There is a new film out about our community. Just Gender is produced and directed by George Zuber.
Just Gender is an educational film developed for TV and subsequent institutional and educational viewing. The film tackles the all too often misunderstood world of transgender. Although Just Gender utilizes some archival footage and stills, it is largely built on a series of original footage and interviews of transgendered persons, their family members and friends, health care experts, community leaders and others who work with the transgender community. The film explores the common myths and misunderstandings about transgendered people. It also explores the confusion between sexual orientation and gender identity, as reflected in the rigid binary view of the world generally held by society. Just Gender also touches on the discrimination, hardships and brutality resulting from those misconceptions and prejudices, including the numerous deaths caused by hate each year. Just Gender explores the diversity of persons under the broad umbrella of transgender people, including cross dressers, gender questioning, gender nonconforming, genderqueer, and female-to-male and male-to-female transsexuals. Through the stories of transgender individuals and their spouses, friends, and allies, we explore the confusion, the isolation, and fear felt by many transgender persons. We also see their growing awareness and acceptance, and ultimately their joy in blossoming comfort as transgendered persons. In this context, the film will explore their first awareness of having “different” feelings, the challenges of growing up with secret longings, the sting of discrimination and the consequences of hateful acts by others. The travels of how these persons, like many of the transgender community, have come to terms with life and embraced their nature, becomes a central story in this documentary.
Zuber, who has served as a diversity leader and active participant in local and national LGBT groups, has this to say:
I realized that I knew nothing about the transgender community more than probably the same stereotypes and misconceptions that most people held.
I thought, if I can know so little after having served in these roles, imagine how little probably most people know.
--George Zuber
Zuber interviews transgender people and their allies and mixes in archival footage in order to share "what transgender individuals most want people to understand" and explains why fixating on surgical status is offensive.
Maria Shriver speaks with Zuber here.
Selected quotes:
We describe transgender in the film as people who have an innate need to express their internal gender identity in some way that crosses society’s norms for the gender they were assigned at birth based on physical appearances.
--Zuber
Transgender people are much more interested in talking about who they are in terms of being an authentic self, and much less interested in dwelling on what it means to go through a surgery.
I think there are more people who are saying, “This is simply part of who I am and I’m not going to hide this aspect.”
Well, you know, periodically you do hear people suggest that this is the result of a degenerative, contemporary society. The reality of it is, that this is an experience which is not unique to our society. Based on all the recorded history that we have, it appears as though it’s always been with us in every age and every society.
Shriver: What do you think the transgender community most wants people to understand?
Zuber: That they’re just normal people. They’re not sick. They’re not deviants. We have to recognize that the term “gender identity disorder” -- the reference to a “disorder” -- was only eliminated recently, I mean, we’re talking about only a year ago. Up until that point, that kind of terminology, even within the professional medical community, suggested that it was more of an illness that needed to be cured.
There are (or were) benefits scheduled in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, New York City, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Rochester, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, Seattle, St. Louis, Tucson, and Washington.