At times, I really get down about being the T part of GLBT. Yesterday was definitely one of those times. I learned that “The Gendercator” will be playing at our local GLBT film festival. If you’re not familiar with the film, I’ll let the creator of the film explain it.
“Things are getting very strange for women these days. More and more often we see young heterosexual women carving their bodies into porno Barbie dolls and lesbian women altering themselves into transmen. Our distorted cultural norms are making women feel compelled to use medical advances to change themselves, instead of working to change the world. This is one story, showing one possible scary future. I am hopeful that this story will foster discussion about female body modification and medical ethics.”
Transgender historian and academic, Susan Stryker, describes it this way:
“The film expresses a long-familiar anti-transgender polemic: the idea that transsexuals are anti-gay, anti-feminist political reactionaries who collude with repressive social and cultural power; furthermore, that transsexuals are complicit in the non-consensual bodily violation of women.”
The film was removed from the Frameline Film Festival (the largest LGBT film festival in the world) after a petition drive. The organizers of the petition drive said this:
“We, the multigendered LGBT community and its allies, declare that there is no space for hatred and transphobia in our community institutions. We reject the notion that transsexuality is anti-feminist or anti-gay. We demand that our community artists be held accountable for the messages that they deliver, and that artistic projects not be allowed to hide under the mask of “sparking dialogue” when the intention is actually to divide and demonize. We further ask that Frameline’s LGBT Film Festival and other LGBT institutions refuse to show the hateful movie “The Gendercator,” which makes no attempt to engage in actual dialogue. We assert that the dialogue that most urgently needs to happen is not around the validity of trans people, but instead around the double standards that trans-related material continues to endure within our own community.”
I have little doubt that the position of The Gendercator in the lineup was planned. It’s played JUST AFTER the gender section of the Festival. How’s that for a little back door transphobia? Take a guess who’s on the selection committee? Keep reading…..
Recently in another post, Tom, a gay man, asked me why I was so angry. It’s not just this movie. It’s not just us being stripped from ENDA. It’s not that we have to protest to be included in ENDA. It’s not that we don’t get access to our legislators, then get blamed for not advocating enough.
I’m pissed off because we have to protest and complain about our place in this community. Whether it be ENDA, or the Matthew Shepard act, or a film festival, we have to put up a fight to be respected and included. I’m pissed that a supposed “GLBT” film festival would have the gall to put the creator of The Gendercator, Catherine Crouch, on the selection committee. In short, I’m pissed because I feel like a goddamn stepchild. My place in this community should not be up for debate. I have a rightful place in this community. I have stood beside my brothers and sisters in the GLBT community and fought for marriage equality. Transgender heroes like Sylvia Rivera have paid with her flesh, for our right to stand in this community, side by side, with gays and lesbians.
I had someone say to me that the beneficiary of the Indianapolis LGBT film festival, Indiana Youth Group, shouldn’t suffer because of this “adult swizzle of this.” If I had an African American film festival that featured “Birth of a Nation” and “The Jazz Singer” hosted by Ted Danson in blackface, would giving the money collected to the NAACP make the movies any less racist? What kind of credibility would the NAACP have after taking part in such an event? Would i have any credibility in the African American community by saying, “I’m not racist, I just helped a black guy yesterday”?!?
You want to have a film festival that’s centered around radical feminism, and include “The Gendercator,” be my guest. But don’t you dare call this a GLBT film festival… unless the T, in GLBT, stands for transphobia.
For those of you in the Indiana area, I’m planning a protest of the premiere night. Please email me for more details.
13 Comments, Comment or Ping
Steph Mineart
I’m perplexed at this - is Catherine Crouch from Indianapolis? If not, (i’m guessing she’s not, or i would have heard about such a controversial movie before now) why is she on the selection committee?
Doesn’t anyone watch the movies and think twice about them? I can’t imagine how this movie could be on any list.
Nov 4th, 2007
Kristen Nyx
I am a 27 year old trans female who is not part of the GLBT community in Indianapolis. Though a few known me, I definitely have no come in the community. Often I will run into someone who is and I will be open about my status with them and they wonder why they have not seen me. Well, my main reason why is much like the message of this email, the gay community does not truely understand or make sense of the trans community. So then you go further into subculture and you get the trans community… and everyone there is a completely different person with only one thing in common. I might have been interested in going to a film festival… it sounds rather interesting, however with reading this story and knowing what they are showing I have decided that I have no interest.
-Kristen
Nov 5th, 2007
Whryne'
I have screened this film for the PRIDE Film Festival here in Bloomington and I actually liked it. I did not see it as dissing Transfolk at all. My perspective was that it was casting dispersions on the way the hetero world views the gay community. The tight vision of right wingers is that “a man loves a woman. if you love women then you must be a man. want to be a man? okay! because that’s all we and our narrow minds can handle! there’s no place in “our” world for any person who is NOT a physiological man to love a physiological woman”. I relate this to my college days when I was studying Deaf culture. At around that time the advent of the cochlear implant was huge. Hearing parents were slapping these things on their Deaf children left and right hoping against hope that the devices would restore hearing and speech even in children who had never had any. Sadly this was not true but these parents kept doing it because they wanted their children to BE LIKE THEM i.e. ‘normal’. And if the medical community told them that this could be done then they were willing to take away such rich gifts as being a member of Deaf Culture, ASL and replace them with a lifelong inability to be able to submersed in water (that’s right no swimming) for the very slim possibility that their child would learn how to talk. Is it any wonder that in a society that already medically alters its own to make them ‘normal’ that we might see a future where ‘normal’ means only a man loving a woman? I mean, wouldn’t all our problems be solved right now if half of the gay and lesbian community would just have reassignment surgery? That way there’d be no need to lobby for gay marriage because there’d be no more gays! In closing, I don’t see this movie as transphobic but as a commentary on what our society could turn into if we don’t learn tolerance.
Nov 5th, 2007
Daniel Pratt
Kristen,
I encourage you to attend the festival. The lineup has many films of interest to the trans community, including an entire block on gender issues on Saturday afternoon. There are many trans people in Indy who are supporting the making of this film as well. Just make up your own mind and don’t let the influences of others decide for you.
Nov 5th, 2007
Karen S
The main diss towards transpeople in the film is the implication that we would collude with the religious right to create a system where a butch dyke (or any non gender-conforming person) is forced into reassignment.
That completely erases the personal struggles that a transperson goes through all of her or his life. Nobody forced me to transition. Nobody. I chose it because I felt that the living in a gender I could not identify with was unbearable. I felt my body was wrong.
I would never, ever wish the pain I had on anyone. I wouldn’t trade my experience for the world, either. In any case, it is a choice that each person has to decide for themselves, how to deal with these feelings. Many, many people may think they should not transition, and who is anyone to question that?
That’s the problem with the film, it makes it look like transpeople are forcing others to transition, when the reality is otherwise.
By the way, by transitioning, I am a lesbian (Well, I feel I was before, anyway. I didn’t date, that’s all.) If the Gendercator’s premise were true, I would have to go to a surgeon for phalloplasty, &c.
Nov 6th, 2007
Marti Abernathey
The other side? Heh. Oh, and as far as “other transpeople”, is INTRAA a part of the festival?
Um, ya…, I thought not.
Nov 6th, 2007
Marti Abernathey
“I mean, wouldn’t all our problems be solved right now if half of the gay and lesbian community would just have reassignment surgery?”
No. the transgender community is one of the most oppressed community’s out there.
This movie isn’t about gays and lesbians. It specifically targets us. The Gendercator forces hormones and surgery. If you’re not aware, Christians don’t support gender change at all. We’re all queers to them.
Nov 6th, 2007
Daniel Pratt
I don’t know if INTRAA is a part of the festival or not. Why don’t you ask that question of INTRAA or the festival committee?
You don’t have to belong to INTRAA to be a trans person in the Indy community. That’s ridiculous.
Nov 6th, 2007
Marti Abernathey
I’ve heard exactly ONE transgender person support it. That’s not “many.”
Nov 6th, 2007
Daniel Pratt
Well, not everyone is choosing to participate in this discussion which is obviously not really a discussion at all. Trust me, there is more than one.
Nov 6th, 2007
Karen S
Yes, but the people showing intolerance are the not the transpeople. We do not say people should not be lesbian or gay. We don’t say that a butch lesbian is not a woman, or that an effeminate gay man is not a man. We certainly do not say that such a person must or even should transition their gender.
We say that identity is personal; that if we understand ourselves to be misgendered, we may do what we will to live our lives out as we choose.
Transpeople only ask that if we feel the need to change our gender, that we be allowed to do in peace, and be respected for what is the most difficult thing we may have to do in our lives.
It is absolutely hypocritical for transpeople to say to LGB folks* that we wish to impinge upon, or even queston your identities as LGB folks. We don’t do this, as a group. We would appreciate the same courtesy.
* BTW, there are more than a few of us that identify as LGB…I am a lesbian, as I posted below.
Nov 7th, 2007
Lisa Harney
Not dissing trans people at all? It’s all about “butch flight” fears, how butch lesbians are supposedly “fleeing womanhood,” and are supposedly pressured to transition.
Look up “The Emperor’s New Gender” - you can find it on a website called “Questioning Transgender” or the Vancouver Rape Relief website. Or check out this blog entry,/a> that discusses it.
Nov 7th, 2007
LoneCorn
Just as an FYI — the Bloomington Pride committee actually does view this film (and Crouch’s public comments) as transphobic and as a result they are flying in Susan Stryker from SF to speak about it and have decided not to give Crouch a place on the panel. They are showing it so that people begin to recognize transphobia for what it is. A discussion of social influences behind transitioning? Great; bring it on. But laying the blame on trans people for homophobia and the oppression of the gender binary? Historically transphobic rhetoric. There’s a big difference.
Nov 8th, 2007