My Transsexual Summer: a new view of gender
Channel 4 reality doc My Transsexual Summer explores what it's like to change gender. Forget all the 'brave' cliches. This TV series is about happy, healthy people
Paris Lees
guardian.co.uk, Monday 7 November 2011 15.30 EST
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/07/my-transsexual-summer-channel-4 (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/07/my-transsexual-summer-channel-4)
Fancy getting sozzled tonight? Try the Trans Documentary Drinking Game, something of a transgender community in-joke. The rules are simple: for every cliche, take one shot of tequila. US writer Helen Boyd, author of My Husband Betty, lists 35 classic clangers, including: trans woman putting on makeup (two shots for reverse camera shot into mirror); showing "before" photos; any reference to genital surgery that includes "finally becoming a woman"; and anything with a trans woman sitting in an above-the-knee skirt, "posed so you can see what great gams she has". Camera in the operating room? Down the whole bottle.
All these silly tropes appear in the first episode of My Transsexual Summer, Channel 4's new primetime reality doc. Yet MTS does have something original to offer: it gives trans people – at least seven – a voice. Yes, we see someone's willy surgically vajazzled into a fancy new foof, but it's deeper than that. The show, I mean. Rather ironically, we also hear participants complain that non-trans people often reduce them to their naughty bits. Max – one of the "Magic ->-bleeped-<- Seven", as the group dub themselves – points out: "If you're out, and trans, it almost gives people licence to ask you whatever they want ... How would you feel if I met your mum and said: 'How's your junk?'" It's sensational meets substance.