My friend Vicki and I went to San Francisco Pride this past weekend.  Probably 95% of why we went to San Francisco Pride this Year was to see the first episode of Sex Change Hospital at Frameline 31 (Vicki was featured in the first episode of the six part documentary).  Episode one of the television series (shown as a stand alone film at Frameline 31) followed Vicki through her male-to-female genital reassignment surgery, and followed female-to-male Jim L. Howley through his hysterectomy.

As I said, the documentary episode with Vicki was submitted and shown as a stand-alone film at Frameline 31, which seems kinda funny to me — this is because all six episodes of the series have already been shown public television in the UK. 

Oh!  I forgot to mention earlier that Sex Change Hospital was produced by World Of Wonder — the same production company that produced Transgeneration for the Sundance Channel.

Okay, so let me try to do an unbiased review of the film Sex Change Hospital … although with my best friend as one of the two focal characters of the episode/film, giving an umbiased review may be difficult.  

Seriously, I thought this was probably the best “sex change” film I’d ever seen — and I’ve seen a lot of these kind of films on Discovery, Discovery Health, as well as other channels.  Sex Change Hospital stands our for three reasons:  The first is that they showed the surgery in graphic detail.  We heard such lines “Testicles Away!” from surgeon Marci Bowers, while actually watching the testicles being cut away.  The second is the emotional connections with the families of the patients.  With Vicki’s portion of the film/episode, you saw her Dad being so supportive and loving, and Vicki feeling the a wide range of emotions that she was feeling both pre- and post-surgery.  With Jim’s portion of the film, you saw and felt the real pain his Mom was going through as she was seeing a hard milestone of her daughter “dying” to become even more so her son.  Lastly, the episode/film wasn’t narrated — the stories were completely told in the words of the people filmed.  I can’t tell y’all what a difference that made to the storytelling — it make for a very personal experience vice a purely clinical experience.

Sex Change Hospital was shown at Frameline 31 with the film One in 2000, a film on intersex people.  The film was at least as compelling as Sex Change Hospital.  After watching One in 2000, I was left with the strange thought that two intersex infants have “corrections” done to their genitalia a day in North America (paid for by insurance companies) — with many intersexuals finding themselves as adults upset that genital surgeries were done on them without their consent for no other reason than their genitalia didn’t conform to physical “norms” — while most transsexuals can’t get insurance companies to pay for their wanted surgeries on their genitalia.  What an odd juxtoposition of human experience.

Anyway, when Sex Change Hospital and/or One in 2000 makes it to the television market where you live, I would highly recommend taking the time to watch the either or both of these.  Well worth the time.