Decent portrayal of transsexuality? ANYWHERE?

[elettaria]

Is there anywhere on TV or film which can manage a decent portrayal of transsexuality? The ones I've seen have ranged from mediocre to downright awful. I suppose they do have a serious problem in that most people don't know much about it, and the little they know is likely to be horribly wrong, but the attempts at audience education always seem

Comments

[eustaciavye25]

Ugh@your post. Please read Sandy Stone's "The 'Empire' Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto) and "You've Changed: Sex reassignment and Personal Identity" edited by Laurie J. Shrage--read these before you start talking about transsexuality as a medical condition (I especially recommend C. Jacob Hale's chapter).

[elettaria]

I specifically said that gender dysphoria is a medical condition, not transsexuality, and the TV shows I've been talking about always deal with the gender dysphoria, mostly because they're making a big meal out of "ooh look, it's a man and then it's a woman!" (I can only think of one transman I've seen on TV, and of course he was the murderer.) This enormous focus on the medical aspect of transsexualism is one of the things that bothers me, especially since it's often done so badly. It really should be possible to make a film or TV episode about someone trans without referring to surgery.

[eustaciavye25]

The reason why I made that comment was because there are problems with the diagnosis of gender dysphoria and the hegemonic force involved. People who want to transition are forced to fit their personal narratives into a specific set of diagnostic criteria and effectively declare themselves mentally ill, which interferes with personal agency and the respect afforded to the individual. That is why I recommend critical works examining the effects of medicalization and mental health frameworks. It is important to be critical of these ideological frameworks.

[eustaciavye25]

And yes, I meant Gender dysphoria, but the two are obviously connected.

Now, are you looking for tv shows that deal with gender dysphoria specifically? Or shows that offer positive representations of transsexual individuals? I can do some research to find some, but I don't have any to offer. The only character I can think of is the one from Ugly Betty. I am not quite sure what to make of that yet, but it wasn't terrible.

[elettaria]

Either will do, along with film - I can't really think of much which is halfway decent to begin with, and pretty much all of the ones I've seen deal with both. There seems to be an obsession with a before-and-after approach. Typically, they will take a woman, make a big meal out of showing that she used to be a man, and then go through her history, often with a traumatic childhood, and definitely covering transitioning and in particular the surgery. To be honest, I think that some of this is about audience education, but it's also about titillation, because people are fascinated by the way a man can turn into a woman and want to know what she looked like before treatment etc., in a way that completely objectifies the trans person

[eustaciavye25]

fine, and I have read Clarissa and research on the medical conditions (and their precursors) but I have to do that stuff for work. By all means, people can discuss the issue, but I sometimes get frustrated by comments made about the issue that end up "stepping in" critical minefields.

[elfbystarlight]

Thank you for the recommendations, but isn't this post on the *treatment* of it as a medical conditon in tv/cinema rather than its objective definition as one? You sound like you've got a fair range of cinema experience with the topic - it has been covered, accurately or otherwise, as all sorts of things from a mental illness to a surgically-correctable physical condition/birth defect. Are there no gradiations in how you think they deal with it?

[elettaria]

And then of course you get all the people who deny that gender dysphoria is a medical condition and therefore deny people treatment for it, which is pretty awful. Do you remember that case a few years back, a kid called Joella something who was born with half her insides hanging out, mammoth intestinal and genital problems, and they made a guess that her gender was male when they did the initial surgery and then found out years later that she was female and did a gender reassignment? I still remember how horrified I was when the endocrinologist on the case said something along the lines of, "She wasn't transsexual or any of that rubbish, she was just a little girl in a terrible mess." An endrocrinologist. I've a feeling this kid may have been the first person in the UK to get the gender on her birth certificate changed, some landmark like that, and they were justifying not using her case as a precedent to allow anyone else to have their birth certificate changed.

[alicephilippa]

There is a huge amount of argument even within the trans community itself as to whether GD is a medical condition or not and whether it should be included in the new edition of the DSM.

I think it is clear that it needs to be considered a medical condition to enable necessary medical treatments.

[eustaciavye25]

Yes, and there is some critical resistance to the necessity of making it a medical condition (especially a mental health issue) in order to allow "treatment". It establishes a hierarchy that uses exploitative practices to regulate who is able to receive treatment. Although I think regulation and support are important, I am also aware of the problems with the current systems.

[elettaria]

Why the scare quotes around "treatment"? And out of curiosity, how much of the medical treatment offered to trans folks these days is appropriate and what they want, and how much is, say, psych treatments trying to convince them that they're not trans? (Are there hormonal treatments with the same aim?) Having run into a few homophobic doctors in my time, including one who tried to make out that my being (quite happily) queer was a psychological problem, I can imagine that trans people must come across that rather a lot. I don't even want to think about what it must have been like if you went to a doctor with gender dysphoria back in the days when being queer was officially considered a medical problem which should be cured, and a criminal offence at that.

[eustaciavye25]

The scare quotes are with reference to the issues surrounding making it a mental health problem. By all means I am in favor of reassignment and hormonal treatments if the individual wants them. I don't like what you are implying about me--I have trans friends and acquaintances and a great deal of my time goes into researching trans representations. My issue is not with transitioning, but I am critically examining the issues surround medical conceptualizations and regulations of gender dysphoria

[eustaciavye25]

There are definitely gradations. In fact, the films I have examined are problematic. Hedwig's experience of surgery is forced--zie doesn't want the surgery, but is pressured in order to marry her fiance and escape from communist East Berlin. The surgery is also botched. In 20 Centimeters, the character's insistence on becoming a woman is problematized by hir interactions with other characters--there are questions about what it means to feel like a woman and there is a challenging of hir lack of differentiation between totalized images of femininity and feminine interiority (which is far more complicated and impossible to define). And hir boyfriend raises the issue of what constitutes a woman--that zie is a woman even with the penis. But how much of this is denial on his part? He doesn't see them as a homosexual couple, which is extremely interesting (but I will spare you the digression). In the end Marieta receives the surgery, and feels positively about it. I have to rewatch transamerica, but that representation also differs

[eustaciavye25]

*hir*

[alicephilippa]

It is the majority society that regards gender as binary. Biologically it is not so. There are many individuals who regard themselves as not part of that binary. Androgyne, neutrois and gender queer for example.

You take on Marietta is interesting in that yes she does find the process of transition and surgery as liberating. Her boyfriend regards her pre-surgery as a woman, and indeed she does see herself as a woman. In other words she is a woman. Yet you ungender her with the use of gender neutral pronouns, which is something that if you did to a trans woman in real life would likely earn you a slap in the face, pretty much the same response you'd get if you insulted any woman.

[elettaria]

Randomly, I wanted to point out that Talmudic Judaism has long had the concept of six genders, not that it's terribly well-known. Are there any other cultures with a similar history? I know that some parts of the world are far more relaxed about non-binary gender systems, and in particular transsexuality, than others