Transgender Film Draws Protests at Festival Site

Their protest makes me want to see the film even more.

Just a point of clarification… there is no castration in this film. Ms Leclair is mistaken and is likely referring to a reference to the film ‘I Spit On Your Grave’ made in an article about TOTWK on Queerty.com several months ago. This is not the first conflation of the two films by the protesters of this movie, indicating once again that they have not seen the film.

I hope there will come a time when the word “Tranny” can be used in a light-hearted, fun way. That time is not here yet. Although our culture has begun to accept homosexuals, the acceptance of trans-people has not really even started. These people have every reason to be afraid and offended. Society’s introduction to trans-people shouldn’t be through questionable satire.

Oh facts, those silly little things that get in the way of so many ill-informed opinions.

by making a big deal about it…the protesters are just inflating the film. In my book…that is dumb dumb dumb. This is America and we have freedom of speech which means the film could be called anything. To protest the film simply for it’s name just shows how anal retentive people can get. Hey trannies! go on with your life!

Darra – “woman pertains to the fact that the individual has a womb which transgender females do not have” — this is possibly the most absurd thing I have ever heard. Quantifying the value of womanhood as being nothing more than a generally small amount of flesh is insulting to millions of women out there. Your basically saying that a woman has no valuer other than to have babies. Way to go – you’ve just wound back years of fighting for gender equality.

Womanhood comes from a sense of knowing. There are so many women out there, who ARE women, who were born unable to have kids, with mixed genitalia, chromosonal problems or with hormonal problems. By some ignorant defiintion of what you think a woman is, you insult these women. But more than anything, you insult cisgendered women.

Honestly, reading this kind of rubbish really makes me angry.

As for this film, think about it like this. Transsexualism is a medical condiition. Trans women are born this way – Science has begun to suggest the condition emerges while the foetus is in the womb. It is a MEDICAL condition. If you read this and think, ‘yeah right, whatever’ – I must ask you, ‘are you medically qualified to make a value judgement on someone else’s medical coditions’? Broad society does not understand transsexualism at all. This film is the equivalent of parodying any serious medical condition. Why would yo mock somone for having a medical condition?

Talk about inhumane.

I peronally find the word “Trannie” to be as offensive to me as the ‘N’ word is to an african american. It will NEVER be a light hearted term. And for all the press this has been getting all we’ve done is gain more notoriety for the filmmaker, remember Chao’s = Cash. What would have happened if we’d ignored the whole thing? Carol

Exploitation films died out for a reason: Almost none of them were any good. Ask Tarantino about the box office on his recent attempt. If he can’t make it good, some nobody who just insults his protagonists and uses irrelevant, inflammatory clips in his “trailer” very likely isn’t going to be good, either.

For anyone who’s seen the film: If it were made about ethnic minorities instead of transgendered persons, with an ethnic slur in the title, would it even be shown on a screen?

Per Darra’s definition of what is a woman, all women who have had a hysterectomy are no longer women.

There was a movie once I don’t recall the name. It was set in the future. Women who couldn’t bear children labor slaves for the upper echelon men and married couples. Women who married and were unable to bear children kept their position at their husbands wimp. If he divorced her of he died she became a labor slave.

Do we really want to define gender based of biological reproductive capacity, how about right to marry? Shall we use fertility testing for men and women in order to marry both must pass the test. Eliminating the wasted marriages and some of the divorce court clutter by preventing marriages that can’t be REproductive

As a friend and maternal figure to a FTM young man, I find this ridiculous, and reading the comments have only proved to raise my anger.

One of the issues of this film is how it depicts trans women, how it reinforces the stereotype that spurs comments like this one;

“I find it kinda amusing that these guys who put on beehive wigs and stiletto heels don’t have, y’know, a sense of humor.”

I’m sorry, you are confusing someone who is female with a Drag Queen. First, they are no longer ‘guys’. They are women. That is how they wish to be addressed. Secondly, very few women who choose to be true to themselves and enter this minority do so in beehive wigs. Or any wigs at all. This isn’t a joke; it’s who they are. Heaven forbid we respect their wishes to be taken seriously, something this film does not ask anyone to do.

” I treat them as men who for whatever reason desire to be seen as women. That is not trivialization but reality.”

— Ed, how do you go about “treating” such a person as a man who wants to be seen as a woman.

I’m sure there’s plenty of transgendered people you’ve run across and not even realized it. If you later find out….what do you do then?

“First, they are no longer ‘guys’. They are women.”

— Ed O: Debatable. If I call myself a dog, am I a dog?

Julie Z: More importantly, the question should be, “do you think like a dog?”

I think like a woman, therefore I am a woman. I don’t need you to identify me as for what I am simply on the basis of what genitalia I was born with.

— Ed O: Not to trivialize or disrespect and if taken that way, sorry. They are not women but men who have gender identity issues who wish to be addressed as women.

Julie Z: A man thinks like a man and a woman thinks like a woman. You are what you think you are when it comes to sexuality. We’re not talking about thinking as ourselves as a different species of animal here, genius. It has to do with sexuality and gender identification according to one’s sexuality. I feel feminine, you feel masculine, it’s that simple. Sex is an emotional component of the mind. Males and female ways of thinking are emotionally different.

— Ed O:I respect that. But that doesn’t make them women. I treat them as men who for whatever reason desire to be seen as women. That is not trivialization but reality.

How would you treat a person that has the mind of a woman as you would treat a man in “any” respect? Chances are, your treatment would never be accepted by any transgender girl/woman.

There are only female women and trans-women. No one is a female unless they are born female. However, womanhood belongs to the mind, not the body.

Gender is a continuum with sometimes nebulous middleground. Feminine women and masculine men are the conventional fixed points, but there is and always have been masculine women and feminine men, and everything in between. A man can emotionally, psychologically, and even physiologically, in terms of actual features, identify more comfrotably with women, though he technically, biologically, is a man. It’s a question of wanting the mind and body to reflect the same identity.
In any case, no one’s entire personhood should be defined by their gender only, wherever they happen to appear in the spectrum.