Gendernauts: A Journey Through Shifting Identities

Available Summary:

"An illuminating and compassionate look at the world of transgender identity, as seen through portraits of some of San Francisco’s leading gender mixers. Whether by birth or by choice, sometimes with the assistance of hormones or surgical prostheses, we meet those who blur the lines of male and female." -Vimeo.

Jack's Summary:

One thing that deeply disappointed me about this documentary was a discussion about Brandon Teena, wherein a gender-variant person claimed that they couldn't know how Brandon Teena identified, because he was dead and therefore couldn't be asked. This betrayed a willing ignorance of Brandon's identity, and a determination to ignore his own words.

In The Brandon Teena Story (a deeply-distressing documentary released one year before Gendernauts), several interviewees insisted that Brandon identified and lived as a man, and wished only to be known as a male. One of Brandon’s ex-girlfriends, when interviewed, said, “he just wanted everybody to know him as always having being a man”. Another of his ex-girlfriends described him rejecting the idea that his relationships were lesbian, stating instead that they were straight, because he was a man. Brandon, according to testimonies, would say that he had begun transition surgeries, to make people believe in the legitimacy of his male identity.

Therefore, I was disappointed that a gender-variant person in Gendernauts made an art project speculating about Brandon’s gender, and treating Brandon as a fictional character. It felt cruel, and very similar to the way that cis people refused to take Brandon’s maleness at face value. The motive seemed to be to use Brandon, in death, as a platform to project the artist’s own non-binary experience, rather than respecting Brandon's binary maleness.

That said, I do recognise the value in Gendernauts. I enjoyed its interviews with trans men, ally doctors, and non-binary people.

One interviewee, a female-presumed intersex person named Hida, describes a gender-ambiguous childhood, presenting "high-femme" during their younger years, discovering their intersex traits as an adult, and experimenting with masculinity. They describe learning how men walk, talk, and present, and discuss what it was like to pass as male so easily, especially in situations where they faced homophobia from strangers who assumed them to be a young gay man. Towards the end of their interview, they talk about how they are now trying to "inhabit the middle ground that I feel is me", explaining, "I think the middle ground is a place where people aren't sure what you are." I really enjoyed Hida's interview.

One of the interviewees I was most impressed by was a woman named Chrystal Weston, who worked for the DA’s Office as an advocate for LGBT+ people. I really liked that her education about trans people included, in her words, transsexuals, transvestites, and both pre-op and post-op individuals. A very progressive understanding for the time, even if the language has changed nowadays.

Annie Sprinkle, a sex worker and activist, talks about her trans male lover Les Nichols, and pornographic footage is shown of the pair together, following Nichols’s phalloplasty operation. The footage is originally from the 1989 film Linda/Les & Annie—The First Female to Male Transsexual Love Story.

The beginning of this segment is largely positive and affirming, and actually quite lovely, but then Sprinkle’s voiceover dreamily remarks about how trans men could “become a new political force of women taking over the world as men”. She also uses explicit language which could be incredibly dysphoria-inducing for many men, referring to all trans men as being men with cunts. Sprinkle then proceeds to describe how much “shock and outrage” came from the FTM transsexual community in response to her film. I think I may know where some of that negative response came from, her good intentions aside.

This documentary definitely gave me mixed feelings. I didn’t like that a trans female interviewee compared all trans people to cyborgs, as part of the "genderfuckery" theme underlying the whole film. I found it dehumanising. That said, such themes are central to the film's advertising and branding, so viewers (myself included) are forewarned of those ideas, and I am aware that many trans viewers may find such comments affirming or compelling. Less excusable are comments made by one of the cis interviewees, who shamelessly misgenders a trans man because he has not had bottom surgery.

Overall, while I think it's a worthwhile watch, I would say that this film is not really for binary trans men. The disrespect shown to Brandon Teena is enough to make that clear.

Lastly, please know that this documentary includes the word "hermaphrodite", which is widely viewed as a stigmatising and misleading term which should not be used to describe intersex people, unless a person self-identifies as such.