Women Talking

Trailer.

Jack's Summary:

There is a lot of abuse-related imagery in this film, and rape is a central topic, including the rape of children. The trans man in this movie experiences incestuous sexual abuse and a traumatic birth. Proceed with caution if that may distress you.

The beginning of the film, narrated by a young teenage girl named Autje, lays out a disturbing premise. The cis men of an ultraconservative, isolated religious colony have been using animal tranquillisers to subdue and sexually assault the colony's women and girls, including Autje. Melvin, a trans man, was abused alongside them.

After the colony's predators are arrested, the women have two days to decide what they will do in response to the rapes; whether they will leave, stay and fight, or do nothing. After two days, the cis men will return on bail.

Melvin is first introduced playing with children in the fields. He is short-haired and masculine-presenting. Autje looks out at him with a frustrated and disturbed expression, a woman named Mejal standing nearby and watching as well. Autje asks Mejal, "Is she always going to be like this? Is Nettie always going to be a man, now?"

Her voiceover, in contrast to her judgemental tone, then says, "Later, we understood that Nettie didn’t become a man because of what happened. Nettie had never felt like a woman. Now pretending had become impossible." The film is quick to establish, quite directly, that Melvin's gender incongruence was not caused by being assaulted.

Watching this, I was reminded of Unbecoming, a short documentary film where Logan, a trans male survivor of sexual assault, firmly asserts that he is not trans because he was abused. While I think Melvin's role in this film could have been handled better, at least the filmmakers grasped the importance of legitimising Melvin's gender in the face of his trauma and social context.

In an awful, blood-splattered flashback, Melvin is shown with long hair, standing in his bedroom after giving birth to a baby which ultimately died. Viewers find out that, horrifically, he suspects that he was impregnated by his own brother. After telling his brother about the traumatic birth, he says, "I won't speak of it. Or anything else. Ever again."

Returning to Autje and Mejal, viewers find out that Melvin has remained selectively mute ever since, either unable or unwilling to speak to any other adult. When Autje questions this, Mejal replies, "She speaks to the children. I think they call her Melvin."

After this, the colony's women resume debating their future; whether they will leave or remain, and whether they will fight for their safety. The debate is interrupted when Miep, a four-year-old girl accompanied by Melvin, enters the room, seeking her mother's comfort because she is still recovering from being assaulted. The women sing to soothe her, with Melvin silently standing nearby. He then leaves to be with the children again, and the discussion resumes.

Melvin, literally and figuratively, does not have a voice in the debates which will decide his future. The film tries to affirm his manhood on the one hand, but on the other hand, his absence is necessary to not complicate debates which frame all of the colony's victims as being women. That is simply the context of the ultraconservative religious community where these crimes have taken place, and the framing of the film, establishing the limits of Melvin's manhood.

The women decide that they will leave, accompanied by boys under the age of fifteen, and any disabled males who need care and were not involved in the assaults. So, no non-disabled adult men... aside from Melvin. But he is not mentioned while this plan is being decided. For the purposes of the plan, he is a woman.

Towards the end of the film, Melvin approaches the central group of women, after he has prepared the children to flee the colony. An elderly woman asks, "Are the children clean and ready?" After Melvin nods in reply, the woman says, "Thank you, Melvin." For the first time since he confronted his brother, Melvin speaks aloud to another adult; "Thank you for saying my name."

That's pretty much the extent of Melvin's presence in the film.

This movie certainly tries to draw an interesting balance, by inserting Melvin's manhood into a context dominated by one specific form of misogynistic sexual violence, and trying its hardest to ensure Melvin does not complicate that foundation too much.

Like many trans men in real life, identifying as a man did not protect Melvin from being abused... but it did ensure that his abuse would be largely set aside, to avoid confronting the complexities of a man being raped because he was born female. He faced the same misogynistic violence as the women around him, even though he was not a woman. That difficult distinction is a bit too tricky for the movie to explore in-depth.

I do wish that Melvin had asserted his identity directly, using his own words, rather than having the narrator refer to him by his birth name during her explanation of who/what Melvin is. The other characters, including one sympathetically-portrayed cis man, are given backstories and identities which are fleshed out through conversations and actions, but Melvin is chiefly talked about, rather than him talking about himself.

Given the ultraconservative religious setting, it makes sense to include a scene where cis women are derisively discussing Melvin's identity, but it would've been good to balance this with a scene involving Melvin's own description of his identity. We know that he speaks to children, and we know that the children use his chosen name, but we do not see the path to that acceptance. We do not get to see him explaining his name or identity to the children, or sharing his pain with them.

The adult women of the colony are shown confronting the rampant abuse alongside girls who have been abused themselves, discussing their trauma and deciding what to do about it, whereas we do not get to see Melvin sharing his pain with anybody. He is not shown holding his pain as a man, explaining to the children that yes, he was also hurt alongside the women, but yes, he is still a man. This film squandered the opportunity to give trans male survivors a scene which resonated strongly with their experiences.

For the most part, Melvin is neatly separated from everybody else. Unfortunately, in my opinion, that makes him feel like a token character, albeit one who is portrayed with a lot of consideration. On a positive note, though, apparently August Winter had a good experience on set, and felt very supported while making this film.