Men feel their masculinity is threatened when they are told they are less assertive, dominant, or 'masculine' than others. They may also experience these reactions when they find themselves to be subordinate to a woman who clearly takes the lead or when they are expected to perform tasks considered 'unmanly.'
The identity had become so central to who I thought I was that letting it go felt like admitting that entire chapter of my life had been pointless.
The video starts with Cher's son, Chaz Bono, who is transgender and recently got married. However, the video then changes to show a before photo of 'Jennifer Coolidge' as a man; that then morphs into a picture of Trace Lysette, who bears absolutely no resemblance to Coolidge whatsoever.
For decades, work was designed around a fiction, that of the 'neutral' worker, an abstract individual assumed to be fully available, consistent, rational, and unaffected by bodily constraints. But this neutrality was never real.
The most obvious example is the adoption of the singular 'they' to replace clunky constructions like 'he or she' and 'he/she.' Language purists argue that this is ungrammatical, even though 'they' has been employed in just this way by authors as diverse as Chaucer, Shakespeare, Austen, Dickinson, and Shaw.
Since the 1990s, a largely underground upwelling of trans creativity has helped new trans identities, communities, and political movements come together. Trans Cinema provides an entryway to the wildly diverse and creative cinema made by trans creators, including those who are BIPOC.
I really wanted to look at the differences between films made by men ... when they're directed by men, it's very taboo, it's sensationalized, it's explicit and it's often violent .... (with) the films made by women, or best case, lesbian women because it's so different, it is like night and day. I'm trying to show that contrast, and that difference.
I've spent the last 25 years since I transitioned being spoken by lawmakers, by media, by people who have never met me but feel entitled to decide what my life means. The pressure to explain, justify, or exist as a symbol in somebody else's mythology is constant. It's part of why my film, Becoming a Man in 127 EASY Steps, exists: to narrate a trans life from the inside, rather than explain it to outsiders.
