Gendercator

4 Responses to “Gendercator”

1. marc Says:
   October 30th, 2007 at 11:37 am

   No news on what went down on Friday evening?

   I had a near death experience on my bike Friday afternoon, which gave its life and crumpled upon being hit by a car going 30mph (my “Darwin moment” fault) so that I might live and walk.

   I was “feeling no pain” on percodans that evening, in no condition to be an effective film critic.

   -marc

2. Robert Says:
   October 30th, 2007 at 12:27 pm

   hey marc, work is totally consuming right now so i haven’t had a chance to reach out to anyone about it.

3. sasha Says:
   October 30th, 2007 at 3:06 pm

   Good to hear you’re OK, Marc. It unfortunately came down to a choice of seeing the movie or ensuring Pro-Prop. A work got done.

4. marc Says:
   November 1st, 2007 at 7:51 am

   Copyright © 2006 Bay Area Reporter, a division of Benro Enterprises, Inc.

   Filmmaker defends The Gendercator
   by Matthew S. Bajko
   m.bajko (at) ebar (dot) com

   Catherine Crouch, the director of a controversial movie about gender reassignment that was pulled from this year’s LGBT film festival, met face-to-face with detractors of her film The Gendercator at a standing-room only forum in San Francisco last week and defended the film’s message.

   “This film is a fiction and I am happy to be accountable for it,” Crouch told the more than 150 people packed into the LGBT Community Center’s auditorium Friday, October 26 to watch the film and question Crouch about her movie and her statements regarding some women’s decision to transition to men.

   The 20-minute science fiction flick depicts a nightmare fantasy where a butch lesbian from the 1970s falls asleep and awakens in the future to discover that religious conservatives have outlawed homosexuality and force women who present as men to undergo gender assignment surgeries to become male.

   “My fear is of the gender binary and of the religious right taking over cultures all over the world. They would have us exterminated and I wondered how they would be doing it. They are already doing it in some countries,” said Crouch, referring to gay men in Iran who undergo surgery to become women in order to escape being killed because they are homosexual.

   Crouch said she made the film to work out her own personal issues with seeing young women reject the term lesbian and prefer to live life as transmen.

   “I made the film because I was noticing a lot of lesbian women – a lot of women in the lesbian community – who do not identify as female or wish to be perceived as female anymore. I wondered why this is happening so fast,” said Crouch. “In the past transsexuals came from all across the community. But we are not seeing a lot of male to female transitions.”

   Crouch said she found the trend troubling because it seemed to her that women who were becoming FTMs were not doing so based on their own desires but to meet societal pressures.

   “My concern is it is coming from outside. It is difficult to be a woman and a lesbian,” she said. “I am also very concerned about heterosexual women who use elective surgery. That has been lost in this film.”

   Transman Jameson Green, author of the book Becoming a Visible Man, agreed misogyny is a serious cultural problem, but he also said that FTMs have the right to decide to undergo surgical procedures if they wish.

   “It is more about personal autonomy and satisfaction, basically,” said Green. “We as transmen have a responsibility to create a new masculinity that is respectful of femininity.”

   He suggested Crouch’s fears are misplaced.

   “We have more to fear from A-list queers who pass as straight than the gender variant,” said Green.

   The movie caused widespread outrage within the transgender community after it was screened in Chicago earlier this year. Objections were raised to the film’s depiction of transgender people and activists successfully petitioned Frameline, producers of San Francisco’s LGBT film festival, to remove the movie from its schedule.

   The unprecedented decision enraged lesbians upset at what they considered censorship and they demanded that the film be shown. The LGBT Community Center’s women’s program then stepped in to organize a screening and panel discussion with both sides of the debate.

   Crouch said the controversy caught her off guard.

   “It happened before the lesbian community even knew about it,” said Crouch, who lives in Indiana. “It was a cyber protest I was unprepared to deal with.”

   Filmmaker Mary Guzman, a friend of Crouch’s, said she was “frightened” when the film was pulled from the festival. She defended Crouch’s right to direct and write the film she felt needed to be made.

   “It’s a movie. Only this much can fit into the movie,” said Guzman as she held two fingers several inches apart to demonstrate the fact the film is a short.

   Transgender historian Susan Stryker said she supported the pulling of the film from Frameline because she found the movie to be transphobic, and if it were to be shown, it needed to be screened within a setting where transgender people could respond.

   “When we speak out against misstatements we are shouted down as censoring opinion. The trans community did not make the decision to pull the film,” said Stryker. “I applaud Frameline for their conscientious decision. I respectfully disagree with what Catherine said in the film. I wish Frameline could have created this discussion in July and this would have blown over by now.”

   Frameline programmer Jennifer Morris said the festival did not have the time to put together a panel this summer, and after center staff contacted them about doing their own forum, Frameline agreed to support the event.

   Green said he did not support the petition to pull the film but did agree with Frameline’s decision to do so because he was concerned about the impression viewers of the movie would be left with about trans people. He used the current fight over including transgender people in federal anti-discrimination legislation to illustrate his concerns about the fears many people have about the transgender community.

   “Artists have a right to say what they want to say and provoke dialogue,” said Green. However, he also said he felt people might “misinterpret the future segments” of the film and “believe transgenders are dangerous.”

   Stryker also compared the film flap to the fight in Congress over a trans inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act.

   “This film gets to the heart of transgenders not being a part of the LGB community, like with ENDA,” she said. “We have seen a backlash the last couple of years as transgenders have gained rights. It was a throw down time for me. Is trans an equal part of this organization of not?”

   Last week’s screening of the film was beset by technical glitches. At first the DVD version of the movie lost its sound, prompting an audience member to shout out “censorship is happening again.” After cleaning the disc and recueing up the film, it skipped over the most controversial part of the film during which it is suggested that “the trannies went along” with a plan hatched by evangelicals to eliminate butch women and assign them a male gender.

   Once the movie ended a horrified Crouch immediately took to the stage to request the movie be reshown.

   “This is just unbelievable,” she said.

   Elijah, a queer trans San Francisco resident who asked that his last name not be used, said he came to the forum to see the movie for himself and hear directly from Crouch. He said he found the film to be a “very transphobic representation” based on a “second wave feminist look at gender.”

   “It is really rare something controversial, especially in the queer community, is being addressed publicly with the community itself and the person who started the controversy,” he said. “It is just a very typical look at what trans is from someone who isn’t trans or talking to people who are trans.”

   Local filmmaker Jenni Olson, in her introduction of the film and the protests behind it, thanked Crouch for coming to San Francisco to discuss the controversy her film sparked.

   “I am glad you made the film and expressed your opinion,” she said.

   But Olson also stated that she found Crouch’s comments about why she made her movie and her questioning some butch lesbians’ decision to transition into men “patronizing to trans people.”

   Olson, who took part in a panel discussion on The Gendercator during the Los Angeles LGBT film festival Outfest this summer, also took issue with Crouch’s assumption that female to male transgender people do so as a reaction to societal pressure to conform to certain gender-based stereotypes.

   “It is really insulting to suggest choosing a trans identity is a misguided response to that pressure,” said Olson.

   Crouch, who remained composed throughout the forum, said she had no regrets in making the film and vowed the controversy would not deter her from creating other controversial work.

   “We are divided. If I have to take some kind of reprimand it is worth it if we are talking today. I am happy this center was willing to let this happen,” she said. “I will not knock it off. I will make lots of films about gender.”

   A follow-up discussion will take place from 1 to 4:30 p.m. Sunday, November 11 at San Francisco’s Main Library.
   11/01/2007

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