Transgender Women in Film at FestHeart
from the FestHeart International LGBTI Film Festival
Rakvere, Estonia
One of the major challenges facing transgender women is inclusivity. Inclusion in female spaces. Inclusion in feminine spaces. Inclusion in lesbian spaces. Inclusion in familial, religious, and cultural spaces. Inclusion in society generally. These themes were featured in the roster of films presented at the second FestHeart LGBTI Film Festival held in Rakvere, Estonia this October.
With the support of the Embassy of Canada to Estonia, I was invited to present two of my documentary films including “Transgender Life in Slovenia”(2016). This film explores the lived experiences of 10 transgender and non-binary individuals in the small central European country of Slovenia. However, my film was accompanied by several other impactful movies covering this topic including, “Girl”(2018), “Venus” (2017), and “Out of Iran” (2013).
The common thread between all four films is the torment, stress, and anxiety resulting from gender dysphoria. Gender dysphoria presents when an individual’s physical form, their body, does not conform to their innate sense of self, their gender identity, thus resulting in significant self-image issues, depression or anxiety, and a tormented experience of one’s existence. For me, this was my daily burden until I finally found the strength, courage, and support, to take the only logical path — that is, to step into my true, authentic self and to stop pretending to be somebody I wasn’t.
There are two main aspects of transition for a transgender person; 1) social transition, and 2) medical transition. The first is far more challenging than the second and yet, without medical transition many transgender individuals remain bound by the burden of gender dysphoria; a crippling, debilitating condition that is omnipresent throughout every day, every hour, every minute, of one’s life. In two of the films we saw the young, transgender women, resort to significant self-harm as a result of being denied the treatment they so desperately needed. In one case, it cost her her life.
As interesting as this is, let’s get back to the point: inclusion, and the devastating effects when inclusion is denied, as depicted in the films. What we all want is to belong, to be wanted, to be acknowledged, accepted, respected, and included. In “Girl” we saw a young transgender woman pursue her dream to become a professional ballerina. In this journey, she sought to gain respect and inclusion among her peers in a highly competitive environment. In “Venus” we saw the protagonist challenged by the intersection of race, culture, religion, family, and gender. Navigating just one of these, as a transgender woman, can be fraught with challenges and yet Director, Eisha Mahjara, managed to weave all them into a 95 minutes film. In “Out of Iran” we witnessed a young transgender woman having to flee from her homeland, losing her fight for inclusion, failing to secure the treatment she so desperately needed, all of which contributed to her suicide. Globally, the suicide rate among transgender women is disproportionately higher than in the cis-gender population, often as much as four-times. In areas where access to trans specific health care is not available, or where the cultural pressure is suffocating, then the gap is even larger.
In my own film, and my own lived experience, we see the struggles to be accepted by society in general, to be supported by our families and friends, to secure meaningful employment, to receive the health care that we need to thrive, to be welcomed within the LGBTQI community, and more importantly, to be recognised as a valuable, contributing, member of society. Among the most painful dismissals, for a transgender woman, is the rejection by feminist and lesbian communities. In particular, one especially vehement sub-group is the Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists or “TERFs”. This subset of the feminist movement works to entirely dismiss and erase the very existence of transgender women. They do so with flagrant scaremongering, fake news, misinformation, and ignorance. It never ceases to amaze me that when women have such large battles to fight, i.e. gender-based violence, inequality, oppression, and misogyny, that we choose to fight amongst ourselves. We see similar behaviour from the lesbian community, who will often exclude transgender women from lesbian spaces citing all manner of ill-conceived objections.
I long for the day that we recognise the validity of every, single, human being, regardless of their variability of the human condition. I remain confident that when we come to truly accept everyone, every human being, then we will live in a fairer, more just, and harmonious world. When we stop comparing each other to some societally constructed ‘standard’, by which we are all judged and categorised, then we will have the opportunity to truly embrace our diversity as an asset and not as a handicap, or the subject of oppression, discrimination, and hatred.
When I am teaching diversity to young students I use a pebble metaphor; having divided the class into random groups I provide each with a small pile of pebbles. Then, I challenge each group to be the first to find two identical pebbles, identical in every respect. Trust me, they try very, very hard. The point being that whilst all of the pebbles are unique they are still pebbles.
I will leave you with a quote, one that I have used since I started my trans advocacy work back in 2012:
“Just like the pebble, we are all unique. When we can come to accept, love, and respect, our own uniqueness then, just maybe, we can come to accept the uniqueness of others”
Michelle Emson
International human rights activist, published author, speaker, documentary filmmaker, and Digital Director for Women’s March Global. You can follow Michelle on Facebook.
