Trailer:http://www.youtube.com/wat
Relevant Clip: http://www.youtube.com/wat
1.
I found this movie, like XXY, to be surprisingly heteronormative. It is sexist in spite of, and not because of, its positive portrayal of a gender-variant character. The film could have been reworked, albeit quite thoroughly, to accommodate a space for thinking about the intersections of all sexism, and not merely transmisogyny. It could have taken an emancipatory theme forall women, and not only transwomen. If a more general and affirmative concept of womanhood, one that includes both transgendered and cisgendered women, isn't articulated in this film or any film with female protagonists, this doesn't merely disadvantage ciswomen. It also leaves transwomen vulnerable to the attack one finds in patriarchal transphobia-- the reading that a transwoman is simply an extreme incarnation of an effeminate homosexual male.
If transwomen cannot ally themselves with cissexual women, if cissexual women cannot ally themselves with transwomen, then the heteronormativity which affects us all -- even the heterosexual, cissexual women who are portrayed so critically in the film -- will still be permitted to reign.Just as feminism needs the support of men to succeed, we also must ensure that even heterosexual ciswomen are aware that they are not, in our current global society, being guaranteed basic human rights because of the same reason that transgendered people are oppressed.
However, we cannot think of oppression as 'being deprived of access to' a certain, unproblematic, unquestioned identity possessed by men, or in this case, ostensibly possessed by ciswomen. I argue that the cissexual woman in a patriarchal society is atno advantage in this regard; is affected just as negatively by patriarchy. This means something positive. It means there is a shared experience, a point of solidarity between transwomen and ciswomen. Any generalized concept of womanhood is always something that is achieved performatively, it is never something you are born with, it is not something you were born lacking – it is always something you become. This partiality is the source of the danger of stereotypes. Yet it is also the frontier of our new, futural identities.
Before I go any further, I need to responsibly to distinguish my criticism of the limited representation of gender-variance in Ma Vie en Rose from transphobia generally, because there are some uncanny similarities. To begin with, I would say that I am only criticizing a specific concept of the transgendered person: one which reincarnates sexist ideals. This is one which puts both the transwoman and the cisgendered woman at a disadvantage. If I don't want to see a transgendered woman feel that her only path to financial stability is through heterosexual marriage, sex work, or otherwise capitalizing on her femininity or her appearance, this is not in order to renounce her femininity as such. It is because all women, not only cisgendered women, are affected by a common kind sexism, although there are clearly additional specific forms it takes.
In fact, I argue that if the media suggests that a transwoman can participate in a heterosexist ideal [of housemaking, marriage, heels, hyperfemininity, et cetera] without being oppressed herself, the media is implicitly suggesting that the transwoman has a special status, which can only be explained by her having been born as a male. The only way a transwoman could find a 'liberation' of her identity in being permitted to participate in a subordinated, if traditionally female role, would be if a transwoman is 'not really a woman.' This is because it is the only way one could be immune to the injustice that oppresses any and every woman who is put in a similar situation. This insults transwomen and all women. We cannot suggest that the problematic stereotype of the transwoman, the "drag queen,*" reincarnating all of the problematic ideals of femininity with jubilance, is accurate. Not without undermining the transwoman's very status as a woman – or without compromising our assertion that we live in a patriarchal society in which women are oppressed, and that women are oppressed in a systematic way by these very stereotypes.
*Note that this is a criticism of the idea of a “drag queen” as a misreading of the transwoman's identity, which is different from renouncing from the lifestyle of an actual drag queen, i.e., a male-identified person who performs femininity.
2.
I want to call to mind the situation where feminists against exploitative pornography and coercive sex trafficking get lumped in with extreme, right-wing, and usually Christian groups. In that case, the right-wingers believe pornography and sex trafficking should be censored because sexuality in general is evil. The feminists, on the other hand, believe that pornography and sex work should be radically re-envisioned becausesexual exploitation, not sexuality in general, is an ethically problematic scenario. Similarly, feminists who criticize any sexist normativity among communities of transwomen can be easily mistaken for patriarchal misogynists -- for, it is true, in each case the critique results from a desire to destroy a certain concept which threatens the strength of one's own self-concept.
2.
I want to call to mind the situation where feminists against exploitative pornography and coercive sex trafficking get lumped in with extreme, right-wing, and usually Christian groups. In that case, the right-wingers believe pornography and sex trafficking should be censored because sexuality in general is evil. The feminists, on the other hand, believe that pornography and sex work should be radically re-envisioned becausesexual exploitation, not sexuality in general, is an ethically problematic scenario. Similarly, feminists who criticize any sexist normativity among communities of transwomen can be easily mistaken for patriarchal misogynists -- for, it is true, in each case the critique results from a desire to destroy a certain concept which threatens the strength of one's own self-concept.
However, there is a difference, which I will argue is similar to that between the anti-sex-trafficking feminists and the anti-sex-trafficking Christians. We believe that a concept of transsexuality (broadening the definition here even to include cissexual homosexual men and women who play into sexist butch-femme relationships) which recreates, almost parodically, heteronormative ideals, should be radically redefined (specifically,broadened) because heteronormativity, and gender normativity, amonganyone, is an ethically problematic phenomenon.
So yes, the anxiety that feminists experience in the face of sexism is similar to the anxiety that sexists feel in the face of feminism. Each feels threatened in their own self-concept. However, feminism must work to ensure that its response to this threat, this anxiety, is not to attempt to recover a sense of identity that has been defined on patriarchal terms -- i.e., a fixed, stable identity. As Judith Butler says,every attempt at inhabiting a specific gender fails at least partially, and that is a good thing, because it is what gives us freedom over these ideals – it is what allows us to choose from among the identities we are offered – and what allows us to create new ones if we like none of the options.
As an aside, I believe this is a basic philosophical state of affairs about what it means to be a self, beyond just a question about sex and gender. I don't think there is a strong sense in which we can 'know' that we have a continuous identity. Memory or consciousness, are, of course, part of what allows us to posit the concept of identity to begin with. But it should be noted forgetting is just as important. With an excess of consciousness, or memory, we begin to lose our sense of self again. We have to be willing to 'forget' our mortality and finitude, our smallness re: the rest of the universe, in order for the selective memories we hold on to about our personal identity to make sense.
So yes, the anxiety that feminists experience in the face of sexism is similar to the anxiety that sexists feel in the face of feminism. Each feels threatened in their own self-concept. However, feminism must work to ensure that its response to this threat, this anxiety, is not to attempt to recover a sense of identity that has been defined on patriarchal terms -- i.e., a fixed, stable identity. As Judith Butler says,every attempt at inhabiting a specific gender fails at least partially, and that is a good thing, because it is what gives us freedom over these ideals – it is what allows us to choose from among the identities we are offered – and what allows us to create new ones if we like none of the options.
As an aside, I believe this is a basic philosophical state of affairs about what it means to be a self, beyond just a question about sex and gender. I don't think there is a strong sense in which we can 'know' that we have a continuous identity. Memory or consciousness, are, of course, part of what allows us to posit the concept of identity to begin with. But it should be noted forgetting is just as important. With an excess of consciousness, or memory, we begin to lose our sense of self again. We have to be willing to 'forget' our mortality and finitude, our smallness re: the rest of the universe, in order for the selective memories we hold on to about our personal identity to make sense.
Although I think this means in some sense there is no static, unchanging, unified 'true self' behind the process of creating and holding onto memories, I don't think that the 'falsehood' of it is a bad thing. I think that it our finitude, what allows us to be incomplete, also makes us open to new experiences, to learning from others, and to a future that we absolutely cannot predict based on our memory of our past self alone. I am pretty sure that if we could have a 'true' concept of the self, and/or know exactly what was going to happen in the future, it would probably mean that we were dead.
3.To speak more specifically of the content of the film -- as I said, there are really no positive portrayals of cissexual women. And while the need to criticize the complicity of cissexual women in patriarchal modes of identity is urgent, the only way the depiction of cissexual women in the film could be consistent would be if Ludovic's dreams about becoming a Barbie-doll housewife were subject to a similar criticism. And they're not. But oh, what befalls the cisgendered women who find her problematic! The very first interaction with a young cisgendered girl we have is when she is jealous of Ludovic for getting the attention of a mutual male friend. (I should note that in the film XXY, the intersexed protagonist was also exclusively attracted to men).The primary ways, from the outset of the film, that we even learn Ludovic is 'gender-variant' is through an over-the-top depiction of her interest in dollhouses and neon pink dresses.
3.To speak more specifically of the content of the film -- as I said, there are really no positive portrayals of cissexual women. And while the need to criticize the complicity of cissexual women in patriarchal modes of identity is urgent, the only way the depiction of cissexual women in the film could be consistent would be if Ludovic's dreams about becoming a Barbie-doll housewife were subject to a similar criticism. And they're not. But oh, what befalls the cisgendered women who find her problematic! The very first interaction with a young cisgendered girl we have is when she is jealous of Ludovic for getting the attention of a mutual male friend. (I should note that in the film XXY, the intersexed protagonist was also exclusively attracted to men).The primary ways, from the outset of the film, that we even learn Ludovic is 'gender-variant' is through an over-the-top depiction of her interest in dollhouses and neon pink dresses.
There is also a schema set up where all women, cisgendered or transgendered, primarily exercise power through their ability to manipulate men sexually. The character of the boss' wife is repeatedly subordinated to Ludovic's mother because Ludovic's mother (whom Ludovic herself clearly envies the influence of), is willing to wear short skirts, style her hair, and otherwise sex it up. The stereotype of the frigid, envious, sexless woman watching from the sidelines is so blatant it doesn't really merit analysis. And when Ludovic does receive support from other women in her community, it comes primarily from this strange, drag-queen-esque version of Barbie, who at one point literally ties up Ludovic's mother, and the mother of Ludovic's love interest, so that Ludovic and the Drag Fairy can fly away together to a brightly colored land full of dollhouses, where weddings never end.
It is certainly true that heterosexual women do a lot of the enforcing of gender roles. However, it is not enough to re-create derogatory depictions of sexism as it exists. In order to effect change we need to create new concepts of friendship. We need new kinds of political solidarity. And, I would argue, we need new kinds of sexual relationships between women. Throughout the film, the tired dynamics between sexually jealous women get recycled over and over. Even if the gender-variant version of femininity self-actualizes at the end of the film, without the solidarity of all women, this is not really a success. The demographic of cisgendered women who unabashedly support a critique of gender identity is not represented at all. Even less can we imagine the possibility of lesbian relationships between cisgendered or transgendered women, in any combination, based on the set of premises the film provides us with. And I argue that it is not merely a personal urgency but a serious political urgency that these diverse forms of lesbian identity become widely represented and legitimized.
Instead, the schema we find in the film suggests that perhaps the problem with the social structure Ludovic finds herself in is not with the heteronormativity itself, but merely where she is located in it. The only ally she finds in her peer group is a girl who is similarly interested in transitioning across the binary, but in reverse: into manhood. In this sense, we see that "individualist" questions of personal identity, wherein a transgendered person says they are 'objectively' one sex while being intersubjectively treated as the opposite sex, can be quite dangerous. They allow us to feel successful in a reform of who gets to participate in which heteronormative identity, but it leaves a necessary, revolutionary abolition of the very concept of a normative gender binary untouched.
In the film, for example, we only ever see men using athleticism to relieve stress. Further, Ludovic's ineptitude at sports seems to imply for her something of her 'fatedness' to the status of woman. Again, the problem with this depiction is so obvious it doesn't merit analysis. While at times Ludovic receives good support from her sister, it is fleeting. The real female alliance remains with Pam, the Barbie doll. All other adult women are depicted as varyingly frigid -- even the scene in which Ludovic's mother cut her hair smacked, to me, of the myth of the 'castrating woman.' And lest I be accused of questioning Ludovic's gender identity by saying that, let's not forget that women can be robbed of their sexuality just as well as men through a metaphorical 'castration' -- in fact it is the rule and not the exception in our society, and all too often we all feel 'castrated' by the other women in our lives.
I think that it is to Ludovic's immense credit that, given the pressure to be gender-compliant, she chooses to pursue what feels right to her. The biggest problem, though, which again, only Ludovic seems to recognize, is with patriarchal masculinity, which harms all women – and men. There are scenes where boys fight and she doesn't want to participate. There are scenes where she is beaten up. While these may be pivotal experiences for a transgendered person, it is also important to note that they can have very similar significance for a cisgendered woman, or even a cisgendered man. Together, we are all realizing that something is profoundly wrong with the role that is being forced onto transwomen -- the same role that is forced onto anybody who was raised as a male.
It does not threaten the concept of transgendered identity to suggest that we need to make a decisive critique of this naturalization of male violenceas it is. If Ludovic goes on to "live the fairy tale" and marry a heteronormative man, cisgendered or otherwise, she is highly likely to find herself in the same scenario -- of being adversely affected by the decaying, mythological gender binary as it executes itself through individual human beings. To say that a transwoman would be any less hurt by a fairy tale wedding than a cisgendered woman could only suggest that transwomen aren't 'real' women, and are thus immune to the conditions which have held back all women for millenia. It is not for the sake of delegitimizing the identity of transwomen that we must criticize the limited representations of cissexual women – or of lesbianism – in media that deals with gender-variance. We must criticize these representations because it is only by uncovering and cutting the vast network of roots which anchor the tree -- in all of their intersections -- can we finally reach their source, and fell the blighted forest.
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