To explain it in detail for @uwuannihilator and anyone who hasn't heard this before:
Frank-N-Furter is a transmisogynistic stereotype of a trans woman.
The character is a cannibalistic rapist who is portrayed as a tall man with masculine features and garish makeup, presenting as a woman, referred to with he/him pronouns.
The character is referred to as a transvestite, as well as being an alien from the planet of Transsexual in the Transylvania galaxy. The film does not describe Frank-N-Furter as pansexual or genderfluid.
Rocky Horror Picture Show was released in 1975. At the time, trans women were still commonly referred to as transvestites. This is before the widespread adoption of terms like transgender or trans woman, back when transsexual was the more respectful term to use to refer to a trans person, even though transsexual was policed such that only trans people that sought out bottom surgery would be considered legitimately trans.
The film refers to the character as a trans woman using language appropriate to the time.
It's an obvious example of the transmisogynistic stereotype of a trans woman as a sexual predator.
The character is depicted as tall and masculine with a feminine presentation to reinforce the idea that trans women are just deviant men.
The character is degendered and turned into a third gender, not allowed to be a man or a woman, instead depicted as some deviant other.
This character is in my top 3 of worst portrayals of trans women in cinema, the other two being Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs and Dil from The Crying Game. And just like those films, it does not matter that people handwave away the implications that they're trans women, because these films are still using transmisogynistic stereotypes that implicitly associate these characters with trans women.
I get that you may not have heard this before. You might find it shocking. You might want to rush to disagree.
I'm going to ask you not to. Before you rush to argue that all of the trans women who talk about how harmful Frank-N-Furter is as a character are wrong, please stop and consider. Maybe you don't have all of the facts and maybe you haven't considered how this kind of portrayal makes other people feel.
We are not being sensitive, we are not taking it personally. We are trying to show you that something you think is innocent is actually harmful. This doesn't mean that you're a bad person if you like it, it just means you didn't know that. And now you do. Please think on that the next time you talk about this.
janainaart
jacobvanloon
germansingergirl
2087
origamiaround
theartofmadeline
