Bold, honest and tinged with a healthy dose of levity, Gwen Haworth’s film, “She’s A Boy I Knew” (showing recently at the Fairy Tales International Film Festival), is an excellent jumping-in point for coming to an understanding of transsexualism and seeing it with a human face - as well as witnessing the dramatic changes that others also experience when confronted with the reality of a transgendered loved one. Not just a “transgender movie,” “She’s A Boy I Knew” has much to say universally on gender, relationships and identity, through the raw and frank experiences of the director and her family.
GayCalgary: Although documenting your own transition, your film really is as much or more about your family and spouse, and their discovery of what your transition meant to them. How did the filming affect the dynamic between you and your family? Was it embarrassing or painful hearing some of their responses in interviews?
Gwen Haworth: The film is an ode to my family. It’s definitely brought me closer to them. I had already heard most of what they said during my transition, but because I was now hearing everything at once, it was intense. The editing process was incredibly emotional. I was reliving the most turbulent moments of my life over and over again, and so I shed many tears during the process. It was very cathartic. Almost like a debriefing session for the past seven years.
GC: Were you surprised at how deep their own transition was?
Gwen: I was surprised that they were still in my life! Almost everything I’d seen in the media had suggested they wouldn’t have anything to do with me.
GC: At one point, you mention the difficulty your father had telling your grandparents about the change you were making. There’s an old adage that as we come out of the closet, often our family goes in. Was this your family’s experience? How has it changed?
Gwen: The first year or so my parents didn’t tell anyone. As it became more apparent to them that this wasn’t going to go away, they moved beyond the shock & denial, and began the long road to acceptance. They’re still working on it, but we’ve all definitely come a long way.
In fact, a few days ago my mom went with my partner Heidi’s mom down to the Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival to present the film. How incredibly amazing is that! The audience was so appreciative of the moms for being supportive parents to their queer children. I can’t wait to see how this experience affects my mom, in the months to come.
GC: It’s common for parents to have some sense of mourning and guilt, both evidenced on a couple of occasions in the film. How much does time heal that, and how much do you think will continue to linger?
Gwen: I realized even before telling my parents that I needed to let them go through their emotional reactions, whatever they may be. I needed to let them know it was okay to express their fears and apprehension. If I had rebuked everything I didn’t agree with by saying “Yes, but…” then I don’t think they’d be in my life at this point.
We’ve all healed much more than I initially expected. There’ll always be those moments where they’ll miss their son, but time does help, especially as new experiences convey to my mom that my life isn’t going to be doom and gloom. She was incredibly happy that I completed my graduate degree and the film. She also loves my partner Heidi, and I’m sure when we have her grandchildren, all will be right in her world.
GC: In the film, you speak of the pre-transition self-imposed isolation you’d lived, and the new openness that you’ve found since becoming Gwen. Would you consider this one of the vital themes of the film, and a demonstration of the harmful effect of Gender Identity Disorder?
Gwen: Absolutely, although I would say it’s more a representation of the harmful effects caused by our society’s limited view of gender as binary. The impact on trans folk is only an amplification of how rigid and suffocating gender roles are on almost everyone’s individual self-expression.
GC: You’ve said that your decision to document your transition was because of the dearth of positive and accurate depictions of transgender people in film history. Do you see this changing, and why do you feel that this is important?
Gwen: That’s the great thing about video cameras and the Internet. Sure there’s a lot on YouTube that you wouldn’t call high art or quality entertainment, but more importantly, the technology gives everyday people a voice, something that was non-existent when I was a teenager. There’s a more visible and diverse community out there, and that helps people recognize they don’t have to go it alone, or conform to antiquated notions of what it means to be transgender.
The trans community’s self-representation is incredibly important because the media’s representation of trans folk still sucks. Sure, there are now characters that are more likeable, but if you look at the big picture, most of the representations show the trans individual as having little power or personal agency, unless it’s tied to their gender or sexual status.
When the media continues to only select a small segment of the trans community to heavily represent, society (including trans folk) can easily be led into believing that those lifestyles and ways of presenting yourself are the only options that exist for us. The media drums it into our head and then we start to believe it, become it, and even self-police. It’s frightening.
That’s why I absolutely hate the statement, “I’m a woman trapped in a man’s body.” It’s a dumbed-down over-simplification of transsexuality that has an incredible amount of stigma attached to it. It belongs to those stock phrases that are assumed to be a part of every transsexual woman’s repertoire, such as, “I played with my sister’s dolls,” “I never liked competitive sports,” “I was disgusted by my genitals,” and “I would have killed myself by now if I didn’t transition.” I don’t relate to these statements. As a child, I was repelled by the representations of transsexuals that I saw on television, because I didn’t see myself in any of them. I was sure I didn’t want to be a sex trade worker, use my gender for stage performance, or be some guy’s fetish object. Like most people, my gender was just one of countless aspects of my identity, not something that I wanted to consume my entire personality and life.
Even today, non-trans filmmakers are still pretty dismal at portraying transsexual women. Where are the diverse representations and the empowered individuals? Where are the trans women who don’t identify as heterosexual after they transition, or the ones who aren’t overtly feminine? Watching the television, you’d think coming out as a transsexual women means that I’d have to give up my reality as a complex human being with my own unique balance of masculinity & femininity, in the obsessive pursuit to make sure everybody reads my gender identity correctly. The overused stock images of transsexual women putting on lipstick and heels make me want to puke. I’ll stick to my Converse and combat boots, thank you very much!
GC: Are there things that we could be doing better, given some occasional issues of self-image, complacency or recklessness (and by this, I don’t mean to point fingers at any particular cross-section) within the transgender community that could stem the tide of these depictions?
Gwen: Yikes! This is such a complicated topic that I don’t think I can sufficiently answer it here. One of the films I’m hoping to complete in the next few years is about internalized transphobia and how the media perpetuates self-hate. It’s something many people grapple with at one time or another, so I’m sure it’ll strike a chord.
I will however state that I don’t believe in squashing anyone’s self-expression “for the betterment of the community.” I don’t think this is the right approach. It saddens me when LGBT communities ostracize individuals for being too gay, too femme, or too flamboyant. To me, the whole idea of trying to streamline the LGBT community’s self-representation in order to be more palatable to non-queers is counterproductive, as it buys into the self-hate that many of us are trying to overcome.
GC: In the film, you comment about sometimes slipping back into the non-communicative mode you’d learned growing up. While the existence of transsexuality demonstrates that much of our identity is biologically driven, there are still ramifications that our socialization plays in our lives. How much of an obstacle do you see that to be?
Gwen: I saw it being a bigger obstacle in the past than I do nowadays. Before, I was afraid of standing out, of how my voice would sound, of the masculine qualities I had acquired growing up. Nowadays I embrace my idiosyncrasies and recognize all people have a balance of masculine and feminine qualities inside of them.
The place I am struggling the most is in breaking down the wall I put up between my family and my emotions. I come from a long line of strong stoic men who talk in a monotone to their family. I don’t think any of us would have chosen this for ourselves, but we were conditioned in our formative years and it’s incredibly hard to deprogram. I can emotionally open up quite easily to others, but I still catch myself shutting down around my family. Especially my father. It’s something I’m sure I’ll be working on for years to come.
GC: Some of the interviewees in the film refer to those first few months of finding your style, sort of as a “wobbly chick” recently hatched. Is it sometimes difficult to look back at that footage of yourself in early transition or pre-transition?
Gwen: It was incredibly horrifying! Especially my awkward cross-dressing footage. I used to cringe at it, but at a certain point realized I needed to get over myself. Editing the film helped me learn to laugh at myself, embrace my vulnerabilities, and generally accept myself, quirks and all.
GC: In earlier versions of transgender treatment – still adhered to by some therapists in the Western world, today – it was required that a transitioning person cut all ties to their former life, their family, their friends, and their jobs. You’ve clearly not done that, stating that you “didn’t jump out of one closet just to jump into another.” Can you imagine what life would have been like if the older standards of care were forced upon you?
Gwen: If I had been faced with that ultimatum in 2002, I would have very likely used an alternative route or the black market to transition. I realize in the past that therapists were concerned about safety issues, but I think they were incredibly unperceptive of the damage they did to people by asking them to sever their ties from friends and family. The trans population has a high suicide rate due to depression, which is obviously aggravated by the isolation people feel when they’ve lost most of their strong relationships. I relied heavily on the emotional support of my friends and family during my transition. It would have been devastating without them. I think it’s completely irresponsible of any therapist nowadays to still require this from most of their clients.
GC: You mention in the past looking in back alleys for clothing, because of the fear of overtly shopping for it. Society has a clear double standard in that women can dress up just to feel good about themselves, but male-bodied persons who do so are automatically assumed to be “fetishists” by mainstream society. What needs to be done to break this perception?
Gwen: It definitely was an issue for me before and through my transition. Even now I’m still struggling with how to proactively address this. There’s a wonderful writer, filmmaker, and performance artist in Vancouver by the name of Michael V Smith. He has done some amazing work around these issues. I admire him for his ability to put it all out there, to be incredibly honest and vulnerable, to help us think about our own self-expression.
GC: You mention the courage it takes for our loved ones to give up the ambitions that they had for us. What are the new ambitions – yours and theirs – for you now?
Gwen: Our biggest ambition is probably for me to pay down the nearly $100,000 debt that I’ve incurred from transitioning genders, graduate school, and making this film. Due to interest, my debt is steadily growing and I can see bankruptcy as a huge potential in the next year or so.
On a brighter note, when my life is financially under control, Heidi and I are eagerly looking to start our family, which is definitely an ambition our two moms are anxious to see come to fruition!
