Scarlett Johansson flippantly dismisses critics of her casting as a trans man
Earlier today, ScreenCrush’s E. Oliver Whitney pointed out something that had previously been missing from coverage (ours included) of the casting for Scarlett Johansson’s new movie Rub & Tug—that the most accurate description of Dante “Tex” Gill, the Pittsburgh massage-parlor-and-steroids kingpin Johansson is set to play in the biopic, is not as a “cross-dressing lesbian,” but as a transgender man. Whitney’s conclusion is based on Gill’s 2003 obituary, which says that Gill preferred to be called “Mr. Gill,” “insisted [he] was a man,” and “may even have undergone the initial stages of [medical transitioning] that made [him] appear more masculine.” Our vocabulary around gender has evolved quite a bit since Gill’s heyday in the ‘70s and ‘80s, but as Whitney correctly points out, although he might not have explicitly called himself transgender, Gill definitely preferred to be referred to as a man.
