Becoming Chaz

[Guest Krisina]

I don't think Chaz had any choice but to be out and public. Being the Son of the famous Sonny and Cher he would always be in the spotlight in one way or another.

I think that the movie having being made will bring am awareness to the public in a positive way.

Krisina

[Guest AlexForever]

Having not seen the movie, I can't comment on it, but I disagree on the fact that it cannot be criticized; there might be valid reasons for that.

Also, there is no reason why something can't be both good and bad at the same time.

[Guest Wulfhere]

I watched it last night and had mixed feelings about it. A lot of the things Chaz said about his struggles to get to where he is, as well as his feelings about his body and so on rang true to the struggles a lot of us face throughout our lives, whether prior to transition or during. I liked that they showed the reactions of his family members, but also put it along side the experiences of other transguys who'd been disowned or had to leave home because their family wouldn't accept them fully or at all. Chaz's feelings about his body at an early age also rang true as the experience for many of us. I also liked how it was juxtaposed with the lives of many transgender children today who's parents are more accepting, agree to put them on hormone blockers and generally accept who they are. I agree with Chaz in saying that that sort of approach will save both the children and their family a lot of heart attack in the future. One reason a lot of parents react negatively is because their children weren't accepted at a young age. Transgender wasn't even in their vocabulary. As such parents feel "betrayed" since they've raised a "daughter" or a "son" who not a "daughter" or "son" to begin with. And the children won't have to endure the usual excuses parents try to come up with to try to deny that you're a transguy: "oh, don't you remember the little dresses you wore/the little dolly you played with/oh you were such a cute little girl" which is extremely erasing for the transguy in question.

However, a lot of the negative aspects of Chaz's personality were sold as "a part" of every transition instead of only a part of his. Especially toward the end, Chaz's personality turned really ugly as far as his relationship with his girlfriend and his need to be right about absolutely everything. It was passed off as an inevitable consequence of testosterone, which I think is a dangerous thing to do given the diversity of experiences out there.

While I realise it was specifically about Chaz's transition and how he reacted to testosterone, he should have also realised that this documentary is pretty much the first exposure the majority of the mainstream public have had to transguys. While the potential negatives should be mentioned along with the positives, I truly think the negatives were over sold in this documentary. Not all guys respond to T by getting overly aggressive, excessively irritable and needing to be right all the time. Nor is being misogynist a bone fide side effect of testosterone. While some sort of irritability is to be expected in any form of "puberty," that kind of "roid rage" image of T and its effects on transguys is a stereotype we should be dispelling as individual rather than general. Same with the sex drive issue. Not all guys experience a substantial increase in sex drive. Some do experience a significant increase in sex drive, some don't.

When you have a transguy who is in the spotlight like Chaz is, you need to be careful about how cast certain individual traits. I think, instead, there should have been more said by other transguys he'd met along the way to get a more well-rounded perspective. That's why I liked Transgender Lives and Transformation (Global series) better. TransGeneration was pretty good for that reason to. They gave a more well-rounded view of how a variety of trans people experienced their transitions. The way Chaz's negative personality traits were painted as "the way it is" here, it would have been like if Gabbie's negative traits in TransGeneration were used as an example of what all transwomen experience. Which it obviously isn't.

I think his misogynist attitude was what annoyed me most, though. All in all, I don't think Chaz is the best ambassador for transguys, but it's not as though he necessarily chose that role either given that he was simply born with famous parents and happened to be trans. Still not sure how much I liked the film, though.

[Ravin]

I just watched this last night after I discovered it was on Netflix, so I thought I'd revive the thread instead of starting a new one.

I thought it was very well done overall, and parts of it really spoke to me. At one point it brought back a phase of my life when I rejected my birthname and insisted on being called "Jo" which was a shortened form of it. I found it very moving and I think it has good educational value for the maintream--so much so that I recommended it on FB. I'm not out yet, except to my immediate family (partners, kids); hopefully some of my friends and family will watch it and be less surprised and a little more informed when I break the news.