This is a beautifully done documentary but it brings up some interesting issues. I've always wondered if some of the ideas/feelings held by the transgender community only help to reinforce restrictive views on gender roles for themselves and others.

I'm not sure if this has been brought up before on feministing but I'd love to get some feedback on the topic :)

I agree with Miss Mod and have over the years questioned our transitioning brothers and sisters to re-think, re-design role boundaries for themselves. I loved the movie Samhita, thank you for posting it!

I know that just like any other women, the transgendered fall into many of the same traps of reinforcing stupid stereotypes, etc. And worse so, they are even expected or forced to.

I'm a strong feminist myself, and always have been. I think for myself, and what other people think? It only matters a little. I dress the way I want to dress, and I act and do what I want to do.

I don't drink hard alcohol, or beer, not because I feel it would impinge my feminity, but because I just don't like the way it tastes.

There's even more or a fight for many transsexuals/transgendered than there is for normal women. We're expected not to be tomboys, we're expected to be perfect, prim and proper.

I say to hell with that bullshit. I'm a woman, and I'm going to be the woman I want to be. I spent years trying to make myself conform to a stereotype that I didn't get or understand... and I'm not about do to the same thing now that I'm free.

Drat, I can't see this, but being transgendered myself it would have been interesting.

As for the bs on cultural expectations, tell me about it. You're caught between two expectations. You're supposed to conform to cultural expectations that are not a part of your background but which must be faked or "performed". However because these concentrate on externals rather than motivations they can only appear as parodic, however good the performance.

So there is the other response; of allowing the hormonal changes to create new behaviours organically. This works to a certain extent as, again, the cultural training - behavioural conditioning if you will is still lacking, but at least you look like a real person. Sadly after a couple of years people still wonder when you're gonna become a "lady".

There are 3 billion women on this planet, which means that there are at least 3 billion ways of being a woman. I'm not convinced that my contribution is invalid, but being a poor pastiche of somebody else definitely is.

Well, I wouldn't say it's like that. Rather, for instance, my sister confronted me telling me that I was putting my bra on wrong, after a friend of mine told me "you're such a boy for putting your bra on the easy way." (she was drunk, give her a break, heh.)

I don't have a problem coming across as authentic, and I'm confident that who I am is appropriate and lady-like. None of my friends would ever claim that I'm any less lady-like than them... as they would all agree that I'm generally MORE lady like.

The issue is that my sister is confusing putting on make up, combing hair, and sense of style with being a woman. She tells me "Flick up the collar, I think that looks awesome" and won't listen to my statement "I don't like the way that looks."

I mention that my friend's mother had to go to Crossdresser stores to find shoes in her size, and she tells me "that's good, you know where to find them", and it's like... um... size 10... I can find shoes anywhere... And then everyone seems totally confused how I could find clothes long enough to fit my 6' frame... it's actually really easy, and I've never had a problem with it.

She tells me "I can't hang out with you like I can hang out with my friends", and it's like... I can't hang out with you like I hang out with my friends... it doesn't mean I don't think you're a woman.

So, my sister mistakes all the one's appearance with what being a woman is about. That's why she thinks her boyfriend/husband knows everything there is to being a woman.

Uh... no he doesn't he's a guy...

Samhita, how is Mookey brave? He graduates from college, he seeks counseling and medication that he needs. He works out, talks to his brother and parents. That sounds like a generic experience to me. Is your assumption that his transitioning makes him brave something that further removes him from the mainstream or romantisizes difference? How does your immediate reaction of "you're so brave for pursuing some method of sex change," really support him?

I don't think Mookey is particularly brave, but I do think he is very reckless. He discusses his genitals and how he urinates and has it placed on the internet and shown at fim festivals. He discusses relatively little, provides no direct conversation between himself and his parents or brother, or anyone else for that matter, and doesn't present himself as doing anything in his life but take testosterone, go to doctors, and work out. Oh yes, and urinate. Does anything about Mookey typify the "transgender experience"? I would venture to say that there is no "transgender experience" or even "transmasculine experience" that can be typified. Mookey discusses a very small portion of his experience- the portion of it that doesn't give us much information about Mookey aside from the above activities. I learned more about his bathroom practices than I know of my roomates'.

Discussing the private matters of those percieved as 'different' furthers their difference. Would Mookey feel compelled to explain these areas of his private life if he weren't convinced through being asked over and over how it is he has sex, how it is he urinates? Would he feel the need to share with the world his parents' sadness and adjustment to himself if he weren't repeatedly told that his abnormality must be hard on his parents?

Specialists tell us that there are more transfeminine individuals than transmasculine ones. Why is it that not visible on your website? That topic would discuss women, after all.

charles askes why 'Transfeminine' people are not more represented. Unfortunatly they ( myself being one though I refuse to use any such termonoligy) being far more visable than 'transmasculine' individuals.

We need MORE visibility for the 'Guys' (ah - loaded terms! How i dispare writing on this aria without using so menny qualifiers i read like a passage Judith Butler exorsised for being too chalanging!) not less.

The transsexual and transgender experience is varied into essentially a spectrum between two extremes.

At one extreme, the transsexual is fully accepted and assimilates into the new gender that they are in. The other extreme, they remain very removed from the new gender and see their new biology as the only justification they need for their gender.

It doesn't matter where you are at in this spectrum, most transsexuals have different experiences from most non-transsexuals. Women who were in boyscouts, and Men who were in girlscouts.

It's a different experience, but it's fundamentally not as important as who we are now, and who we have become. I imagine no one would like to be judged for the actions that they took as a child or teenager...

Now, at the non-assimilating extreme, there is a tendency to focus solely on the biological parts of the condition. You will find transsexuals (both men and women) who have no problem talking about that stuff, and will really only talk about that stuff with people of the now-same gender, as that's all they really have in common.

Meanwhile, from the assimilation end, my friends and I talk about the normal girl stuff... we don't talk about our biology more than is typically necessary, and occationally I have to remind some of my friends that I don't have tampons, because I don't exactly have the biology to make them a necessecity.

People tell us that we must be so brave, because they look at something that we have done/are doing that they cannot imagine doing themselves, and they imagine some great action on our part. I remind people that they shouldn't think it takes any sort of confidence at all to go through a change that was absolutely necessary.

My life was in shambles, a wreck, and I was on my way in a nosedive to destruction. It's not suddenly now brave that I pulled up the stick as hard as I can, and gotten back to level flight...

And, yes, there are just as many transmen as transwomen. They get about equal coverage actually... "but I see all this stuff about transsexual women..." uh... transgendered, yes... typically they're crossdressers, drag queens, or "trannys" (men who surgically alter their body to look feminine for erotic purposes)

thevirginqueen, I definitely see your point that there are people on the transfeminine spectrum who are more visible than those on the transmasculine spectrum. I meant that more to mean this website. I haven't come across (in my admittedly short period of time) reading feministing of any stories specifically speaking of transfeminine experiences.

Puella Nivis, thank you for continuing to comment. I was under the impression from statistics, from HBIDGA documents and European-collected data that there are more transsexual women if not more transgender women, at least among those transitioning within national healthcare programs. I'm sorry I mistyped that. I agree that it is frustrating to see such a skewed representation of transgender individuals, as many seem to appear on daytime shock programs (Jerry Springer, etc.) and those who would paint the 'girl next door' or 'boy next door' image that is likely as common if not more common are those whose faces would not appear unnecessarily next to a comment seperating them from their now-same-sex acquaintences.

I question the reason a transitioning-to-male individual should be highlighted on this website- which is about women. I think it takes away from the identities and realities of transsexuals to portray a transitioning man as a woman or a transitioning woman as a man.

Puella, do you mind if I ask a frivolous question? What is the easy way of putting on a bra? I only know one way...have I secretly been a boy all this time?! (That last is a joke?)

Puella Nivis, I'd say that the experences of 'Transmen' or 'transmasculine' individuals falls under the remits of this site well.

The problem is that such people are viewed as women who've alterd their bodies not as men - much in the same way that a person like myself is viewed as a man.

Also german to this argument is weither the crossing of (nonexistant and frankly imaginary, theoretical) Gender bounderies is itself a topic for Feminist discorse. I'd argue that it is as it's the formation of a male/ female discorse and the atempts to enforce it that lead to all the problems we may be discussing on this site; the erasure of bodies and experences that do not fit the 'pure man' or 'pure women' templates, the form of the patriachy (I could never spell that word), rape ect, ect. You name it it's root cause is Genderd discorse.