From The Advocate, May 11, 2004
The Opposite Sex, a two-part Showtime documentary, begins with the gripping journey of trans man Rene Pena, a God-fearing, married truck driver
By Christopher Lisotta
The Opposite Sex: Rene’s Story opens with documentary subject Rene Pena jogging through the countryside. Handsome, muscled, and driven, he’s a prime example of masculinity. That only grows more obvious when the traditional, God-fearing Pena, a truck driver, interacts with his pretty wife of 11 years, Wona, and their two young sons. But appearances can be deceptive – although everything about Pena’s mind and heart shows he is a man, his body still forces him to face the fact that, at least biologically, he is a woman.
Films and documentaries exploring the transgender experience have become all the rage thanks to the success of Boys Don’t Cry, Southern Comfort, and Soldier’s Girl. But Bruce Hensel, MD, a heterosexual practicing physician and emergency room director who has been a medical reporter on Los Angeles’s KNBC-TV for more than 15 years, wanted to make a powerful film that presents the process of transition from start to finish.
The result is The Opposite Sex, a documentary in two parts, with each part telling the story of a different individual. The first part, Rene’s Story, airs May 3 at 9 p.m. Eastern and Pacific on Showtime. Jamie’s Story, which follows a male-to-female transition, will debut in June. After each segment, Hensel moderates a panel in which trans men and women talk about their own experiences.
“I was so fascinated that so many people are so prejudiced about what they don’t understand,” Hensel explains. “I also knew that I could show the medical side. No movie has ever shown the full journey.” Pena wasn’t Hensel’s ideal choice for the female-to-male segment. Since the now-33-year-old was so masculine, Hensel feared that the audience wouldn’t believe Pena was a biological woman, and he felt the medical journey he was hoping to capture on film would be too short. But after a meeting with the couple – and with prodding from his business partner, out reality TV producer Stuart Krasnow – Hensel changed his mind.
“When we interviewed Rene and Wona, [the decision] was a no-brainer,” he explains. What was initially a liability became an asset once Hensel heard Pena’s personal story. Pena tells The Advocate, “I told my mom when I was 3 years old that God was going to make me a boy, and I never turned back from that statement, not one day of my life.” He refused to wear dresses and fought attempts by his family to make him act or appear feminine. At 11, Pena decided to live his life as a boy. “I just happened to have the strength to be what I wanted to be,” he says, noting that other transgendered people often wait decades before taking that step. “I may be different, but I’m not special.”
Pena’s reason for doing the project was clear: He wanted to get his lower surgery paid for and performed by a world-class doctor. In his early 20s Pena had a double mastectomy, but he’d never had a medical procedure to alter his vagina. Although the film’s producers refused to pay for any surgery, Pete Raphael, MD, a Texas surgeon who performs an innovative procedure that transforms a clitoris into a penis, did the work for free. One of the distinctive elements of the film is its graphic medical footage, which shows exactly what Pena went through to become a man.
Aside from Pena’s unswerving determination, Hensel was fascinated by his relationship with Wona (the couple are in the process of adopting the two boys who live with them). Intensely loyal to one another, the former high school sweethearts were reeling from being shunned by their church after Pena’s transgender status was revealed. “They have so many layers,” Hensel says. “They really love each other in the deepest way possible.” The Penas gave Hensel complete access to their lives, which play out with intense emotion on the screen as one revelation after another comes out into the open.
Both Pena and Hensel insist that the film does not exaggerate. “The pain you see is the pain that’s really there,” Hensel explains. “And triumph, the triumph is really there.”
This Week's Action – 4/19/04
En Femme Getaway
Betty & I will be at the En Femme Getaway for the next six days. I’ll be back with more news and a report on our trip after 4/27!
In case you don’t know about it, here’s a link to info about the Getaway. This will be our 2nd trip there, & we are really looking forward to it.
Helen & Betty
Me, giving the Banquet Speech:
Betty, being Betty (photo by Becca):
TG Kickboxer – "Beautiful Boxer"
Film Tells of Kickboxer Who Had Sex Change
Fri Apr 16, 7:54 AM
SINGAPORE – A film about a real-life champion Thai kickboxer who hung up his gloves to undergo a sex change operation has meant more than box-office receipts to its subject – it’s given her peace of mind.
The recent Thai release of “Beautiful Boxer,” a dramatic film about her life as a transvestite and transsexual, has helped people understand the tough choices she’s made in her life, former prizefighter Parinya Charoenphol said at a news conference Wednesday.
“After the movie came out, it seemed like people could now understand the reasons why I made certain decisions,” Parinya said through a Thai translator, referring to the sex change operation she underwent in 1999.
“They have given me a lot of encouragement,” said Parinya, decked out in a white satin blouse, floral skirt and sharp-toed boots.
Parinya has been offered several acting roles and has accepted parts in four Thai television soap operas and an action movie.
“Beautiful Boxer” opens in Singapore on April 29.
13-year-old Australian FTM
A series of 5 articles related to a recent Australian court decision permitting a 13-year old ftm transsexual to take medication to slow the effects of puberty, and to take testosterone when he is older. The third article is of more general interest, since it discusses some ongoing research into possible genetic causes of transsexualism. The last article, though purportedly neutral, actually comes from the “anti-trans” perspective (it’s a mental illness, etc.); the source is a news service that supplies articles to the right-wing and fundamentalist press. It gives prominent place to the views of one person who went from male to female and then back again — and apparently believes that because he was mistaken, so is everyone else who thinks they’re transsexual.
From the Courier-Mail, an Australian paper.
From uk.gay.com, an online UK gay magazine.
From the Sydney Morning Herald (this is the third article as reference above)
Another from the Courier Mail
And the last from townhall.com, a conservative online magazine.
(and again, thanks to Donna for finding all this great TG news online!)
TG News: Miami legislation
An article about TG identity within the GLBT, and fights to get protective legislation, in Miami, published in the Sun Sentinel
TG News from Houston
One article about NTAC’s upcoming lobbying efforts on behalf of the TG Community in Washington DC.
Another about TG prostitutes and efforts to keep them safe and get them off the street.
And a third about the TG women who were murdered in Houston in 2003, and whose cases remain unsolved.
Updates on Gwen Araujo Case
From the Advocate
From the San Diego Union Tribune
From www.sfgate.com
Chris Kahrl, TG sportswriter
From the Washington Blade
OUT IN SPORTS
Throwing a curveball Chris Kahrl, the transgendered co-author of the annual Baseball Prospectus, is finding life outside the closet rewarding.
Friday, April 09, 2004
FOR MORE THAN A decade, Chris Kahrl has turned a love of baseball into a successful career in sports publishing, working with a long-standing team of
authors to write, edit, and publish the annual Baseball Prospectus. The definitive guide, feverishly updated each winter and published a full month before Major League baseball’s opening day, which was last week, analyzes statistics on each player in the profession. It reaches 60,000 readers annually. Noting that other attempts to chronicle anything can be as ‘dull as paste,’ Kahrl and colleagues pepper the ‘Prospectus’ with intelligent humor and thoughtful
commentary, successfully turning a reference guide into a legitimate coffee table book for even the most casual fan to enjoy.
Reflecting that humor and charm, Kahrl, a lifetime athlete and baseball fanatic, publicly discussed the book and baseball last Thursday for nearly three hours
at Politics and Prose bookstore in Northwest D.C. The Baseball Prospectus may be different because of its hip, fresh approach to one of America’s favorite
pastimes. But it’s also unique for another reason: Its co-author Chris Kahrl has been living openly as a transgendered woman for the past six months.
COMING OUT STORIES have a certain arc to them and can almost write themselves today. But Kahrl, 36, offers a rare perspective about the torturous layers involved in coming out as a transgendered person that few others, including gay men and lesbians, have experienced. “For me, the process of coming out is effectively unzipping your head for everyone’s benefit,” she says.
“I was scared to death when I took my boss out for drinks. But when I told him, he said, ‘Well, Chris, I’m your friend, you’re a great author, and we’re going to make this work.'”
That might seem unbelievably enlightened for a boss, but Kahrl of Virginia has known him and all of her colleagues for more than 10 years. “I’ve had good fortune with all of my friends, even my family,” she says. “I gave being a guy my best shot, and it didn’t work out and that’s OK.”
STILL, MOST OF her work with Major League Baseball is researched over the phone and Internet, not in the locker room. At Politics and Prose, it was standing room only when she appeared last week. Kahrl said it couldn’t have gone better.
“People blinked for a minute, but as I kept rolling along, talking about baseball, gender issues disappeared from everyone’s radar as it became clear everyone was going to get what they came for baseball,” she says. Her relatively painless transition says something about the strength of her character. Her colleagues, further still, attribute it to her comportment and professionalism.
“Sure, there is gossip out there,” says Gary Gillette, co-author of Baseball Encyclopedia, a publication similar to the Baseball Prospectus. “But these days, everyone is either enlightened enough to deal with it or wise enough to keep their mouths shut. Chris is very well-respected, well-liked, in this industry,” he says, “and that will certainly continue.”
Kahrl sees no inherent disconnect between the masculine world of baseball and her identity and, in fact, says that a love of the former eases the awkwardness of the latter. “Baseball is something I could relate to with my great-grandfather – with all people,” she says. “Sports give us all something in common to talk about that is essentially inoffensive.” Still, she expects the stares, the puzzled faces, and the common inquiries, and views them as an easy tradeoff for being able to live openly. Her story should inspire anyone in agony over crossing bridges or taking risks.
Gender- bender teen shot in B'klyn
Gender- bender teen shot in B’klyn
By CELESTE KATZ
and GREG GITTRICH
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS
A 20-year-old Brooklyn man shot a teenage transvestite four times – capping their illicit pre-dawn encounter with gunfire after discovering the youth was a boy, cops said yesterday. Jamel Stevens was tracked down Wednesday by detectives in Bedford-Stuyvesant and charged with attempted murder, assault and menacing
in the attack, authorities said. Stevens shot the 14-year-old twice in the left arm and twice in the left thigh just after 3 a.m. on Feb. 21 in the Marcy Houses playground on Nostrand Ave., police said. The young victim’s wounds were not life-threatening. He was treated and released from Kings County Hospital, police said. The teenage transvestite was wearing lip gloss and tight pants, and had long hair and painted nails, the source said. Still, there is no mistaking him for a girl, said Rafeal Hernandez, 17, a neighbor of the victim.
“It’s just noticeable that he’s a guy,” Hernandez said. Crystal Gonzalez, 19, said she had warned the teen to stop stuffing his shirt and dressing like a girl. “But he didn’t listen to me,” she said. “There are a lot of crazy people in this world who don’t accept gay people.” At Marcy Houses, Stevens’ family was stunned by his arrest. “Jamel has never been in trouble a day in his life,” said his grandmother, Patricia Fleming, 62. “I never had to go to the police station for him.” Fleming said Stevens, a construction worker, was living in Florida but moved back to Brooklyn this year after his sick mother lapsed into a coma. Fleming said she visited Stevens’ mother in the hospital yesterday. “I told her, ‘We need you. I can’t do this alone,'” she said.
Originally published on April 16, 2004