A smart and engaging Canadian documentary profiles a couple at the nexus point of trans rights, politics, and Asperger’s Syndrome.
The wealth of identities and stories from within the trans community—kept silent for too long—continues to challenge, enrich, and surprise us. Such is the case with Transfixed, a fascinating new documentary from Alan Kol. The story follows Martine Stonehouse and her partner John Gelmon, two Canadians living with Asperger’s Syndrome, and Martine’s efforts to become eligible for gender reassignment surgery in spite of governmental bias and a weight problem.
The journey reveals Martine’s strong and principled character. She is someone who embodies the term activist in the purest sense when she becomes one not for political reasons, but simply to live her life the way she deserves.
My connection isn’t cooperating at the moment, so I haven’t been able to watch the trailer. Could someone clue me in as to why weight is relevant to transition surgery? Generally, I consider Canadian healthcare to be far superior to what goes on in uStates, but a surface read leads to the conclusion that it’s just the same old bias against anyone overweight at all.
Caine
There is nothing explicit in the trailer but most surgeons I’ve encountered really, really, really hate going through any fat to get to the interesting bits.
The trailer has a *charming* sequence where Martine is eating some french fries and her voice-over is “I try to eat right…”
Chigau:
But we’re talking transition surgery -- in this case, the interesting bits are, um, right there. I don’t know as much about female to male surgery, but I still don’t see how weight is relevant here.
Oh, and there are times I can’t pass up fries, either. A couple of weeks ago, my lunch was a large fries and a chocolate shake.
Caine
My wife is in the same boat as Martine was. Simply put, extra weight is considered extra risk for any surgery; the longer and more invasive the surgery, the greater the risk. Risks include issues with the anesthetic, a greater risk of cardiac failure, greater risk of blood clots, and a number of others. SRS is lengthy, fairly invasive, and also considered elective, so surgeons do want patients to reduce their weight as much as possible beforehand. I have no medical training, so I can’t, of course, determine exactly how necessary that is versus how much stigma and fatphobic mindsets play a role. There are alternative means of determining a patient’s general fitness for surgery, which I believe are underused, but that’s really all I know.
What concerns me, after watching the trailer you posted here and a longer one it linked to via YouTube, is the very cis-hetero-normative framing given to how Martine’s quest for SRS intersects with her relationship. She and John both explain that they cannot have a sexual relationship -- at all -- while Martine lacks a vagina, and that they cannot get married unless the sexual relationship they want is made possible by Martine’s surgery. John in particular is adamant that it “isn’t fair” for him not to be able to have sex with his partner, and says that if that doesn’t become possible he will “always want her as a friend”, implying that they cannot properly be a couple until vaginal intercourse is possible.
There is also a clip of Martine and John at the wedding altar, with the celebrant quoting “God created them male and female”, which serves to reinforce the framing. And an explanation from Martine of how John has issues with her natal genitalia, and one from a surgeon of how after surgery a man “wouldn’t be able to tell” that her vagina was surgically created. If there is any pushback against the idea that a marital or romantic relationship necessarily rests on the act of heterosexual PIV intercourse, neither trailer showed it.
I realize that Martine and John’s relationship is their own, and since they did get married and are still happily together as far as I know -- I have met Martine a couple of times and we have friends in common -- I can only approve of their happiness and wish them more of it. But the greater narrative the film puts out troubles me.
Whirlwitch:
I can see why. It’s going to take a long time to break the normative hold on everything.
The new generation appears to be thinking differently about these things. Among my kid and his other trans friends the most common sexuality appears to be pansexual. As my kid said ‘why would anyone make their sexuality about the genitals of their partner?’
Anat:
Yes, I think that’s true, but there’s still a very long way to go. Way too many people still end up dead because of their gender or orientation. Parts of the world still criminalize LGBT people. More insidious, inside the bubble of acceptance, you have normative standards being set in stone (ie homonornativity), and any time that happens, you just end up with intolerance and a lack of acceptance.
Bisexuals are still being erased, and too many of them, unable to find support, choose to die. There’s a lot of bad still going on, and I don’t think it will be solved by trying for a pansexualnormative.