Combating the Naysayer

The other day I entered a conversation full of disdain for what I am doing - making a film with a transgender character in it. I was told, all sorts of things, including I shouldn't, that I am trying to make people think another way about transgender people and that it is an 'abomination to God.'

I asked if what they believed meant not doing anything about the transgender individuals that are getting murdered, then went on to explain the high rate of homicides transpiring and the ways in which some of the murders I have learned about occurred. I then got a slightly different reaction.

Sometimes I think people are so busy being resistant or trying to swing this as a joke they forget that transgender people are just that - people. So it alienates them from the reality of being human beings who are living their lives in the best way they can.

I'm a writer/director so the best way I could find to impact this issue was to write something I might direct. That involves having a transgender person in the story as someone - simply living life and yet not have that be the main point of the tale.

This way I haven't created the pressure cooker that message films can sometimes be and yet folks are free to get the message.

I hope we have the opportunity to shoot this, because I've created an experience I think will be fun to enter - making it easy for me to tell this story and talk folks through the situations of the characters.

Written by Tanyeno Wotorson, the Director of "Glo."