“I’m not your fucking adventure”
I watched episode six of the third series of Transparent last night. I can’t stop thinking about it. One scene in particular.
Josh is on a roadtrip with Shea, a trans woman he knows through Maura, the titular trans parent. With some serious sexual tension building, they finally kiss after a beautifully shot chase around an abandoned waterpark.
Before they go much further, Shea tells Josh she is HIV positive. He baulks. He’s insensitive. He asks stupid questions. When she calls him out on this, Josh is indignant. He’s been completely cool with everything so how dare she insult or offend him. Also, he’s paying for everything, so…
Poor Joshie.
Let’s be clear. Josh represents the standard liberal white cis man. He thinks he’s open-minded and well-informed, but those values don’t stand up to the way he behaves and the words that tumble from his mouth. Even before their altercation, Josh says some seriously thoughtless things about how great it is that Shea can’t get pregnant. Later he suggests that one day she’ll quit sex work and settle down with a family — as if it’s all so easy.
As Lara Zarum writes,
To put it broadly, the season is all about how theory buts up against actual lived reality — the intricate, sometimes contradictory dynamic between the realm of the mind and the realm of the body. What if you’re armed with knowledge but don’t know how to use it? What if your beliefs no longer match your feelings? What if you know the right things to say, but can’t figure out what to do? Then what?
But we’re not here to talk about Josh. What’s so wonderful about this scene is how its main focus is always Shea. As she responds to Josh’s juvenile reaction, it’s her story we see. It’s her anger we feel. “I see right through you,” she says. “I’m not your fucking adventure. I’m a person.”
As a cis white woman, I have no idea what it’s like to be a trans woman. But the strength of the writing and acting (Shea is played by trans actor Trace Lysette) bring important and much-needed elements to the empathy toolkit — sparse as it is when it comes to the trans experience.
As Shea roared her magnificent line for a second time, I, like her, had tears in my eyes. All women know what it’s like to be objectified. To be a man’s adventure. But to be a trans woman? To my shame, I’d barely considered it.
Of the storyline, Lysette reflects,
What will it take for cis hetero men to claim their attraction to trans women? Trans women are women, we’re just a different type of women. There’s this misconception that it makes you gay somehow and, in turn, their masculinity feels attacked and often times they act that out onto us. A lot of the violence with trans women happens with people who have been involved with us romantically. It also affects our self-esteem and the rates of suicide, it effects our overall quality of life.
Elsewhere in the episode, Ali has another nitrous-induced trip at the dentist where the words THERE IS NO BINARY flash up on a Wheel of Fortune board. The writers and producers (some of whom are trans themselves) literally spell it out.
Like Josh and all he represents, I too have a disconnect between how enlightened and informed I feel, and how I actually am. I’m realising how narrow my field of vision has been, and the disservice we do ourselves as a culture by trying to maintain the intangible yet suffocating boundaries we’ve built.
