Review: My Transsexual Summer

22Nov11

*disclaimer:  this is not about the people in the show, but the format of the show itself and the presentation of information.

If you don’t what I am talking about you can watch it on Youtube here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cts4nFWHvDs&feature=player_embedded

So seven trannies get together for a retreat.  I personally wouldn’t use that word, but ‘My Transsexual Summer’ doesn’t mind so much.  None of these people seem to be the medicated activist type I have come to know in my own experiences with trans folk.  It presumes that its seven contestants are on a magical gender slide, trying to find a position they feel most comfortable with themselves, and that self obsession is the imperative of a transsexual life.   I think most people who go through puberty could relate to this time of change, sure it’s a difficult time, but eventually you adjust and move on, but it doesn’t look like our seven friends want to get over it, they just want to go on (wank) about it, but maybe that’s a British thing and not a trans thing.

Then of course there are those people who have trans identified since very young and took on cis gender affirming roles to suppress that identity.  This is very sad, but also funny because just as you can imagine queer bullying comes from closeted queers, you could imagine excessive gender stereotypes are more likely to be trans identifying.  So perhaps if you see a truck driving, rugby playing wife beating alcoholic, hold on to your boots, they might be about to transplain all their problems away.  It’s sick and sad, but it can be unfair on other people if you get married have children, then do a 180 and say oops.  It is established here is it is a shit world for trans people, but the show focuses on the sentiment ‘I’m so happy now’.

The other thing is the desperate environment they’ve created.  Every conversation is about being transsexual/transgender (trans).  As most trans people know, these conversations are awkward at best and provides maybe a few sentences at best.  Also it often descends in a trans pissing contest (I identified as trans when I was 8, no 5!  Well I actually identified as trans in the womb, but I couldn’t tell my mum.  I’m actually intersex).  These details really are personal and unimportant unless you are attempting to dissolve deep psychological issues with a professional.  I think everyone has their story, but I prefer the story one of my ex’s gave me relating to their trans experience.

“I want to be a shemale, having tits and a cock it’s hot, and I’d totally like to  fuck everything”

It seems so honest and vital and yet this attitude is invalid because why?  Because we are a pathological people, gender diversity is still not welcomed, we are urged toward heteronormative behaviour.  The sentiment “I love being a woman” and “I love being a man” seems to validate cisgender identities without creating anything new and distinctly trans, which I think would derive naturally from our unique experiences.

Also none of these people are interesting, the people on the show are entirely bland.  I blame the domineering gayness of it all, the music, the accommodation, they are so evidently out of their element.  Dancing and acting up to stereotypes that make me think their hormones are providing them narcotic effects.  Shiny happy people.  The reality is much worse – I’d prefer something a little more Big Brother style where privately they confess horrible experiences and their loathing for one another.  For example imagine someone was honest on that show.

“I only came on this show for the money.  I hate having to work in one gender and live in another because it is the only way I can survive.  You know why I don’t date?  I’m terrified that people will misinterpret my body and my friendships will fall apart.  I actually hate being trans, it is real inconvenience and all those people who are not trans, I’m so envious I worship their image.  I’m so susceptible to trashpop magazines, I want to look like Kylie.  Make up is expensive, hormones are expensive, my entire fucking life is expensive, if I was rich I wouldn’t give a fuck about transrights, I’d just get a million surgeries and pretend I’m not trans.  You know, I’m not really ashamed of who I am, I’m a survivor, I’m so much stronger than most people, sure I don’t have their problems, but I’ve got my own and that gives me the right to tell you to fuck off and deal with the fact that you’re different to me.”

So for trannies, pack a dildo, sip a glass of wine, ham it up for the cameras and don’t forget to pretend like you’re happy because EVERYTHING IS FINE, I can’t emphasise that enough.  No it’s not fine and it doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that when I look into the mirror I see myself putting the philospher’s stone into my pocket (hate myself), it instead has to do with the fact that we constantly deny people their identity by telling them how to be themselves, a woman looks like this, a man looks like this, behaves like this, etc and it is infuriating because there are generations of trans people growing up hating their childhoods, their experiences because if they don’t, it’s confusing for doctors, YOU’VE GOT TO HATE YOUR BODY, YOURSELF AND EVERYTHING ABOUT WHO YOU WERE and yet so many people maintain that they don’t change in the transition.

As Tilda Swinton and Virginia Woolfe  in put it in Orlando – Same person, different sex.  You will take your problems with you,  transitioning doesn’t solve your problems.  The show makes out like the only thing that is different about these people is that they are trans, when in fact that would make them abnormal.  Imagine if cisgender people walked around all day talking about being cis, and how they felt comfortable in their body today, it would be awkward.  The trans community really needs heroes, champions who’s claim to fame is not that they are a test subject in these social and scientific laboratories, but actually kick ass… and there are plenty of them, but they don’t make it to popular media as often as those who have ‘always known they were a (gender noun) because they used to (stereotyped gender behaviour)’.

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Tags: gatekeepers, gender, television, trans*, transgender