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Yesterday 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.
-bar. None of those portraits were included in her family-oriented studio tour display. She hopes to attract customers for Christmas, which is her busiest time of year. She did, however, give us the address of her 