Saw an incredibly sweet movie yesterday for class,
Image via Wikipedia.Transamerica_(film)”>Transamerica, with Felicity Huffman in the role of a pre-op transgendered Sabrina “Bree” Osbourne. Just a week before male-to-female reassignment surgery Bree learns she’s got a now otherwise orphaned son from a one-night stand nearly eighteen years earlier. Much warming of hearts ensues as she zooms to pick him up from New York where he’s been living on the streets hustling, meddling with drugs, and most recently, where he’s been busted for shoplifting. Presenting herself as a church lady (not much of a stretch!) Bree bails the boy out and drives him back across the country to L.A. Eventually the boy finds out Bree’s actually his father, Bree gets surgery, and the two reconcile… about as well as you can imagine under the circumstances. Which is actually a big relief and a much nicer ending than a much happier one would have been.
One of the more interesting evolutions through the film, I thought was that the main character starts out so unready for reassignment… so sure surgery is all she needs, so… in denial about herself as if she doesn’t want to start being a woman so much, or even stop being a man, as to just erase her previous existence. And over the course of the movie as she begins to accept more about this young man and the rest of her life she starts losing some of her inauthentic affectations of femininity — the extreme “drag” attire, the shovels full of makeup, even her strained, no-stretch-pretending-to-be-a-church-lady prissiness — in exchange for relaxation into womanhood. And while they don’t make any kind of deal out of it at all in the movie (it’s surprisingly free of unintentional, non-plot-carrying clichés that way) it become clear that her psychologist was right not to sign off on her surgery until she cleaned things up because she really wasn’t ready.
One of the great things I’ve gotten out of the combined-studies program I’ve been taking this quarter is just how much there is to take for granted about the vast, wet, alphabet-soupy mesh of chromosomes, anatomy, gender, orientation, and sexuality most of us blithely imagine is a pretty elementary one- or two-step determination. And the movie nicely illuminates some of that complexity.
It also helped me make a little peace with one of my big bugaboos about trans people: perhaps because I have the privilege of feeling comfortable and unambiguous about my chromosomes, my anatomy, my gender, my orientation, and sexuality I’ve had the privilege as well to feel confined unto strangulation by all the fucking do’s and don’ts of elaborately constructed gender. And because I’m so conscious that gender is constructed I’ve chaffed at the idea that some people would want all that only more!
I think I’ve mentioned this before but decades ago a friend spent a week with a group of mostly-lesbian friends on Fire Island, NY. She said she wound up partying with a group of cross-dressing gay men who, at one point, took her under their wing and did her up — shaved her legs, curled her hair, made up her face, found her a gown. She said they were doing all these things she’d never really bothered with, and they were really good at it. And she said she felt this sort of competitive undertone like “here’s how you really do it, girlfriend,” as if no actual woman could ever be as feminine as they could be. My friend said they were great, that they all had a great time. Me, I just thought it was as weird that a bunch of men would think they could talk down to women about femininity (successfully talk down, no less!)
But here’s the deal on that, and it ties back into the movie: the boy, Toby by the way, who is unambiguously male is only seventeen and you recognize that he’s still busy constructing his gender! What kind of hats to wear. Whether to shoplift. How to interact as an adult male with women and with other men. What it means for a man to have a car. How to meet, how to greet, how to top or bottom in bed, how to “drink like a man” (clue: don’t barf on your pre-op mom’s lavender skirt), and so on.
The point being that it’s not just trans people who do gender drag, or make decisions about not just what it would be like to be a man or woman but to some extent what it must be like. And if the Bree character in the movie starts out a little rough around the edges well… big deal! That most of us get the over-the-top-feminized Barbie-style clothes and Bob the Builder helmets out of our systems early shouldn’t make us imagine everyone else should get it right the first time should they take it on a little later in life.
And since, at least as far as my position of privilege is concerned, the answer if you’re a woman is “everything I do is feminine,” and the answer for men is “everything I do is masculine.” Perhaps even if “everything you do” includes getting surgical reassignment. And I can say that so confidently because I feel when it does come down to gender, as opposed to chromosomes, anatomy, orientation, and sexuality, we all substantially make gender up based on what we see around us and to accommodate generally absolutely legitimate, unquestionably present, but also pretty low-level and almost abstract knowledge of “what” we are.
At this point I’d be even more arrogant and ignorant than usual to claim to understand all the issues hidden behind the little ‘t’ in LGBT, but at least in part thanks to the movie, thanks to listening to some pre- and post-op trans people including a really great film and video professional who spoke after the on-campus movie, I’ve at least got it through my thick skull that “gender” is a manifestation of a deeper “what” we feel that, if it doesn’t match the anatomy we pee with (for starters), distracts some of us to a point that we seek anatomical reassignment.
Lot to think about anyway, and there are so many worse ways to get started (but only get started) than Transamerica.
Submitted by 1998 (not verified) on Sat, 2008-03-08 12:13.
I had completely forgotten about that movie. I wanted to see it. My feelings about transgender are basically the same as they are regarding any kind of *alternative* lifestyle. (I don't like that term.) It's not my place to really feel anything about it. I have a hard enough time deciding what is right for me. Among my closest friends, we have a mix of bi, lesbian, polyamorous, and BDSM.
I guess I should stop giving myself a hard time about being a complete failure as a girl because I don't care a whole lot about pretty clothes, jewelry, purses, or shoes. I'm just low mainenance is all.
[What I'm trying to say is you could fail at playing by a set of rules you agreed constituted game called "gender," but you couldn't possibly fail, completely or incompletely at being a girl because *you're a girl!* And I guess what I was trying to say is that *unless* the rules of femininity, or masculinity, or any other *constructed* rather than innate thing say only "you can do anything the laws of physics and biology permit" then it's an unnecessarily confining set of rules. Thanks, Biscuit. --fl]
Submitted by 1998 (not verified) on Sat, 2008-03-08 13:08.
Biscuit. Not being materialist or vain is hardly a failure.
Figleaf wrote:
"And since, at least as far as my position of privilege is concerned, the answer if you're a woman is "everything I do is feminine," and the answer for men is "everything I do is masculine." Perhaps even if "everything you do" includes getting surgical reassignment."
Hm. I prefer to think that not everything I do is feminine, but it doesn't need to be, either. I like doing some masculine and some gender-neutral things.
And what I think is feminine or masculine in me isn't necessarily the same as what someone else thinks is, and that doesn't really matter except it could be interesting to talk about. So it's okay if you think everything I do is feminine. :)
Plus, happy women's day everyone, men and women alike! I only wish there was a men's day as well, because men are so lovely. Let no one come and tell me that all other days are theirs, for they're still not getting roses on any of those days. Here, I'll try to make up for that:
@}-,-`---
[Lovely rose, Larus! Seriously. And yes, as long as we can agree that "masculine" nor "feminine" doesn't constrain what's expected of you, and as long as its meaning can be arbitrary to the users instead of generalized to a class then I'm fine with that. As Bree says to her mom (after needing to borrow some of her hormone replacement pills) "we've got the same hormones, mom, they just come in different bottles." Because, of course, even such obvious definitions of femininity as "has periods" or "has estrogen" applies only to women at certain ages or stages of health just as "has hair on the face" or "produces significant amounts of testicular testosterone" applies to men at certain ages and degrees of health as well. Thanks! --fl]
Submitted by 1998 (not verified) on Sat, 2008-03-08 13:25.
I'm glad you enjoyed the movie, figleaf. I too thought the ending was just right. Too much sentimentality would've ruined it.
I used it last quarter (only the first half due to time constraints) and we had a great discussion - until I mentioned the topping/bottoming theme and drew blank stares from the whole class. I know my students are relatively sheltered, but I was still pretty surprised that I had to explain those terms. Even the kids who'd had "comprehensive" sex ed in high school had no clue. Which I took as a reminder that "comprehensive" only means it's OK to discuss birth control, but not necessarily what turns people on and the tremendous variation therein.
[Hi Sungold. I think topping and bottoming are still pretty emergent. I'd never heard the terms till, I think, the 1980s when the old CoEvolution Quarterly devoted an issue to kink. They're wonderfully useful terms though. --fl]
Submitted by 1998 (not verified) on Sat, 2008-03-08 16:04.
I have not seen that movie but what you wrote about it made me realize what it is about a transexual man who comes to my women's book group that annoys me so much. To be kind I will call "him" "her"...she wears skirts and blouses and lots of make up (none of us dress like that on a Saturday morning-we all wear jeans and sweatshirts and no make up to book group) and she speaks in a falsetto and it irritates me. I guess the reason why it irritates me is that everything she does is such an affectation. She doesn't say much and she never reads the book and it feels like a man is sitting there listening to her conversation. It bugs me that she is pretending to be a woman and doing it so badly.
[Hi Mag. I'm not ready to speak for anyone and I probably could never speak for that one individual, but if it's hard enough for you or me to figure out exactly what our identity means with all the encouragement we get growing up it's even less easy to have to roll one for yourself. --fl]
Submitted by 1998 (not verified) on Sat, 2008-03-08 23:05.
I love the movie, it was just beautifully done I thought.
The thing about femininity or masculinity is that like you I feel they are cultural constructs. So in the example with your friend being "made up" into a female even though, she ALREADY IS is a funny example. Thinking about it objectively those trans people were probably much MORE feminised than any woman (lesbian or not) can ever hope to be - in a sense they're probably more qualified to make a point about feminisation of culture than anyone else. I don't know if having a vagina means that everything you do is "femininity". It SHOULD BE, I agree with your philosophically - but bottom line, it's just not. And the same goes for men too. That's the kicker about femininity and masculinity. Following the femininity and masculinity checklist (not that there is one but culturally speaking) you'll find that 99% of men and women don't even fit the bill, nor will they ever.
It's a model that is never realised - for women especially - being HUMAN denies us being feminine (to the truest sense of what we hold it up to be). For women especially it's a model that CANNOT be realised because if it is then there goes the beauty industry, or the fashion industry, the dieting industry, motherhood ...etc. Farting? Not feminine - doh, that makes us all failures immediately. But these transgendered people; they actually DO live (and love) by these hightened rules of what it is to be feminine - they can't get away with anything less than that. Indeed they follow that 'femininity' rule book more than women do. They *have* to...for a multitude of reasons but in the end even they don't quite make the grade - culturally speaking. The irony!
[Hi M. So here's where that old saying "religion is a crutch, yes, but humanity has a broken leg" comes in. The earliest, maybe most obvious stages can pretty rough but over time a lot of people seem to work it out. --fl]
Submitted by 1998 (not verified) on Sun, 2008-03-09 13:14.
P.S. I want to tell you that I also have a lot of compassion for this person and we really try to be kind to her. It's just awkward. Also, she is the only transexual person I have ever known (the town I live in is not that big), but I don't think she is very representative of transexuals. She is socially awkward and there are other things about her that make me uncomfortable-she's not very good about respecting my personal space. She leans in too close and touches my arm and I don't like it. I just had to back pedal a little and say that because I was feeling guilty after reading Snowdrop's comment on a later post. I have to confess, though, that I really don't understand what it is like for a person to feel that she or he is in the wrong body. I don't understand it at all. It must be hard to feel that way.
Submitted by 1998 (not verified) on Sun, 2008-03-09 21:00.
Um, M...I'm not sure I understand exactly everything you meant in your second paragraph, but it seems like you're making some sweeping generalizations about "these transgendered people", as if they were a monolith. They're not. There are both transwomen and transmen(and plenty of grey area in between), and not all of them present as over-gendered characatures or are easily singled-out for their anatomical incongruency. Many cisgendered(i.e. non-trans) people assume that since the only transpeople they've ever knowingly seen as trans have looked or been portrayed a certain way, then ALL transpeople must look/act that way, completely overlooking the possibility that they may have interacted with transpeople at other times and not noticed. Do you think all transpeople "don't quite make the grade" in terms of their ability to "pass", live full lives or be accepted as their appropriate gender? Isn't that sort of a moral/worthiness judgement on your part?
Submitted by 1998 (not verified) on Mon, 2008-03-10 14:07.
Mmm. But I think arbitrary is still not quite what I want, at least not *completely arbitrary*. I'm quite happy having ideas of masculine and feminine influenced by my culture, which is ultimately influenced by the human nature.
But even within one culture, each of us has their own individual version of it, and some like you can choose not to have anything to do with some parts of it. And we all have a different nature as well. (Yes! Each of us has different genes! Next time somebody tells you that men are from Mars, tell him that!)
I've had foreign friends who would do things that I perceived as unquestionably feminine, and tell me that "it's my duty as a man." But then I've also known a girl of my own age, from the same cultural background, who said she'd been a "tomboy" as a child - and it turned out she'd been just like me or maybe a bit girlier (by my definition). And *I* sure never thought I was "tomboyish."
That kind of experiences are nice, if you ask me. Not to mention healthy. So are transsexuals, by the way! What Sugarmag talks about sounds familiar to me.
[Hi Larus. "I've had foreign friends who would do things that I perceived as unquestionably feminine, and tell me that 'it's my duty as a man.' But then I've also known a girl of my own age, from the same cultural background, who said she'd been a 'tomboy' as a child - and it turned out she'd been just like me or maybe a bit girlier (by my definition)." Which is my biggest problem with the idea of "gender" as opposed to all the other qualities people unquestionably have. Arguing about how to qualifiy doing one's duty, or playing... however it was that local boys are perceived to play, especially when such duties and such play must be parsed through sometimes utterly contradictory cultural grammars, doesn't feel like it makes our lives *easier!* More poetic, possibly, but then look at how much poetry is underlain by tragedy! Oh, and by the way, I *still* don't think we somehow could, or even should rid ourselves of "gender." Because innate or constructed it's certainly there in front of us and it can certainly be used to explain a lot of human behavior... even if most of that behavior happens to revolve around getting a handle on Johnny "Jackass" Knoxville, Phyllis Schlaffley. And FGM! --fl]
Submitted by 1998 (not verified) on Mon, 2008-03-10 23:24.
But, Figleaf, she was *happy* being tomboyish. It was part of her identity. She wasn't making it a tragedy.
But of course, if I and she were less independent individuals, or if we had been brought up to stricter gender roles, we too might consider ourselves to be "failures." And *that* I agree would be tragic. I very much wish people didn't have to have such feelings about themselves. We're bad people if we make others unhappy, not if we do some utterly harmless things that maybe are (and maybe are just thought to be) more characteristic for some other groups.
"Which is my biggest problem with the idea of "gender" as opposed to all the other qualities people unquestionably have."
Gender *and age*.
[Good point about age too, Larus. Along those lines, the other day I turned 53 and decided to just go ahead and round up and tell everyone I'm 55 for the next three years. It *shouldn't* matter, but it's surprised, shocked, or irritated everyone I've told so far. But really it's less of a fudge than when I used to say I was almost seven when I was really only six and a half. :-) --fl]
Submitted by 1998 (not verified) on Tue, 2008-03-11 14:37.
I haven't seen the movie, but I have relevant personal experience that I'm still working to understand better.
I had a boyfriend in college with pretty nonstandard gender. (I mentioned him once before in a comment about erotic experiences that conflict with prescribed gender roles.) He was (and is still) very into cross-dressing, which seems partly to be an erotic thing and partly to be an identity thing. For a while I thought he might transition, but he has grown more comfortable with his male body and has been getting to prefer looking androgynous to looking femme. (Just as well, from the point of view of my entirely irrelevant aesthetic preferences.)
What threw me for a loop was that this was the first boyfriend I ever topped and I was a bit worried by how much I enjoyed it. I've had a pretty ambivalent relationship with the idea of myself as female, and I was worried that I was equating femininity with submission. I've since topped more typically masculine men and bottomed to a couple of femme guys, which is reassuring. And I've discovered a version of shiny/femme/fabulous that I can do without feeling uncomfortable, which also helps. I think the part of my brain that is screwed up about gender is at least different from the part of my brain that is screwed up about dominance and submission. I'm not sure what I would have done if they turned out to be inextricably linked.
For myself, I don't have a strong inner sense of myself as male or female, except that I know I've wound up with the constraints of a female body and female social identity. I don't like the idea that everything I do is feminine, because it seems like there's a distortion of emphasis. (Is everything I do dark-haired?) Maybe this is because I'm so comfortable in my body I don't even notice that my real gender is female, but that seems a little phenomenologically inaccurate, so to speak.
Not sure exactly how that fits in, except that it might help to shift the perspective to specific people and their lives rather than "the transgendered" and "the cisgendered". Some people are in between. (Wouldn't some people have to be in between, since there are people who switch from cisgendered to transgendered later in life?)
[Ooh! You put it perfectly when you said "Is everything I do dark-haired," P, because yes, what I'm aiming for is a definition of gender that's exactly as relevant as a definition of dark-haired would be. But here's the deal and I think I might really help with my point: y'know how people pidgeonhole blonds (ok, technically only blonde women but that's just reinforcement) right? We take all this stuff about "blonde" and culturally attempt to *impose it!* If someone blonde is a ditz we chalk it up to their blondeness, if someone blonde wins a debate, especially against a dark-haired opponent, we're conditioned to think "wow, that an exceptional blonde." But really *everything* a blonde does is blonde, not just the *expected* parts. If I happen to like the color of blonde hair (I actually prefer dark hair) then it's fine if I express a preference for people with that characteristic. Otherwise it really shouldn't matter much. And, end of the day, when we don't *deny* gender, but attach no more weight to it than we do for hair color, then I'm just saying we'd have a little less misery all around. Anyway, great comparison to bring up! --fl]
Submitted by 1998 (not verified) on Wed, 2008-03-12 00:45.
albinosquid - well what I'm trying to say, rather ineptly (sorry) is that there are certain rules of gender and we live and die by them. I would rather there wasn't but in this culture there simply IS. When a woman is overweight, doesn't shave her legs, has a shaved head and wears doc martins she is immediately thought to be a dyke. Never mind that she might just be a girl who likes dressing comfy and can't be bothered shaving - but hey the generalisation is made anyway. Trans-gendered people suffer the same restrictions in gender that non transgendered people do. It's entirely possible that I haven't picked up on every single trans-gendered person I've come across - then again I'm sure I haven't picked up on every single gay person, or every single person with autism either - even though those are things that we mark as "other" in our society. I'm just saying that we all have rules of gender and however wrongly they are defined (which by the way I think they ARE very unfair) we are judged on them immediately - sometimes without even opening our mouths.