Represent
Over the last few weeks the same conversation continues to crop up among my friends: media representation of transsexual women. Since this may be a subject I pursue in my education I've made it my mission to watch any movie featuring trans women. There are any number of formulaic documentaries that dissect the physical transition process, starting with hormones and ending with “The Surgery” as though that's the end of their transsexual experience. But to find an American fictional story featuring a trans woman is another adventure entirely.
You might go back to the 80s and 70s, when trans women were comic relief and not to be taken seriously. Great examples include The World According to Garp, which features a “pathetic” trans woman who can never get a date. Or there's Dog Day Afternoon, about two men who rob a bank in order to pay for a trans woman's surgery. It could be a shining example if she weren't portrayed as a flamboyant, hysterical, emotional drag queen and if she didn't utter the damning line, “The doctor told me I was a woman trapped in a man's body.”
By the 90s trans women were moved up to major characters but the homophobia directed at them is so thick you could cut it with a knife. There's the infamous Crying Game, in which the main character's girlfriend is shockingly revealed to be transsexual, resulting in disgust and vomit. Or perhaps Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, which features a trans woman as the villain only for the “hilarious” joke of revealing her status and making police officers vomit.
In the sophisticated New Millennium trans women become main characters but continue to be mocked and ridiculed in a more insidious way. These movies pass themselves off as progressive, pro-trans movies while robbing the transsexual experience of all meaning and inserting their own agenda. There's Normal, which, according to the writer and director, uses transsexuality as a metaphor for “ultimate betrayal” in a marriage. Roy, the trans woman, is not meant to be taken seriously as a woman. The actor who plays her even uses male pronouns while describing his character in interviews. Transamerica uses transsexuality for comedic effect. It's a road trip movie in which the main character, Bree, must bail her unknown son from jail before her therapist will sign off on her surgery. We're expected to laugh at her deep voice and awkward, simpering attempt at being feminine. We're expected to reel when her son sees her penis and later tries to sleep with her but we are never expected to identify with her, only pity her. Although she is portrayed by an actress, much rehearsal and research was dedicated to “masculinizing” her so she could “accurately” embody a transsexual woman, something she and the director take great pride in.
In a way, the new movies are the most dangerous. By utilizing the physical transition process they present just enough evidence to seem like legitimate portrayals. Unaware cissexuals can watch them and feel progressive and tolerant while being fed stereotypes and gross inaccuracies. They leave the movie thinking, “Those poor transsexuals! Aren't they sad, pathetic people? It's so nice for them to be in a movie. That actor did such a fantastic job we should give him an Oscar.” This is the black-face equivalent for transsexual women. Rather than allow actual trans women to write, direct and portray transsexual life we're expected to be grateful for the gross misrepresentations of ignorant cissexuals that hijack our experience for their own agendas. Only when we begin to speak for ourselves can we repair the damage done.