Talk:We Exist
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Gender Identity of Andrew Garfield's Character
[edit]Definitions
[edit]Here's a break down of Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, and Gender Expression for some common definitions.
Transgender or Drag Queen
[edit]The music video description provided by the band says 'Our film follows the story of a young person's struggle with gender identity.'. A story about a drag queen would be one about gender expression and sexual orientation, but not gender identity. With that in mind, it seems more appropriate to treat this as a story about a transgender character. From the definitions page above: "Not all people who consider themselves (or who may be considered by others as) transgender will undergo a gender transition.". The fact that the protagonist does not appear to be on hormones or have undergone any surgery does not suggest that they are not transgender. I think this is a strong argument for considering the protagonist transgender.
Billboard and The Independent state that the protagonist is transgender, while The Advocate notes that the portrayal is ambiguous.
The current citations in the article [1][2][3][4], all refer to the actor as being in drag rather than to the character as being a 'drag queen'.
Though the song lyrics are about a gay man, it looks like the video itself is about a transgender person.
Pronouns
[edit]Given that the character is transgender there are two options:
The character is a female-identifed transwoman. In this case the appropriate pronoun is she.
The character is a non-binary-identified transperson, in which case the appropriate pronoun would be a neutral one. Since the song description intentionally leaves the gender of the protagonist unspecified, this option is also somewhat compelling. Unfortunately, I don't know if theres a consensus on gender neutral pronouns in the wikipedia community, so that makes this more difficult to execute.
I'm going to go with the interpretation of Billboard/The Advocate and treat the character as a transwoman.
Paigeantry (talk) 19:56, 18 May 2014 (UTC)Paigeantry