okay, so last tuesday night i watched Mein Kind ist trans* - Was nun? (lit: My kid is trans* - now what?), a SWR documentary from this month that explores how families with trans kids experience and deal with the coming out, questions of (medical) transition and (marginally) the general repercussions of having a family member be trans. in this, the doc highlights the specific experiences of three german families. it pissed me off a little. it made me feel a little bit insane.
it's not a bad documentary, really. it is semantically up-to-date and i am convinced it is wholly good-faith. but it fits into this pervasive tradition of specifically german productions about trans youth, made by and for public broadcasting, that unproportionally centre the families, specifically the parents and their experiences and feelings about their kids' transness, rather than the trans kids' experiences themselves. oh, and they keep deadnaming them.
it is very difficult to put into words why this film made me so angry. as i said, it's quite respectful. noone gets misgendered (except by their transphobic dad), all the info and facts presented are technically on-par with the current scientific/medical consensus, some myths (like social contagion) are debunked and the trans kids are taken seriously in their identities and decisions. it is for sure one of the better docs you can find about the topic. and yet.
i have to say, this documentary clearly isn't about us or for us (trans people). it's about how to deal with us if you're our parents. it's in the title. a lot of it is about how to approach medical transition, how to weigh its risks against its benefits, how much bodily autonomy to grant your trans kid and the difficult decision of trusting them in their self-perception. and these sort of conversations have their right to exist, of course, i'm sure it's no small predicament for parents to find themselves in and have to deal with. it's a good thing that docs like this are getting made, so parents of trans kids get to have access to current information and the experiences of parents like them. and as a starting-off point, this is good. but me, i want a little more.
maybe i just want a different documentary. maybe its unfair to hold this film to expectations it's not trying to fulfill. but uhhh maybe this (the blog post) isn't so much about this specific film, but rather a general criticism/pondering of how transness is represented and talked about in german documentary. or just. the world rn.
what i want is more depth. this is a general problem. documentaries about niche topics that are made for the broader public don't go into all too much depth. people don't care that much. people don't care about everything there is to know about fungi. people don't care about the gear a shepherd might have historically carried. people don't care about why cis people are so insanely obsessed with gender. people only maybe kind of sort of care about how other cis people feel about trans people if it comes on tv on a random saturday evening and there's nothing else to watch. but i am taking people by the shoulders, shaking them violently, and yelling I WANT YOU TO CARE!! I WANT YOU TO CARE ABOUT THIS SO BAD!! there is more to know!! don't you want to know??? the answer, in most cases, would be no, but, y'know. i'd like the option to be there.
i think there were two things where the lack of depth really irked me in Mein Kind ist trans*. One, they are interviewing these parents, who are sharing their experiences and feelings about the transness of their children, and, overwhelmingly, these feelings are shock and denial and grief. and maybe i'm too trans to empathise with that but it is insane to me how attached some people are to the supposed gender of their child. to the point that they feel genuine loss when the kid comes out as trans. when really, nothing about this person changes (except that now maybe they get to be a little more themselves). in the film, this grief wasn't questioned. none of the experiences and emotions were, really, which, to be clear, i think is good policy. but i'd be super interested in a deeper look into why some, maybe even many people have this insane attachment to other people's, but specifically their children's assumed gender. what's going on there, socio-psychologically? what is it to you whether your kid is a boy or a girl or a secret third option? what does that change? why do you view your child as a thing that belongs to you and their changing in ways you haven't forseen as a violation of yourself? why is the changing of someone's gender akin to their death? how closely are gender and personhood tied together if three years later, a mother still breaks out into tears from grief at the memory of "losing" the daughter that is now her son? i just think it would be valuable to all of us to explore these questions and the social and psychological reasons for this obsession with gender and maintaining gender. and even if it weren't generally valuable -- i think it'd still be interesting.
the other thing is the science. or, well. the reality of trans-related research. and maybe this, too, is boring to a greater audience, because it's statistics and numbers and whatever whatever. but man. there is a difference in saying, the long-term effects of hormone blockers aren't well-researched, and the long-term effects of hormone blockers aren't well-researched, however they have been in use for decades in trans-related and -unrelated use-cases, and are generally regarded as safe. yes, social contagion is a popular rethoric, but why aren't we exploring where that comes from specifically? that the original study was full of bad-faith prejudice and flawed methodology? why are we saying that trans research is young and scarce when my man magnus hirschfeld was doing it a century ago and trans people have been overwhelmingly happy to be able to transition since forever? why are we still putting the question of whether transition is "the right path" up for debate? look me in the eyes and try to deny how much more peace and happiness they hold than before i transitioned. look into the eyes of any trans person who gets to be themselves.
that's the big thing that frustrates me. why don't people trust us? why is transness, or transitioning, such a horrible thing that we are not allowed to choose for ourselves the medical procedures we want to undergo to feel more at peace with our bodies? why are we not allowed to be able to make those decisions for ourselves? is a 98%+ satisfaction rate not good enough? why? people don't have to pass a psych eval before getting knee replacements, despite the meagre 83% satisfaction rate.
i know it is important to be aware of risk factors. and to be aware that medical transition is (largely) irreversible. but uh. fetch me that tumblr post.
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| many people don't realise this. |
and no, you cannot know for sure that it's ultimately the right decision. but man. man. i'm losing my mind here. how do i convey to you that that's okay and if something changes later-on, that's okay and you can make more decisions to direct your life onto a new path that is right for you then. no, i can't take back my decision to transition. but it's not the last decision i will have made in my life.
what i wanted to get at is, there is such a focus on the negative when [cis people] talk/report about transness and transition. the risks, the side effects of the medical treatments, the way we suffer before transition and during rough parts of transition, and the way people suffer for whom transition has stopped working. the bullying and harrassment and and and. but like. every medical treatment has risks and negative side effects.
(or like. just effects. cause what is framed as a desirable and undesirable effect of testosterone, for example, really depends on what you want out of it. hair in weird places isn't necessarily a positive effect, but like. that's what T does to some people. and mood changes and general unwellness aren't positive effects but that's what happens when you suddenly introduce a new hormone in an unprecedented dosis to your body. that's puberty. it's a normal thing that happens. scarring is a consequence of top-surgery and some might hope for minimal visibility, but i love my broad, jagged, pronounced scars. it'd just be nice if that nuance in what counts as positive and negative effects of medical transition to whom were explored more in the discussion. anyway.)
every invasive surgery runs the risk of death. but how high is that risk? who are the people performing the surgeries and who are the people prescribing and monitoring our hormone treatments? they are medical professionals who have been doing these things every day for decades with practices and results that are only increasing in quality. do you not trust these people? and, again, do you not trust trans people to find ourselves a good surgeon or endocrinologist whom we trust?
it's like medically transitioning is a uniquely difficult decision to make. but it's really not. it's such an easy decision. in my experience, anyway.
what i feel when i watch these kinds of documentaries, or hear literally any discussion about the topic with no trans person at the table, is that the consensus is still that transness is bad. transitioning is bad. being a different gender than what some rando decided when you were three seconds old (or even before that) is bad and it needs to be prevented. what if you're just gender-nonconforming? can't you manage without hormones? without surgeries? if you do this, make sure to do it right, so that nobody knows. be sure to do your scarcare so they are as invisible as possible. we don't want to see you in public bathrooms. or professional sports. or on tv. or social media. not in a way that shows your transness. gender-affirming and -changing treatments are normal until it's a trans person seeking them voluntarily because then it's risky and mutilation and a perversion of nature. none of that makes any sense.
but whatever. i'm just some guy. send that documentary to your parent or cis friends or whoever doesn't really know anything about the subject. it's fine for that.
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last saturday, we had our 2nd comic club meeting and it was very fun and i made this comic, using my left (non-dominant) hand:
on wednesday, i had a long call with my friend that was very nice and left me feeling happy and more solidified in our friendship. i was also brave and read out a vulnerable poem to them and it was fine. good, even. very good. i don't need to be so scared about showing what i feel.
yesterday (thursday), i finished (sort of) the first layer of lineart for my uni comic this semester. this is the bulk of the work on that done, i think. the rest is drawing the second, simpler lineart layer, cleanup, colour, and layout. and print. i have 2 weeks maybe. i'll be fine.
today, i caved and downloaded the Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream demo and made myself and two of my friends and i must say, as limited as the demo is, it was very fun and i think that the full version will be my end-of-semester reward.
the question is, why am i not allowed to share screenshots from the demo? we're so cute. let me show everyone how cute we are in full res :-(
it is late. sweet dreams, my friends and onlookers.
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