Adam (2019) - Is It Transphobic?
It’s… Complicated
Recently, my girlfriend and I watched Adam, a 2019 comedy-drama. And it needs talking about.
The premise is simple. Teen cisgender straight boy, visiting his lesbian sister in New York, is mistaken for a trans man, and since it’s getting him near to girls, he leans into the error.
A comedy of errors. A farce. What joy!
No. Not remotely funny because trans people, especially trans women, are routinely accused of deception with a view to acquiring sexual partners. That absurdly tone-deaf and ignorant accusation certainly deserves its own breakdown. I’m a transgender lesbian myself and I know full well how patently ridiculous the notion is.
However, what makes Adam particularly egregious is its provenance and the things it does get right.
The film is directed by Rhys Ernst, himself a trans man, and prior to this, his debut feature, he and his then trans-woman partner, Zachary Drucker, worked on several projects exploring gender before landing gigs as associate producers on Transparent. So far, so good. A trans power couple, demystifying how gender works in queer relationships, and ensuring some level of authenticity in a major TV show that was, sadly, a little laden with cisgender people.
