My Transsexual Summer: a new view of gender
Channel 4 reality doc My Transsexual Summer explores what it's like to change gender. Forget all the 'brave' cliches. This TV series is about happy, healthy people
The participants of My Transsexual Summer.
Fancy getting sozzled tonight? Try the Trans Documentary Drinking Game, something of a transgender community in-joke. The rules are simple: for every cliche, take one shot of tequila. US writer Helen Boyd, author of My Husband Betty, lists 35 classic clangers, including: trans woman putting on makeup (two shots for reverse camera shot into mirror); showing "before" photos; any reference to genital surgery that includes "finally becoming a woman"; and anything with a trans woman sitting in an above-the-knee skirt, "posed so you can see what great gams she has". Camera in the operating room? Down the whole bottle.
All these silly tropes appear in the first episode of My Transsexual Summer, Channel 4's new primetime reality doc. Yet MTS does have something original to offer: it gives trans people – at least seven – a voice. Yes, we see someone's willy surgically vajazzled into a fancy new foof, but it's deeper than that. The show, I mean. Rather ironically, we also hear participants complain that non-trans people often reduce them to their naughty bits. Max – one of the "Magic Tranny Seven", as the group dub themselves – points out: "If you're out, and trans, it almost gives people licence to ask you whatever they want … How would you feel if I met your mum and said: 'How's your junk?'" It's sensational meets substance.
For the past eight months, I've been consulting on this show, a mixture of upmarket Big Brother "retreat" and observational footage of seven diverse personalities. It's also the first major piece of trans-themed output since Channel 4 signed a Memorandum of Understanding with my campaign group, Trans Media Watch. The document suggests treating trans people with accuracy, dignity and respect. Pretty radical, huh? Apparently, I've been "a pain in the arse" to work with. Good. I'd be astonished if a team of all-white film-makers, runners, producers and researchers felt they had a God-given right to make TV about ethnic minority issues. Nothing about us without us, as they say.
Can you blame me? My boyfriend lost his mum this year and, while mourning, we visited his dad who, to lighten the mood, popped the telly on. When his dad's girlfriend flicked over to the comedy channel, I knew it was only a matter of time before something offensive about trans people was said. It took 10 minutes. On this particular occasion, it was Lee Mack in Not Going Out. Lee's character joked that he'd like to see pal Lucy recreate Sharon Stone's infamous leg-crossing scene from Basic Instinct. He then tries to persuade Lucy that her new partner is a mobster:
Lucy: Yeah Lee, he's a gangster and I'm a post-op transsexual.
Lee: Maybe forget doing the Sharon Stone thing then.
Perhaps everyone else felt embarrassed, but I was angry, and reminded why I haven't owned a television since 2007. But why does it matter how trans people are represented?
Growing up, the only time I'd ever seen trans people on TV were those "brave", depressing ones, hanging around hospitals waiting for "sex change" surgery. They may as well have been aliens. The ex-mining town where I grew up in Nottinghamshire was insular to say the least. Changing gender was something that simply didn't happen to the people on my council estate. But I knew from four that I was "different", and other people seemed to notice too. I was routinely bullied, often quite violently, for years.
Puberty was a real drag. I hated the way my body was changing; no one told me I had a medical condition, that help was available. I was confused and angry. I mixed with the wrong people and went to the wrong places: anything negative I welcomed, and I was deeply unhappy.
Seven years ago, I was sent to borstal. Slithering around in the societal sludge, I was forced to admit I'd made a huge mistake – committing robbery. The thought of transitioning to female, let alone getting a degree, or career, felt insurmountable. Then came Nadia Almada. After her Big Brother stint, and for the first time in my life, changing gender didn't seem so extreme. I could still have friends. I could go to college, to bars – to Sainsbury's. Nadia's success suggested I could remain a valid – Nectar card-carrying – human.
Such is the power of representation. A close friend also transitioned off the back of Nadia's win and, I expect, so did others. We would probably have done it anyway – or killed ourselves first – but how many more years of self-destruction did we avoid? My Transsexual Summer's Sarah recalls watching trans people on late-night TV: "I remember being really choked; because someone else felt the same as I did."
Then there's the internet. Fox, one of the participants, says he wants to give back after finding support through online transition diaries: "Life's about doing stuff that scares you, and taking part in this really scared me. Before I transitioned, I was so lucky to have YouTube … I'd just watch video after video, as I was hungry just to see people who were in some way like me."
It was refreshing also to see Fox and his new pals pooh-pooh the notion that one can never truly flourish in a new gender presentation. Where else can we see happy, healthy, bright young trans people on TV? "Each of us brings a completely different viewpoint," says Lewis. "It's always been done in a really miserable way in the past, but this is fresh and new. If anyone's considering transition themselves, it shows that there's light at the end of the tunnel."
Love or loathe her – and you'll have a response either way – Donna delivers an unapologetic perspective: "I wanted to put a different spin on things, as a lot of trans people have a lot of grief in their life. But it's been quite easy for me and I can hold my hands up and say, yeah, I'm having a good time." And Sarah doesn't want your pity either: "Don't feel sorry for me because I'm trans – buy me a drink. I've made the best decision ever."
I'm sceptical about shows that claim to solve complex socio-personal issues: some people need therapy, not Gok Wan pouring them into a corset. Yet I'm inclined to think MTS has made a real difference to some of its previously isolated and vulnerable subjects.
Lewis says he'd never knowingly met a trans person before, and that MTS genuinely helped him: "It was one of the best things I ever did, I feel so much more confident. My friends are absolutely great, but they don't quite understand, because they've not been through it themselves."
Perhaps now we'll all understand that little bit better.
My Transsexual Summer is on Channel 4 at 10pm on Tuesday
My Transsexual Summer is on Channel 4 at 10pm on Tuesday
Charlie Condou: The three of us
Two dads, one mum – one family
Catherine, Charlie Condou and Cameron. Photograph: Graham Turner for the Guardian
Co-parenting – it shouldn't be that hard to understand and yet many people seem to struggle with the idea. Gay parenting in the public mind comes in two flavours – sperm donation and surrogacy. But that's not how it is for us. My child has a mummy and two daddies and while we don't all live together in some sort of quirky, sitcom writer's dream, we are friends who hang out together, holiday together and, like any family, occasionally bicker.
Not over the big things; we sorted them out before we ever set foot in an IVF clinic. On general parenting principles, responsibilities, education and the rest, we are as one. But sometimes we are three adults with three opinions and one bemused child in the middle. We agreed, early on, that in situations where we disagreed, any one of us would have the power of veto. We wanted to avoid situations where it was two against one, so any one of us gets to pull the plug on an idea or strategy.
This leads to some interesting Mexican standoffs. Like when we were in Canada last year, when Georgia was just a few months old. We were still pretty new to parenting and this was the first time we'd travelled long distance with her (to introduce her to her third set of grandparents, Cameron's family). Finding ourselves in the middle of the Canadian night with a fractious baby, we could not agree on the reasons for her inability to settle. Catherine thought she was tired, and needed to sleep. I thought the opposite, that she was jet-lagged, out-of-sync and wanted to play. Cam thought that she was just hungry.
After 10 minutes of frustrated rocking/pacing/sniping at each other (we were jet-lagged too, and four of us sharing a room didn't exactly help with the general mood), Cam took control and fed the baby, to a chorus of "We'll never get her routine straight now" from her other two parents. Naturally, Georgia was snoring peacefully in her basket 10 minutes later, leaving Catherine and me to seethe silently while Cam bathed in a pool of smug.
The issues concerning three-way debating are never more acute than when we're picking a name. We're dealing with this at the moment as our baby boy is due in January. The problem is that we all have very different taste in names. I like old-fashioned, working-class English names, Cam goes for rough-and-tumble Americana and Catherine wants something more sophisticated. It is impossible to find a name that makes everyone happy. If you draw a Venn diagram of our likes, there is no overlapping section where our differing tastes miraculously meet. We do all agree, however, that we don't want anything ostentatiously quirky.
There will be no Eagle Flame Condou running around. Actually, it's fairly easy to come up with a list of names we won't use, as a seemingly endless succession of suggestions is greeted with a chorus of "Noooo!" from the other two. A couple of weeks back, it really felt as though we'd reached a stalemate. So, we've decided that we will each contribute six names to a shortlist. Then each person gets to cross two names off each list, leaving us with a shortlist of six to choose from. Hopefully, we'll be able to reach a consensus from there.
I am less dogmatic than the other two as I get the surname (Georgia and the new baby are both Condou), but it'll still be a miracle if he's anything other than "baby" by January. Perhaps we should just toss a coin for it.
Follow Charlie Condou on Twitter @charliecondou
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