The “gender fluid” actress Ruby Rose revealed that she received backlash from progressives after openly identifying herself as a lesbian.
The Australian actress, who was recently cast as Batwoman in the upcoming series of the same name, told Entertainment Weekly that many progressives slammed her, saying being both a lesbian and “gender fluid” was a contradiction in terms.
“I came to the States to get into acting, and I couldn’t even get a manager or agent, so I made a short film based on my life because I had the time to do it,” the Meg star told the magazine. “I put it online, just to say, ‘This is something I wanted to do,’ and it went viral, which I didn’t ever expect. And then I got an opportunity to audition for Orange Is the New Black because they wanted to have a gender-neutral character.”
“But I’ve also gotten backlash. And that’s when you realize you have to keep up with the terminology,” she continued. “When I got cast as a lesbian in Batwoman, I didn’t know that being a gender-fluid woman meant that I couldn’t be a lesbian because I’m not a woman — not considered lesbian enough.”
Rose then admitted that the hostile response led her to consider making a new term for self-identity to avoid “stepping on anyone else’s toes.”
“My initial response was ‘Pfft!’ And then I was like, ‘Wait. Let me just figure this one out. How do I right this wrong, because if someone out there is upset by this, I need to know why and how to fix it,'” she explained.
“That’s when I sort of said, ‘I’m a woman that identifies as a woman. I’m not trans. But if being gender-fluid means that I can’t identify as a woman at any point, then I guess I can’t be that,’” she continued. “Maybe I need to make up another term, one that doesn’t step on any toes. One where I can be fluid in my gender, but also a lesbian, because otherwise, I’m not sure what I am.”
The 33-year-old, who rose to fame from Netflix series Orange is the New Black, has previously described her “gender fluidity” as a “feeling like you’re at one end of the spectrum or the other.”
“For the most part, I definitely don’t identify as any gender. I’m not a guy; I don’t really feel like a woman, but obviously I was born one,” she told Elle in 2015. “So, I’m somewhere in the middle, which-in my perfect imagination-is like having the best of both sexes.”
It is not the first time Ruby Rose has been the subject of criticism. Last August, she chose to delete her Twitter account amid a flurry of criticism over her casting Batwoman, with some fans contending that a Jewish actress should have been picked for the role to “reflect the superheroes’ heritage.”
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