Pass it Along
One doc showing at this year's Gender Reel Festival uses Philly to further the trans cause.
Shaun Brady
City Paper
http://www.citypaper.net/arts/2012-09-06-gender-reel-festival-wren-warner-transpass.html (http://www.citypaper.net/arts/2012-09-06-gender-reel-festival-wren-warner-transpass.html)
Wren Warner started out to make Transpass in order to advance a very specific goal: to influence SEPTA to remove gender stickers from their transit passes. But just as Warner was finalizing the edit on the 16-minute short, the issue at the heart of this issue doc was resolved: in April, SEPTA announced their intention to do away with the stickers in 2013.
"At that point it became more of a piece to educate folks, not to educate SEPTA," Warner says. "Now I'm trying to get it out to festivals to spread the word about trans issues."
Regardless of the fact that it became the rare propaganda piece whose goal was achieved before it was ever screened, Transpass nevertheless raises important points around the public perception of transgender people. The interviewees, mostly from the ranks of Riders Against Gender Exclusion (RAGE), all share stories about their mistreatment and, in many cases, public humiliation at the hands of public-transit employees — ridicule that spreads from drivers to passengers and, at times, turns life-threatening.
Such incidents offer proof that, beyond the seemingly solved problem of forcing riders to identify by gender, sensitivity continues to be an issue. According to Joe Ippolito, chair of the Gender Reel Festival, films like Transpass and others that will screen this weekend can help to remedy that.