I saw this news over the weekend and wanted to wait and see hope and pray it was just some stupid mistake, but alas it looks like it wasn’t. Ruby Rose has had a wild few days. She scored arguably the biggest role of her career as Batwoman in a new CW series, her film The Meg, which she was heavily promoted in, made a whopping $141M at the box office…oh, and a bunch of angry trolls attacked her for her sexuality, forcing her to quit Twitter.
This is a weird one, so let’s jump into it. Rose playing the Kate Kane version of Batwoman was seen as a really big deal for the LGBTQ community, having a gay superhero character on TV in a major network series. Rose, who has been publicly out for years, appeared on the Jimmy Fallon show and talked about how deeply personal the role is for her, for exactly this reason and others. Yet somehow there was a backlash against her casting specifically because of her sexuality, and began attacking the actress personally. Some of the insults attack her for not being Jewish as the character is, while others attack her for claiming to be gender fluid and not a good spokesperson for LGBTQ. Check out the #RecastBatwoman hashtag to get a look at most of it.
Rose posted this message on Twitter before closing her account and blocking comments on her Instagram…
“Where on earth did ‘Ruby is not a lesbian therefore she can’t be batwoman’ come from — has to be the funniest most ridiculous thing I’ve ever read. I came out at 12? And have for the past 5 years had to deal with ‘she’s too gay’ how do y’all flip it like that? I didn’t change. I wish we would all support each other and our journeys.
When women and when minorities join forces we are unstoppable… when we tear each other down it’s much more hurtful than from any group. But hey/ love a challenge I just wish women and the LGBT community supported each other more, My wish was we were all a little kinder and more supportive of each other…Sending everyone my love and gratitude, it’s been a rollercoaster of a year, this month especially.
I am looking forward to getting more than 4 hours of sleep and to break from Twitter to focus all my energy on my next 2 projects. If you need me, I’ll be on my Bat Phone.”
What’s wild about this is that these would seemingly be people in favor of Rose’s casting, but they’ve attacked her nonetheless. You can see why that would be especially hurtful, and why that would lead to her taking a powder from social media for a while.
