SOMETIMES YOU CAN'T JUST CIRCLE ONE:
Third Gender, Fourth Wall at TrannyFest
BY LEXI LEBAN
reprinted from Release Print, 11/97
At first glance,
an incredible freedom of gender expression seems to have taken hold in
our culture. Dennis Rodman, member of the NBA-champion Chicago Bulls,
dresses in a wedding gown for his book signing and openly discusses the
fact that he has cross dressed ever since he was a child. Singer K.D.
Lang appears on the cover of Vanity Fair getting a shave from Cindy
Crawford. The TV news magazine 20/20 devotes a segment to intersexuals
(formerly called hermaphrodites). RuPaul has a talk show on VH1. Film
images of drag queens and transsexuals in mainstream cinema, 
from
The Crying Game to Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, suggest
that we've "come a long way, baby."
Real social change, however, often lags behind mere visibility or fashion. In the 20/20 segment on intersexuals, the case was raised of a child named Jade, who was born with "ambiguous" primary sex characteristics. Because she did not easily fit into either category of male or female, she was subjected to emergency surgery to alter her genitalia to make her an anatomical female. As I watched the program, I felt the violence of a physician taking a knife and "fixing the problem." Our society has invested a lot in the binary gender system, which allows only two ways of classifying anatomical sex. According to historian and novelist Leslie Feinberg, in her book Transgender Warriors, "Intersexual bodies are rarely sick ones, and the emergency is culturally constructed." Morgan Holmes, an intersex woman, says, "What is even more difficult than defining oneself as a member of the community 'woman' is attempting to define oneself as an intersex/woman. The task requires taking back an identity which has been made illegitimate through culture and has been stolen through surgery." Holmes' comments point out our cultural discomfort with difference and with the individual right to choose to define one's own gender identity - to determine what to do with one's own body.
In San Francisco, on November 22 at the Roxie Cinema, audiences will get the opportunity to examine these and other thought-provoking issues at TrannyFest, a celebration of "transgender and transgenre cinema" devoted to "breaking boxes and bridging communities." The event, which is cosponsored by Film Arts Foundation (FAF) is the first U.S. film festival of its kind. Festival co-directors Elise Hurwitz, Christopher Lee and Alison Austin invite viewers to make "gender chaos history" while enjoying six programs of a "finger-snapping, groin-bumping, tear-jerking, heartwarming mix of experimental, documentary, narrative and pornographic shorts and features by transgendered filmmakers or about gender expression diversity." Included among the festival organizers are local activists Yosenio Lewis, Andrea Pasillas and Ahimsa Timoteo.
"One of the main reasons we felt this festival was so important was to take control of our own images," says Austin. Lee adds, "We want to give voice to folks who have not had the opportunity to be heard before." Among the works shown at the first TrannyFest will be several films by Film Arts Foundation members, including Machiko Saito's Premenstrual Spotting, Rae Rea's Third and Elise Hurwitz and Christopher Lee's Trappings of Transhood. Other films include Wanted Alive: Teresita La Campesina by La Tina, Shotgun by Jordy Jones, Look of Love by Charles Lofton, Kings of New York by Lucia Davis, Ground Bloom Flower by Gay Natsu, You Don't Know Dick by Candace Schermerhorn and Bestor Cram and many others.
In broad terms, "transgender" can include transsexuals, transgenders, transvestites, cross-dressers, bi-genders, drag kings, drag queens, butch women, feminine men, passing women, passing men, gender-benders, androgynes, bodyshapers, bearded ladies and many others. This broad umbrella term can be used inclusively to describe anyone who challenges the boundaries of sex and gender. A more specific definition might draw distinctions among those who reassign the sex they were labeled with at birth, those who live full-time in the gender opposite to their anatomy and those whose gender expression is considered inappropriate for their sex.
At TrannyFest, gender expression and sexual orientation intersect in many films, producing identities that are complex and multifaceted. In the past, FTMs (female-to-male transsexuals) have sometimes been narrowly characterized as butch lesbians with internalized homophobia; according to this argument, FTMs couldn't love a woman as a woman so they decided to change their gender in order to become heterosexual and love a woman as a man. In Trappings of Transhood, however, viewers see interviews with FTMs who define themselves as gay men. Trappings shows that some FTMs choose to take hormones and/or desire surgery, while others choose not to. the film also raises issues confronted by transgendered people of color. Trappings of Transhood embodies the aim of TrannyFest, which is to explore the wide range of gender possibilities and dispel narrow stereotypes.
Yosenio Lewis of FTM International, who is also an interviewee in Trappings of Transhood, says, "My biggest hope for TrannyFest is that the transgenders who are in the closet, who are afraid, who are scared to come out and be themselves, will come to the festival and find themselves, and find the courage to say, 'This is who I am. I need support and now I know where I can get it.' My second hope is that some of the significant others in our lives -- family, friends, partners, co-workers, clergy, etc. -- can come to this festival and feel support and recognition of who they are."
According to Rae Rea, the writer and director
of Third, there is a strong transgender and transsexual presence
in San Francisco. The issues of this community, however, often are not
covered in gay and lesbian film festivals, or if they are, they are covered
in 
one
program, leaving little time to explore the diversity of transsexual people.
"It will be interesting to see whether this festival will be preaching
to the converted or whether it will draw audiences from outside the transsexual/transgender
community," says Rea, "and whether there will be discussion
in San Francisco afterwards. That would be the ultimate aim of a festival
around these issues."
Rae Rea's Third is a film that could easily slip through the cracks, for it is not easy to categorize. Third is "an experimental narrative using butch camp to tell the story of one third-gendered character's escape," says Rea. The film has had an interesting life in exhibition. The title Third, used as a noun meaning third gender (as in "I'm a third"), is defiant of the binary gender system in general. The film, however, was not generally recognized as having to do with transgender issues until Rea submitted it to TrannyFest. Third is also a good example of the "transgenre" character of this festival. When Rea was writing the film, he thought it was clearly a story, clearly a narrative script. However, every other film festival has programmed it in the experimental category. The experience of the film in exhibition mirrors the experience of a transgendered identity. As Rea puts it, "Sometimes you can't simply 'Circle one."
Several years ago, I (a sort of femmy dyke) got
decked out in a red-leather mini, black fishnet stockings, and black,
fuck-me patent leather pumps, and set out for the night club Esta Noche
to see a friend perform in a drag show. Maybe it was my sequined tube
top, but when I entered the club, the bouncer at the door 
asked
me what I would be performing. I felt queasy, swept with anxiety by this
sudden attack of mistaken identity. Later, at home, I looked in the mirror
and considered electrolysis. Was it the mustache that caused the confusion?
Did I look like a male-to-female transsexual? I questioned my precious
femininity. Perhaps if I had been older and less uptight and more secure
in my own identity, I might have interpreted the bouncer's remark as a
compliment. I might have enjoyed the moment of liberation and maybe even
have learned something new about gender and identity. I might have savored
the opportunity to be somewhere between male and female, unrestricted
by the binary gender system. Hell, I might have realized a lifelong dream
to be a Star.
Jennifer Miller, bearded woman, performance artist, juggler and founder of Circus Amok in New York City, understands this perspective. Miller refuses to shave. She says, "My beard is a lifelong performance. I live in a very liminal place. 'Liminal' means an inbetween place. It means a doorway, a dawn or dusk. It's a lovely place. In theatre, it is when the lights go out before the performance begins.