Trans reality, sans melodrama

[LostInTime]

Article

Lifetime's TV movie, A Girl Like Me, got it right from the title on. This movie is based on the true story of Gwen "Eddie" Araujo's hate-crime murder. Araujo, a 17-year-old transsexual, was killed in October 2002 upon the discovery that she was biologically male. Her killers lured her to a party in order to expose her.
[...]
Gwen's internal transition—her pain, her desires, her longings, and her commitment to her personal truth—were all too familiar and real. I never knew Gwen personally, yet I knew her intimately long before this movie appeared. I did not get to know Gwen by following her case in the news either: Almost all transsexual people feel what she felt and can relate to her struggle.


Posted at: June 30, 2006, 12:48:33 PMcheck here for ratings

The early buzz for the film "A Girl Like Me: The Gwen Araujo Story" really paid off. Lifetime Television reports that the biopic on the slain transsexual teen and her mom's quest for justice became the network's most watched original movie of the year, pulling in a whopping 5.1 million viewers. Think about that.

[Kate]

Almost all transsexual people feel what she felt and can relate to her struggle.

It was a terrific - though heartbreakingly (is that a word?) tragic - movie. I did OK holding it in until the bikers showed up as the escort... then I lost it.

BUT... I must admit I was surprised at how different her and I are. I really couldn't relate to her at all... the makeup play, flamboyance, dressup, effeminacy, sexual adventures and experimenting... I kept thinking how she seemed much more like an effeminate drag queen than a transsexual. I don't mean that as a put down in any way, it' just what I kept thinking while watching it.

EDIT: Which, come to think of it, might be more a product of watching a non-TS actor trying to portray the role...

[LostInTime]

You were probably picking up on something.

Check out this blog post for more info.

[Kimberly]

That was... disturbing.

Not that surprising but still...

^*sigh*

[tinkerbell]

Yeah...it's amazing how ignorant some people can be about gender issues.  Another thing which was not mentioned in the article was the fact that when Gwen was murdered, the news people told the public that 'Gwen had been killed because her true gender was discovered".  True gender???  hello?? Gwen's true gender was female, and she was killed because her SEX was discovered not her gender.


tinkerbell

P.S.  I'm so fed up to the point that I don't say anything anymore when I hear nonsense like that.  I mean transsexualism is not something new, for it's been around forever; so it is only fair that people should learn to respect the complexities of gender identity at least.