an actor shall be assessed, without prejudice to be zis, trans or whatever.

If the character is a transe woman, the actor should also be a woman; it doesn't matter if it's a woman or a trans. If the character is a trance man, the actor needs a man, trans or zis, but a man. That would be the rule. However, there can always be exceptions, according to the character (not all transsexuals are equal, nor all jokes are equal); according to the actor (because some serious actors have enough sensitivity, others do not...). Eddie Redmayne did a great job at The Danish Girl. Tilda Swinton luxury in Orlando. Jared Leto was also a wonderful trans woman at the Dallas Buyers Club. Victoria April, on the other hand, was not credible in Sex Change. What must be avoided is the deplorable image given by some male actors disguised as women. For example, Tony Sang in Everything about my mother, or even worse, Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie.

The argument that is often used, that is, that the roles of trans friends have to be made by trans friends, is by nature exclusive to trans for three reasons. Firstly, we would confine them to a single type of paper. Secondly, we would punish them to starve to death, because there are very few trans characters in the film industry, and if a schism can't do that of a trans, for the same reason a trans could not do that of a swan. Finally, because it also goes against their desires: the trans woman wants to be a woman, without adjectives; the trans men.

* Cisgenero: A person in whom the sex assigned to the birth coincides with the gender identity; opposed to the transgender.