Squid Game’s Trans Character Being Played By A Cis Man Is Better Than Nothing

One of the most important lessons you can learn in the fight for social justice is to take your wins where you can get them. If you won’t let things move forward until they’re perfect, you won’t see them move at all. Life is about give and take, and when no one seems of a mind to give you anything, you take what you can get. This is what I remind myself when I see the news of Squid Game’s transgender representation.

In the second series, one of the contestants will be a transgender woman who is competing to pay for her surgery. She will be played by Park Sunghoon, a cisgender man. A lot of people will tell you this is a bad thing. And in an ideal world, they would be right. But my fellow trans people, look around you. This is not an ideal world we’re living in right now. We’re very, very far from that world, and this role could inch us a baby step closer. It’s good news.

Trans Representation Is A Complex Issue In South Korea

While trans issues are a volatile political issue in the West, in South Korea (where Squid Game is set, produced, and filmed) trans rights haven’t even reached the debate stage yet and are mostly ignored. It is the only nation in the world where parental consent is required (no matter your age) to change your gender marker, and along with Japan is the only one that only allows it for unmarried individuals. You also cannot have children, and human rights studies have shown that doctors in South Korea are likely to reject trans patients for any healthcare entirely on the basis of them being trans.

This means that many trans people are forced to remain closeted in South Korea for their own safety. The idea that Squid Game could have just found a trans woman for this role overlooks how few of them would be willing to put themselves in the spotlight like this, not to mention that many simply don’t even exist. Things are not always as easy as internet buzzwords suggest.

Could the show have found a suitable trans woman if it really wanted to, with the cultural cache generated by the first series and the might of Netflix? Possibly. It would have had an easier time finding an Asian-American trans woman, which would no doubt have brought its own controversy. But no one forced the show to do this at all. No one expected it. One of the biggest shows on television will feature a trans woman in a prominent, sympathetic role. We have to learn to celebrate the steps to victory, not cast them aside because the road has not been fully walked.

Squid Game Has Tackled Major Issues Before

There will be further controversies to come, no doubt. For one thing, she will almost certainly die (given the nature of the show), which for those unable to read past the aforementioned internet buzzwords will be written off as a ‘bury your gays’ trope. The writing of women was also a weaker aspect of the first season, and adding transgender issues into the mix will mean it gets some stuff wrong. It will not be above criticism when that happens, but it would have to be drastically disastrous for this to not be an overall force for good.

Besides, Squid Game has tackled social issues well before, and the tragedy and desperation of the contestants is the point. In the first season, the lens was on North Korean defectors, with Sae-byeok a fan favourite by the end of the show. The mistreatment of immigrants is also in focus, with Abdul the kindest character in the series despite the unfounded belief that immigrants are self-serving and animalistic.

We also have to remember that if we insist on perfection, we’re often left with nothing. Scarlett Johansson was slated to play a trans man in 2018 for the biopic Rub & Tug. After pressure (and a somewhat ignorant response to the context), she dropped out. In 2020, the movie was downgraded to a TV show, and in 2024 it still does not appear to be in production. I think it was right for Johansson to leave in that instance, for the record, but it’s worth noting that if Squid Game didn’t get Park Sunghoon to play this role, they would have been far more likely to cut the character altogether than to cast the perfect trans woman.

If they had found a trans woman, then I have no doubt some sleuths would have poured through her online presence to find a misdemeanor to pull her down as well. It feels like a lot of activists don’t actually like winning or making progress, they like complaining about losing.

Squid Game season two having a prominent trans woman character is a major cultural victory at a time when trans people really need one. It is a flawed one, and will no doubt come with some rough, problematic edges, but a win is a win. We need to learn that while we still have wins left.