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		Nicco, a female-to-male transsexual, prepares to undergo surgery to remove his breasts, a major step in the transitioning process that he anxiously awaits throughout ‘Boy I Am.’ (Photo by Sam Feder and Julie Hollar)


		film
		DEC. 15, 2006

New documentary examines politics of the female-to-male trans experience

MORE INFO:
‘Boy I Am’
DVD
www.boyiam.com

Identity politics can be a treacherous labyrinth among gay men and lesbians, but adding transgender issues to the mix has historically proved confounding and maddening to all sides. The debates about transgender identity and its interface with lesbian politics and feminism undergo some tough and revealing scrutiny in “Boy I Am,” a documentary created by Sam Feder and Julie Hollar.

Profiling three female-to-male transsexuals, “Boy I Am,” examines the place of transgender men in the lesbian community, a former home and safe haven for many trans men. Feder and Hollar round out the stories by interviewing academics, activists and a physician about the process and politics of changing one’s body from that of a woman to that of a man.

Nicco is by far the most compelling of the three men, partly because of his willingness to let himself be seen — emotionally and otherwise. His climactic moment comes toward the end of the documentary when he finally gathers together enough money to have his breasts removed, and the audience is allowed to see the surgical process involved.

The images of removal, so difficult to watch, become a point of victory for Nicco, who feels that this act is the key to his liberation; the entire scene becomes a metaphor for the greater culture’s unease with issues that prove revelatory to those living the transgender and transsexual experience.

CRAFTING A BODY AND LIFE to match personal gender identity is a long road, full of detours and dead-ends, and the filmmakers were willing to engage their subjects fully, getting them to discuss subjects that some might consider taboo or politically incorrect.

Understandably, much of the dialogue centers on the current American culture’s limited understanding of gender and, in particular, women’s politicized bodies. One of Nicco’s friends says she thought the then-female Nicco was copping out, unable to handle the pressure of living as a masculine woman.

With feminism battling the notion that social status is rightfully linked to biology, the move to change one’s body and, in some minds, gain the social privileges that go with the male form is a terrible act of betrayal. The trans men profiled in the film address this as one of the central struggles of their process, and it appears to be an ongoing one.

IF SOME OF THIS sounds heavy and complicated, it is. On occasion, especially with the engaging but dense commentary from a professor of gender studies at the University of Southern California, it’s easy to let the eyes glaze over and wonder what everyone is talking about. The same happens with the very earnest trans rights lawyer, who delivers her rhetoric with the typical activist’s tone of dispassionate outrage.

Luckily, it’s the stories of the trans men that take center stage, and their own analysis of the experience mixed with their personal understanding of lesbian and feminist history allows the material to come to life.

Norie, born a female, tries to sort out what her new, post-op manifestation will mean to her as a black person. Black men have a complicated history and place in the wider U.S. culture, and Norie worries about how he will adjust to this new put-upon identity.

Keegan, after getting her double mastectomy, moves from New York, just so he can live regularly without his past queer affiliations and connections keeping him from being the everyday man he knows himself to be.

As usual, explorations of transgender issues stir up more questions, and at the crux of the ftm experience lies the nebulous and inflammatory issue of masculinity. What is it, what are non-misogynistic ways of being masculine, and how do people not born with the body approach this already confused gender expression?

Perhaps it is the experience of cobbling together a man’s form that allows these trans men to embrace what masculinity truly means.

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