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Not Once Did He Mention Non-Binary, Trans, or Simply Other
Does this make Tom Hanks’ recent Harvard commencement speech out of touch, trans-phobic and wrong?
Tom Hanks recently gave a twenty-something-minute commencement speech to the 372nd graduating class from Harvard University. The Chabot Community College grad, however, boldly used language that might have left a lot of people — are you ready ?— offended.
The Academy Award-winning actor cleverly used a message he once received on his answering machine from the deceased actor, Marlon Brando, as the hinge for a door that he opened for the young graduates. Mr. Hanks was pointing all of us “present” in the direction of the clues we need to solve many of today’s problems: We are all members of the human race, he proclaimed in the way that only the former “Forest Gump” can.
According to Hanks, who himself was inspired by the legendary thespian, Mr. Brando, the secret to resolving many of the conflicts tearing us apart today is to recall that each of us alive is nothing more and nothing less than just human. When he said those words, and only because I am hyper-politically aware, I feared the backlash to which the beloved hero of so many great Hollywood moments for the past 45 years would be subjected. Hanks said “Only human” and I…
