Read the Director’s Note of the Gendercator
Director’s Note
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.
May 21st, 2007 at 8:50 am
More of the story from the film maker’s website below.
This seems to me to be an effort similar to Todd Haynes “Superstar,” contemplating a dystopian future where feminism has been obliterated by right wing fundies.
Text below from:
http://www.catherinecrouch.com/mainwebsite_html/filmsDetail.php?pageID=gendercator
Sunshine Sally (Emily Wood) celebrates Billie Jean King’s historic 1973 victory over Bobby Riggs on the fateful night before her 75 year slumber.
The Gendercator
TRT : 20 minutes
Super 8mm & Mini DV
The Gendercator is a short satirical take on female body modification and gender. The story uses the “Rip van Winkle” model to extrapolate from the past into a possible future.
In 1973 a group of hippie women are celebrating Billie Jean King’s victory over Bobby Riggs. They are partying in the rural woods outside of Bloomington, Indiana. Our heroine Sally is a simple minded, sporty type who overindulges at the party and passes out under a tree. Sally wakes up 75 years later in 2048 to discover (amongst other social changes) that feminism has failed utterly and completely. Sex roles and gender expression are rigidly binary and enforced by law and social custom. When Sally rejects the feminine hairdo and short skirt she is given, the doctor at the emergency room calls in the “Gendercator”, a government official who informs Sally that butch women and sissy boys are no longer tolerated – gender variants are allowed to chose their gender, but they must chose one and follow its rigid constraints.
Sally is baffled by this brave new world. All she wants is to “do her own thing” – but her own thing is no more. Sally is a simple-minded stoner, indoctrinated into 70s feminism. She is no poster girl or freedom fighter, just a gentle tomboy dropped into the future with a tendency to respond in slogans such as “sisterhood is powerful”.
Nurse Nancy locates some of Sally’s former friends – they are 100 now, but because of advances in the medical profession (cloning spare parts), they are still healthy and thriving. The friends tell Sally they heard she moved to California and that’s why they never looked for her. One of her friends appears to be a man and tells Sally, “They made me do it. They’ll make you too.” They explain to Sally that in the early 2000s the evangelical Christians took over the government and legislated their strict family values, legally sanctioning only “one man, one woman” couples. Advances in sex reassignment surgery have made it possible to honor an individual’s choice of gender AND government policy. Sally is comfortable in the middle of the genders, an unacceptable choice in 2048.
Director’s Note
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.
May 21st, 2007 at 10:41 am
ADDRESSING COMMON QUESTIONS
Would pulling the film be censorship?
It is not censorship to refuse to make a space for bigotry in a space that claims to be against it.
Frameline has never claimed to be a free-for-all exchange of ideas; all films are subject to censorship when they go through the selection process. This fight is not about whether the film in question may be enjoyed or have some value–this is about refusing to allow a double standard around material that specifically targets and attacks a population in a forum that claims to empower that population.
Frameline’s mission is “to strengthen the diverse lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.” We are asking that trans-related films be held to those standards.
Crouch claims that her film challenges the gender binary and promotes feminism. I agree with these values. What if I actually want to see the film?
Many transgender people also challenge the gender binary and identify as feminists. Many feminists also identify as pro-trans. True feminism does not require hatred. But even for those trans people who do identify as with the binary, we must remember that gender oppression is not the fault of transgender people. It is not the responsibility of trans people alone to challenge society. There are plenty of binary-identified women and men in the LGBT community. Additionally, Crouch’s film creates a new—and false—binary of her very own creation that assumes trans people choose between transitioning and being ‘pro-female.’
If you are still interested in the film you can see it elsewhere or request it from the director; our community dollars from Frameline ticket sales and advertising should NOT be required to support this work.
What about having a dialogue about gender? Isn’t that a good thing?
A dialogue requires an actual exchange of ideas. Crouch has repeatedly refused to engage in dialogue with concerned community members across the country. Before SF residents began protesting the film, the conversation was framed completely in hateful, one-sided terms. There is no discussion in Crouch’s film, there are prescribed values – many of them not just hateful, but inaccurate–upon a huge, diverse population.
Films designed to antagonize, belittle, or demonize whole populations of (trans) people in the name of “fostering debate” should not be permitted in film festivals whose aim is to support and nurture those populations. Tell Crouch there are ways to celebrate female masculinity without demonizing trans people. Tell Frameline you will not support a festival that does not support its community.
The film actually sounds kind of funny/stupid. Is it really worth this attention? Can it really hurt anyone?
As an artistic piece, no, the film is not worth much attention. But the alternative—to ignore it—ensures that it will continue to get play in LGBT film festivals without some REAL dialogue around ensuring trans community respect in our institutions.
Trans people are continuously marginalized in their own LGBT communities. Here is one example where the right thing to do is actually clear, where refusing to broadcast hate does not actually hurt anyone, but where showing it sends a clear message to our multigendered SF queer community: the trans identity is still up for criticism in the LGBT community, and a bigoted out-of-towner has more of a voice than we do in our own community institutions.
Imagine being a queer or trans-questioning youth attending the sci-fi series, watching as the audience cheers the rejection of transgender people. Gay people who grew up surrounded by anti-gay jokes and images should know better how much damage can be done by such portrayals.
May 21st, 2007 at 12:12 pm
From the Director’s note on the film:
“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 show’s the film’s intent to demonstrate that altering one’s body, transitioning into a trans-man, is an act from ‘distorted cultural norms’ and implies that trans-men are truly lesbian women who feel compelled to “change themselves, instead of working to change the world.”
These kind of condescending judgements of transgender people have no place in an LGBTQ film festival.
May 22nd, 2007 at 7:32 am
Let’s take the statement first without the reference to transmen:
“we see young heterosexual women carving their bodies into porno Barbie dolls… Our distorted cultural norms are making women feel compelled to use medical advances to change themselves, instead of working to change the world.”
I think we all agree with the feminist theory that young het women are going for to great lengths to attain the “hips of a cub scout” body type a.k.a. “porno barbie dolls” largely as a product of media and the distortion it brings to cultural norms.
Gay men have been hitting the gyms for decades in similar body modification pursuits, and there has been much writing about the sociology of gay gym culture that attempts to make etiological claims.
http://www.gaypsychotherapy.com/GLRbody2.htm
SO there is a feminist general case established that places women and men under pressure to conform their bodies to abnormal patriarchal cultural norms that are considered “hot.”
I think that on this portion of her statement, we can agree that absent media and social pressure to attain a perfect body, those women who spend time slimming, dieting or surgically modifying their bodies to the perfect form might spend more time “changing the world.” Ditto for gay men at the gym.
[Trade my six pack abs for social justice? Hmm.]
But the rub comes when Crouch mentioned lesbians becoming transmen.
That is where the disconnect between the artist statement and the synopsis of the film might be exposed.
One could read that as asserting that all lesbians who become transmen do so because of cultural ab/norms.
Or one could read that as some lesbians who become transmen do so because of cultural ab/norms.
The articles used in the artist statement are indeterminate, indefinite, so there is no clear meaning expressed.
I think it is pretty elementary to dismiss as absurd the idea that all lesbians become transmen due to cultural ab/norms.
But it is not out of the question that some lesbians might transition to male, as they would take other body modification steps, because of patriarchal messaging.
Without any numbers at hand, I’d say that was a pretty sketchy assertion to make that claim at any significant volume, but I’d also imagine that messed up patriarchal gender messaging might be behind some cases.
I don’t think that the argument here is that all lesbians who become transmen do so because of cultural ab/norms, rather that the presence of cultural ab/norms changes people’s perceptions and actions in a way that is similar to many het women who become political lesbians for a time.
I have no idea why I’m a Kinsey 5. There are a variety of theses as to the etiology of gay instincts in men. It is no threat to me that the path of others is different, contradictory to whatever mine is or was.
Now, does any of this have anything to do with the synopsis of the film? Has anyone seen the film, or is this just commentary on one reading of the film maker’s statement?
Gay men survived “Cruising,” lesbians survived “Basic Instict,” and transfolks will survive “Gendercator” because our communities are stronger than the blindspots in any single film or of any single film maker.
Although I’d like to have seen “The Last Temptation of Christ” wipe out all fundie Christians, I’m relieved to know that art, even “bad art” can’t kill a community.
-marc
May 22nd, 2007 at 8:26 am
The filmmaker in some ways harkens back to the 90s in the bay area when there were big discussions in the lesbian/ftm community about what it meant for someone to transition from being a butch lesbian to a ftm. My former lesbian girlfriend, a civil rights attorney no less, was fairly hostile to me coming out as trans and suggested that it was anti-feminist and anti-gay.
I suggested that it was similar to her coming out as a lesbian. That she just was a lesbian. Not that she hated men, had bad potty training by her dad, or some other nonsense. She loves women and is a lesbian. And trans folks are just that…trans folks.
In my experience, there are ftms that struggle with sexism, but no more than any other group, and that doesn’t mean they transititoned because of that.
Are you a gay man because you hate women? I doubt it.
I agree that we will survive bad art. I do think that trans folks need to start drawing lines about what we consider acceptable representations of ourselves, especially when it is in the LGBT film festival. Its one thing to have Basic Instinct play in the general public but it’s another if Frameline wanted to play it as part of their film festival in the early 90s.
If Frameline had said, hey, we have this homophobic or transphobic film we want to play, and lets analyze it as a community, I think it would have been interesting. But would a Jewish Film festival play an anti-semitic film without even being conscious of what they were doing? I doubt it.
January 15th, 2008 at 11:21 am
i am working on a provocative erotic movie that is making a statement for women who are sexually abused in the name of cleansing a very popular beleive in the part of the world that i come from.
Do you want to work on it with me?