“For many decades, I performed ‘woman’ with the long hair and the makeup,” Ramirez, who is non-binary, told The Cut. “Sometimes it was me, and sometimes it was survival.”
However, the reporter said Ramirez’s Che Diaz has prompted “plenty of eye-rolling from the (mostly younger) queer people I know, who found the character a hyperbolized, hypercringe representation of nonbinary identity.”
While the article pointed out the similarities between Ramirez and Che—both non-binary individuals of Mexican and Irish descent—Ramirez doubled down that their character is not an extension of themself. “I’m an actor,” Ramirez told The Cut. “I’m not the characters I play. I’m not Che Diaz.”
Ramirez further distanced themselves from Che’s storyline in their Instagram rebuttal, stressing that they are not “the fictional characters I have played, nor am I responsible for the things that are written for them to say.”
“I am a human being, an artist, an actor,” Ramirez added. “And we are living in a world that has become increasingly hostile toward anyone who dares to free themselves from the gender binary, or disrupt the mainstream.”
