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On Saturday March 29th I went to see the documentary ‘She’s a boy i knew‘ at the Amnesty International Filmfestival at the Kriterion film theater in Amsterdam. I went together with my brother, because I already read on the documentary’s website that it was meant for the families of transsexuals to see it. So I invited my brother to come along with me to Amsterdam to see this documentary, as far as I know he was very impressed by it. Now I’ll be telling you how I perceived this documentary made by Canadian filmmaker Gwen Haworth.
Not only is Gwen Haworth the maker of this documentary, together with her ex-wife, best friend, and her family she is the subject of the story she tells. This is the story of herself, her past, her transition, her present. Pictures, home-video material, video interviews and animation create a documentary which is impressive in its entirety.
The most important people in Gwen’s life have their own story in this bigger story. There’s the story of her parents, her sisters and even her grand parents. This way she puts the history of herself and her family into an interesting perspective, the people in her story gain a lot of depth this way. It enables the viewer to get a better understanding of the perspective Gwen’s family has on Gwen, her transitioning and her new life. The same goes for Gwen’s best friend Roari and her ex-wife Malgosia.
Malgosia plays an important and impressive role in this documentary. Gwen came out to the people around her when she was already married to Malgosia, at the time they married Malgosia didn’t know of Gwen’s gender dysphoria. To her and Gwen’s family and friends Gwen had been Steven for about 27 years. A guy whom hadn’t shown any signs that he didn’t feel right in his body. Gwen’s coming out to Malgosia caused a lot of sadness and pain in both their lives. The story of Gwen and Malgosia is mostly a story of Steven and Malgosia, home-video material and pictures of the time before Steven became Gwen show a really happy couple. Malgosia’s phrase that she fell in love with Steven, and Gwen isn’t Steven anymore to her, depicts a feeling which is more common among transgendered people whom out themselves to their partner later in marriage. Malgosia deserves a lot of respect for her attitude and dedication towards Gwen, although they didn’t stay a couple, they do still share a love for one another.
The documentary not only shows how Gwen’s relation to Malgosia changes, but also how the change from Steven to Gwen affects her family and how their perception of Gwen changes during her years of transition. Gwen’s parents and two sisters are both interviewed earlier on and later on in Gwen’s transition. It also shows how Gwen’s own attitude to her family changes, something very crucial. It takes a lot from one’s family to understand what is happening with you, and it is important to keep them involved in your life when you transition. It is difficult, especially if your attitude towards them wasn’t one of involving them in your life before you started transitioning. Gwen coped with this very well, it shows the struggles it brings upon her parents, but as Gwen opens up they learn to know her and they continue their love for their child. This is something I encounter in my own process now too, and it still can give me and my parents hard times, but seeing how Gwen’s family came out of this I have good hopes for me and my family.
In that sense and thanks to how it’s presented, showing the difficulties and the laughs ’She’s a boy I knew‘ does give a representation of a person transitioning with a lot of recognition both for families and the person transitioning. It is a positive representation which can give one strength to be yourself and to involve the people around you in a process with a lot of difficulties and pitfalls and the continued love between people whom go through this process of one person together.
This documentary is one to see, one to purchase and absolutely one to spread the word about, as I’m doing here.
Gwen, whom was present at the screening at the AIFF, called upon the community to self-represent oneself. Self representation was one of her biggest motivation to make this documentary and I can understand very well why. There are multiple representations of transgendered people in the media, but few are self representations which are this impressive. Gwen convinced me and I am thinking about extending my self representation beyond this blog into something which can mean empower the transgender community and their families and friends in this perspective. I don’t know if I will succeed, but seeing how Gwen made this happen I have hope for myself. Gwen is a positive and admirable example for the younger generation of transgendered and queer people in this world.
I take this opportunity to thank Gwen for making this documentary and I will do my very best to show it to everyone I know, for they too have to see this marble of a documentary.
Friday March 28th I went to see the documentary ‘A jihad for love‘ at the Amnesty International Filmfestival, screened at the Kriterion film theater in Amsterdam. This documentary is made by Parvez Sharma, an Indian Muslim now living in the United States. This documentary depicts how gay Muslims find a way to be true to themselves and their believes. It shows their struggle with the believes of others and the situation they are in. In a country like Iran gays can face a death penalty, the idea to be unallowed to live if you are true to yourself, is one no one person on this world should be confronted with. Though not all of the persons are both proud of their sexuality and their believes, the proudness that is showed in this documentary projects the strenght these people possess.
One can say a lot about the style of the documentary which isn’t one like ‘An inconvenient truth‘ or ‘Fahrenheit 9/11‘, this documentary finds it’s strenght in the people which it depicts, strong people whom have strong believes and show the love they find in their religious believes as well as in their friends and the oppurtunity to gain freedom wherever in this world. This documentary tells us not to look away anymore when people are discriminated against, are being persecuted, or being forced to flee their country for being homosexual, for being whom they are, being themselves. These are people like me and you whom have loved ones, believes, hopes and dreams, and everyone should have all this in freedom.
I support Amnesty International and will keep doing so, and if I one day can help the cause of Parvez Sharma in an other meaningful way I more than willing to do so.
I recommend everyone whom has a heart for freedom and has an affinity with human rights to watch this documentary.
Tomorrow and Saturday I will go see on both days one film at the Amnesty Filmfestival. It’s a festival with a lot of interesting and intruiging films and documentaries. I’m going to see two documentaries, one about religious muslims whom are gay, A Jihad For Love, and the other about a transgendered woman whom documented her own life, She’s A Boy I Knew. I am really looking forward to seeing both these documentaries, and I will tell you as much as I can about them after the weekend. One thing I can surely tell you already is that you go must see these documentaries, as far as I know they’re both really beautiful and amazingly interesting.
After I broke up with my ex in 2003 it happened only four times that I felt I could feel something more then friendship for a girl. One was right after the break-up with a very special girl, but as you can guess it will not work to start something new right after a break-up. We’re still great friends, and I feel really grateful for that. The second girl which made my heart tick a bit faster came three months after the break-up, she was sweet, older than me, and some complication in relationship terms. In the end the click just didn’t seem there and I lost contact with her. The third girl only caught some deeper interest, also a fellow student as mine like number two, but this was Spring 2006. A time in which I was personally well into my personal transition, but I got aware that I didn’t really feel something more than friendship for her. Number four was even more hopeless, I’d seen her on campus multiple times and met her by coincedence late last year. She seemed really sweet and intelligent, but whatever she seemed when I she first talked about her boyfriend the interest was gone. Due to a slight incident we don’t speak (or see) each other anymore. In the meantime my official transition has begun and I am now living my life. As in 2003 I can impossibly hit on straight girls anymore, but now in 2008 I have seen that lesbian girls aren’t that open towards a transgendered woman. I don’t think much about my sexuality, but the thing is I do like women far more than men, that makes me a lesbian in the case society sees me as a woman, in terms of gender. I do believe I still have a long way to go to be seen as a woman to everyone, and at this stage I get the feeling lesbian girls are curious but not interested. To some I might even be an object on which they can shed their light to fullfill their curiosity.
Now when it comes to dating as lesbian I get sort of insecure because what I just mentioned and personally I’m by far not the most assertive girl in the crowd. So how do I take this on, I first have to meet a fabulous girl and than I must hope she has an open mind and that she’ll learn to know me as a person. I think my personality is my strongest point in charming someone, but even then my situation makes dating more complicated. By far most cisgendered people don’t have to be aware of their gender, they can take it for granted, when they date someone. I can’t go around it, it would be horribly unrealistic if I ignored my gender situation. It is impossible for me to take it for granted when on a date. I went through a lot to get where I am now, and I still have to go through a lot to achieve what I want for myself to be really myself. There’s no way that I want to be alone for the rest of my life, I want to love and be loved, I want to build a family and a future with the person I will love most. It has to start somewhere, but I don’t have any guide to get it started. Do I have to wait ’til people can’t see anymore that I wasn’t born a woman, do I have to limit my spectrum to other lesbian transgendered women, do I have to jump in and get myself hurt by beautiful but hurtful people??? Things have of course progressed since I came to the choice to not get myself involved as long as I didn’t feel ready for it. That was early 2004, and a lot has changed and I do feel ready for a relationship and even more, but the person to be in that relationship with is as yet nowhere to be found. For some reason I don’t meet people whom are really interested in me, and whom are open to me and whom are charmed by my personality. This all sounds disgustingly sad, but the thing is that it does make me sad, and that I should be more assertive to get myself a darn date with a fabulous girl. That is why I will do start writing about my amorous adventures, at least as far as I will have them, if not then I’ll have to write more about the absense of love, won’t I? 
Well most of the snow in this vid already melted away by now, one hour after I’ve shot this half a minute of unique footage of snow falling on Good Friday 2008. Not that it’s oh so special, but it was nice to capture this while I was sitting inside my warm and cosy room .
Now there’s only one month left before the half a year anniversary of beginning my hormone treatment. This means I have to contact the German surgeon whom I want to perform my srs. If this is arranged it would mean that I could be operated shortly after the official real-life experience period has ended in Spring of next year. There’s certain things I want to manage before that, like officially changing my name, so I’ll have the right name on my university diploma.
What’s bothering me now is that I am not really assertive in managing a lot things which I need to manage. It’s not only because of tiredness spells, which have become quite apparent this last month. I am struggling quite a bit to be myself, sometimes life feels heavy. It doesn’t depress me, it’s simply difficult and often tiresome to do the effort of being myself with this body I have. Most important thing probably is the issue of facial and body hair, the body hair isn’t retreating as fast as I wish it would do, and the facial hair is an issue of painful removal for which I have to contact a clinic, for which I need to be a little more assertive. It often feels absurd to stand in front of the bathroom mirror with shaving cream on my face, it sometimes feels like someone pulled a joke with me. Well, I can tell you, there’s nothing funny about shaving your face, getting up in the morning is every morning waking up with a hairy rash on my face. So yeah maybe I will, I really should, call the clinic tomorrow to start getting over this horrible rash!
The hormone treatment started banging on the wall which held back most of my emotions sometime last month, and it seems to have made some serious cracks in that wall. Luckily I don’t have moodswings, but there are certain issues which are very emtional to me, like the problem surrounding my motivation to study. I now know what it feels like to be unable to prevent myself from crying. Last time I had to confront myself with my study problem, I was simply forced to cry by my emotions although I totally didn’t want to cry. It is a bit weird, but obviously part of my transition, for years I had held back crying about emotional stuff, even though I was quite emotional in my younger years and cried easily. I had raised a wall to keep back most emotions, to not show my feelings of hurt, now this wall is being torn down. It makes me curious about how I’m going to handle my emotions from now on. I will learn to live with it that’s for sure.
Well despite all the tiresomeness and emotionalities, my life in transition has also learnt me to live with applying make-up on a daily basis. Did I look up to putting on foundation every day only months before the start of my real-life experience, now I apply it with an ease of ‘that’s done in a jiffy‘. That doesn’t deny the fact that I will be very glad to be rid of putting on foundation as soon as the facial hair removal reaches it’s goal. Make-up is now necessary, but I’m not anti-makeup, I prefer looking natural, that’s all.
I do think the make-up helps me in being more passable than if I wouldn’t use it. The reaction of random people on my appearance isn’t as if they’re abhorred by my appearance, but I’m not consequently ma’am-ed either. The reason behind that could be the local culture in which people hardly sir or ma’am one another if appropriate, it could also be my youth which makes it not that common to ma’am me. Or I simply don’t get myself involved in situation in which I could be ma’am-ed, it’s hard to say, but I don’t see it as a problem. You know why? Well nobody has sir-ed me since when I started my real-life experience. I know my voice isn’t worked well yet, but I don’t sound manly which helps, I think. Honestly I don’t need to be ma’am-ed to feel like a woman, I want to be myself and I can be myself, and I simply don’t get the feeling from my surroundiing that I’m being misread, that’s what it is about.
This month there’s no news on physical developments, my weight might be fluctuating, but I haven’t bought that scale yet so I can’t tell. Besides that nothing else seems to visibly be going on with my body, maybe I’d need feedback from others to tell me if someting has changed, though I won’t be showing anyone my bare breasts. No way!
Next diary update will be on April 20th, so as predicted by myself I will not do the half a month updates anymore. But don’t be sad, there’s more about I have to tell besides transition updates.
Late Spring last year I dicovered her, for which I am The Ditty Bops deeply thankful. Jesca was listed as one of their friends on their myspace page, any Ditty Bops friend can be a friend of mine I thought. So I went to read, listen, and watch what was on Jesca’s myspace page, and I liked it, I adored it, and I still love it. Especially her video for the song Big Fish gave me a really pleasant feeling, I was in love! So I went on a quest to download her beautiful music, which was hard, because there was to that date no official releases from her. Eventually Soulseek popped up some downloads from a radio-session, known as the KCRW morning becomes eclectic session, and from another website I got a number of live songs. Now I could survive until her debut album Kismet would be released in September that same year.
Though what did I do when Kismet was released in the States? Nothing! I didn’t download it nor did I order it. She was too dear to me to download it from Soulseek and she had some fierce competition from other beautiful artists those months after the release of Kismet. Yesterday though Jesca surprised me, I found Kismet in a record store in Utrecht. I was surprised because I thought she had only released Kismet in the US, but a closer look showed this was a European release. Well what else could I do besides buying the record, well of course there were a lot of other records there which I still want to buy, but Jesca’s surprise was too big to ignore so I finally have Kismet in my possession. Big Fish, the song that made me fall in love with her music isn’t on it, but that doesn’t mean I can’t show it you right here.
And as an extra treat I’ve added the video of her single Money to this post too!
They can sing and make music, they’re really good at it, that’s why I listen to their voices, to their music. I love them as artists, I love them as musicians, I love them because their voices soothe my heart, because their music carresses my soul.
I want to show my love for them, I want to show whom those beautiful women are. Today I’ll tell you about three of them, Chan Marshall (Cat Power), Regina Spektor, and Joan Wasser (Joan as Police Woman).
I first heard one of Chan’s songs on a Belgian radio station in 2003 when her ‘You Are Free’ album was released, I almost instantly fell in love with her voice and music, it’s lightness, it’s darkness, I still love it. The Belgian Radio station was difficult to receive on my radio, which gave an extra charm to hearing Cat Power on the radio, she wasn’t played on Dutch radio. I haven’t seen her play live yet, I do know her history of being somewhat absent during her gigs, but things have changed for the better I have heard. There will come a day that I will enjoy her music and her beautiful voice among the crowd at one of her concerts.
Mid 2005 a friend of mine introduced me to a singer whom made me set my first steps into the alternative folk genre, this was Regina Spektor. The beauty of Regina’s voice had invaded my veins as soon as I played the song which was sent to me over MSN. I bought the yet unofficially released Soviet Kitsch and craved to hear more of her adorable music, and wished to see her play live ever since. Even if I don’t get to see and hear her play live, I will always be willing to give my heart to this beautiful girl.
Regina was soon followed by Joan Wasser, she’s one of the first women after Chan whom soulfully caught my ears and made me swing and swoon. I can’t remember exactly when it was, and how, but it was the song Christobel, of the Joan As Police Woman album Real Life, that hailed Joan into my life. A day before my 24th birthday in 2006 I went to a concert of her, although she was sniffing a lot because of a little cold, the concert was incredible. Joan’s music also pressed my nose even further into the beautiful music of Antony (of Antony and the Johnsons) along with the girls of CocoRosie, I adore Antony, but most importantly I’ll forever adore Joan! This song ‘Eternal Flame’ is one of those reasons for why I adore her.
My initiative (SSIGN) caught the attention of someone working at the editorial office of my university’s university magazine. He says they’re really interested in my initiative and want to interview me. He must have read my blog and the fact that this initiative is still in it’s early stage of development. There’s not much more to tell them at this point than what can be read on the SSIGN weblog. This will mean that there’s at this point in time little chance I’ll be giving any interview, were it to the university magazine or any other media. Of course when you bring news you want to be the first to bring it. From my point of view I will bring the news of my initiative at the moment I think is right for it. That is why I have a weblog running for my initiatie where I decide what I share and when I share it with those whom read it. I am in favor of keeping this in the open and being transparent about this initiative, until this takes the shape of a real organisation its weblog will stay in the air. With information accumulating on it I do risk that certain media run away with the news about its existence without consulting me. For now there’s little info on the SSIGN weblog, bringing news about it would be presumptuous, meaning that there’s too little certain about how things will develop. I hope I won’t be discoverd by many more media and asked about it, because the more people I’ll have to keep waiting the more people can become impatient and might not be interested anymore when I decide the time is right to tell them the SSIGN story. I will reply to the guy from the university magazine and will tell him he’ll have to wait and to simply keep an eye on the SSIGN weblog. I do hope and that’s personal that this media encounter will be more succesful than my two previous ones…don’t ask.. >.< ..it was silly…but then again those who asked me the question were quite silly too, and of another standard than a university magazine. Though, no I don’t suspect this to make me famous, maybe known on my university and among transgendered people in the Netherlands, that’s all. Most importantly all this isn’t about me, but about those young people and students whom can benefit from what my initiative can deliver them.
What can I say? Little has happened these past two weeks, honestly, I don’t even have much reason to write an update now. So if you don’t mind, from now on I’ll only do the update once a month. After four months the wild water rafting (which is an exaggeration) has turned into bobbing up and down in a rowing boat on a calm lake. I have my emotional moments, the highs, the lows, but they’re few. Physically too, little happens over two weeks, so what’s left to write about. I have enough to write about none transitional issues, like my previous posts show, there’s always a connection with my transition, but no immediate connection to make it part of my diary. Hopefully I will have something to write about in another two weeks, when I’ll be on hormones for 5 months. It’ll probably be the general things, you never know though, there could be fireworks too.
And because I haven’t posted any music videos lately I have one here to make this post a little bit more interesting. It’s a song by Emily Jane White. She reminds me of Cat Power on her ‘You are free‘ album, which I totally fell in love with back then, so now I’ve fallen in love with Emily Jane White.
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