My Crazy Boxers

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Available Summaries:

Suicidal... or just a working-class butch dyke caught in the wrong underpants? Seems that the boxers were the bigger problem, according to my treatment team. This video is based on actual meetings with hospital staff while in a psychiatric hospital system.

Krissy Mahan makes movies using humour as a feminist tool. Their films address social issues such as accessibility, gender identity, mental health, immigration, and working-class post-industrial cities. Mahan has been recording visual records of people for 20 years, using whatever technology is available.

-Otherness Archive.

One method to control populations is to use administrative violence is to pathologize difference and dissent. In this film, I reenact what actually happened to me in a psychiatric setting. The clothes I wear provoked a very violent response by medical professionals – I was locked up and forced to take psychotropic medications. This film uses experimental visuals to highlight the insidiousness of the therapist’s words.

-Official website.

Jack's Summary:

For a short film comprised entirely of dialogue accompanied by a pixellated video of fish swimming, this piece hit me harder than many feature-length movies with massive budgets and glossy graphics. This is an uncomfortably realistic depiction of a medical practitioner demonising masculine presentation. The psychiatrist's voice actor did a devastatingly brilliant job.

As seen in Vor Transsexuellen Wird Gewarnt, butches have always shared experiences, struggles, and joys with trans people (butches and trans people not being mutually exclusive populations). This short film is an example of bigotry also faced by trans men, transmasculine people, non-binary people, etc. So many of us are punished, judged, and abused for our masculinity, regardless of our different labels, and I'm so thankful for Krissy Mahan sharing such traumatic experiences in this short film.