Transgender

i remember as a kid watching a peter pan where peter was played by a girl.

idk this one isn't rlly outrageous to me. If they were doing it to push back trans rights ya grab teh pitchforks. but they aren't. they are taking a step forward for trans rights. i would hope they read these articles and cast real trans people going forward with understanding that they are literally supporting trans people if they do that. But it doesn't bother me he's cis. Who would i be to say what gender he can or can't be?

my actual thought when reading the article is "i bet that's a healthy experience for the actor"

This kind of thing always makes me feel vaguely uncomfortable. At least it seems like positive representation, and the character's motivation is a damning indictment of how healthcare fails people who fall outside the norm. It's a message that can get people talking about the big issues.

But I don't know. I'd just be happier to see a trans woman play a trans woman

I think the article does a great job discussing the issues with casting a cis man as a trans woman. Personally, I'm not a fan of this decision. The article mentions about how having a trans person in South Korea media is a big enough deal but imo if you're going to make this much effort then at least do it right and give fair representation.

The only thought I really have on this front is that all gender is inherently performative. One cannot be gender, one does gender. So the actor is not a cis man, he acts a cis man.

The question is if his performance can be considered an authentic performance of a trans woman, or if it comes across as acting as a cis man acting as a trans woman. To frame it another way, if we were to run this logic from the other side, could it be said that an actor like Elliot Page failed to properly portray cis-het women in many of his roles before coming out publicly as trans? I would probably argue no, but Elliot did have more practice.

I have not seen Squid Game season 2, so I can't make that call in this case. But even if I had, I am also not familiar enough with the nuances of gender performativity in Korean culture to determine what is and isn't a believable performance of gender. I would bring my own western biases to it if I tried.

At the end of the day, I think the author is trying to advocate a stance that doesn't really require all of that extra rationalization. It's a no-brainer to say "Look, you have plenty of actual trans people struggling to make it in the acting industry, why not just hire one of them?" Can a cis actor perform a trans identity as well as they do their cis identity? Maybe, it depends on how skilled at acting they are, I suppose. It's like asking if an actor who is typecast can do well if taken out of their normal genre—sometimes they can, but a lot of times they just don't. If you need an actor to star in a comedic movie, it's easier to find a comedian than it is to train a dramatist to act funny.