![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vaneramosYesterday afternoon at the Guelph International Film Festival, Danny and I saw two films: Blossoms of Fire and Transexual Journey. The first, directed by Maureen Gosling and Ellen Osborne, describes the radiant Zapotec women of southern Oaxaca, Mexico, noted for the strong role they play in traditional culture. Outside observers have often considered their society matriarchal, but in fact it is refreshingly egalitarian. One segment documented the surprising freedom of gays and lesbians in their community. The film is colourful and uplifting.
More difficult was Transexual Journey, by filmmaker Mark Cotton, which follows four patients arriving at a clinic near Montreal for gender reassignment surgery. I went through a startling paradigm shift at the beginning when one of the patients, Terry, first appeared on screen. I thought, "Oh no! He's such a cute little bear. I can't believe he's going to become a woman." It turned out Terry was born a woman, had already gone through several years of gender reassignment, including hormone therapy which had caused him to grow facial hair, and had come to Montreal for the difficult surgery to build a penis.
The difficult part came when the film discussed the surgeries in detail and showed some semi-discrete scenes from two of the actual procedures, including one outlining how the skin for Terry's penis would be cut from his left forearm. I felt queasy and light-headed and had to leave the room for a few minutes. I have always been squeamish about blood, but the intensity of my reaction was unprecedented and it puzzled me. Shadows of my own traumatic surgery in the past year perhaps.
I have several transgendered friends, but I still don't know enough about their dilemma. Some of them seem to assume exaggerated, stereotypical characteristics rather than the way a typical man or woman looks and behaves. I understand those very stereotypes have caused them intolerable frustration and distress. The solution doesn't make sense to me, but I don't have to live with it. As the person who introduced the film said, if our culture would let children be themselves rather than demanding that boys behave a certain way and girls another, mabye nobody would have to take such drastic measures to assert their individual identities.
At the risk of offending more people, I'll go further. If our culture treated homosexual and homophilic relations the same as hetero, we probably wouldn't need the labels gay, lesbian and bisexual. They're useful primarily in response to a society that has disregarded, devalued and criminalized our relationships.
More difficult was Transexual Journey, by filmmaker Mark Cotton, which follows four patients arriving at a clinic near Montreal for gender reassignment surgery. I went through a startling paradigm shift at the beginning when one of the patients, Terry, first appeared on screen. I thought, "Oh no! He's such a cute little bear. I can't believe he's going to become a woman." It turned out Terry was born a woman, had already gone through several years of gender reassignment, including hormone therapy which had caused him to grow facial hair, and had come to Montreal for the difficult surgery to build a penis.
The difficult part came when the film discussed the surgeries in detail and showed some semi-discrete scenes from two of the actual procedures, including one outlining how the skin for Terry's penis would be cut from his left forearm. I felt queasy and light-headed and had to leave the room for a few minutes. I have always been squeamish about blood, but the intensity of my reaction was unprecedented and it puzzled me. Shadows of my own traumatic surgery in the past year perhaps.
I have several transgendered friends, but I still don't know enough about their dilemma. Some of them seem to assume exaggerated, stereotypical characteristics rather than the way a typical man or woman looks and behaves. I understand those very stereotypes have caused them intolerable frustration and distress. The solution doesn't make sense to me, but I don't have to live with it. As the person who introduced the film said, if our culture would let children be themselves rather than demanding that boys behave a certain way and girls another, mabye nobody would have to take such drastic measures to assert their individual identities.
At the risk of offending more people, I'll go further. If our culture treated homosexual and homophilic relations the same as hetero, we probably wouldn't need the labels gay, lesbian and bisexual. They're useful primarily in response to a society that has disregarded, devalued and criminalized our relationships.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2003-10-19 07:13 pm (UTC)We probably wouldn't need the word "straight" either. People might care about the quality of one's relationships, rather than with whom we have them.
This doesn't seem like a strange idea to me at all. I've said more than once to friends that "bisexual" is a flag-of-convenience label for me. (That's right, despite how strong I can come on about it. :-) I don't want anyone who sees me in love with men to get surprised or upset if they ever see me in love with women too ... so I hand them the label, and I'm fierce about defending other fence-sitters. But then, I'm fierce about defending gay men and lesbians to straights, too.
I'm reading Jennifer Boylan's "She's Not There" right now, about a person transitioning male to female. The only thing that interests me is that she sort of confirms what other trans people have told me: it may be partly about gender role expectations, but even if those were gone, some people might still need to do something about their bodies. I sometimes wonder if trans/gender issues aren't going to prove even more thorny for all of us to consider than sexuality has been.
I've had that paradigm shift about hot trans cubs once or twice myself! :)
no subject
Date: 2003-10-19 07:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-10-20 01:56 am (UTC)Nothing particularly offensive in what you said, but I'm me, right?
I spend quite a bit of time avoiding conversations on these kinds of core issues with the transgendered, because my views on the subject are not popular.
Being of a mind that says transgenderism is the product of buy-in to the notion that gender is something other than the core pretext justifying a sociocultural construct, I tend to tell the transgendered to get over feeling like they need to conform to the notions of “gender-appropriateness” (for what impact that may have, generally not much). It's far less expensive materially and emotionally to learn to deal with the hand one's been dealt (and, in turn, change some of the paradigms as one goes along as a side benefit) than to try and re-deal the hand. You are very right, though, in the assertion that I mirror; I don't have to live inside that situation, and I can't fully grasp it any more than people not living inside my distinct situation can comprehend that.
I do honor and respect others' rights to determine the ways they choose to present themselves or be perceived, but I am deeply saddened and angered that the larger culture is overridingly oppressive in the establishment and rigid enforcement of arbitrary parameters along these lines.
Of course, my current problems with identity issues of my own seriously damage my credibility in the arena of nonconformity within set sociocultural constructs, so it's best to keep my mouth shut in any event.
Besides, you hardly need the validation from me when the points stand well on their own.
no subject
Date: 2003-10-20 09:10 am (UTC)