In our time at the British Film Institute, I wanted to watch some kind of obscure documentary. When I saw The Gender Bender scrolling along on the home screen, i’ll admit it peaked my interest. Gender has always been an interesting topic for me, we live in a very gender binary society so seeing other people explore that binary in new ways fascinates me. In The Gender Bender a drag queen and host of a disco night club, Winston, explains his relationship with gender as well as his thoughts on how England perceives gender. His words were very inspiring, he talked about freedom of expression, about being who you are and letting yourself enjoy the things you enjoy. What I loved to see what how much he laughed and smiled with people, both in costume and out. Seeing people do what they love and enjoy life to the fullest extent always makes me so happy.
Though while this film was made in 1992, I still feel like a lot of his words rang true for today. Gender and free sexual expression has had a rough history in America, and whenever people go outside what is considered the norm they are often treated like something is wrong with them. Popular shows like Rupaul’s Drag Race I think have helped these issues become more normalized, but actual trans people still go through a lot of ridicule.
In this film Winston talked a lot about how England was a very sexually repressed country, and because of that going outside the norm was made more difficult. I think this is the same for America too, people would rather be miserable than accept and be a part of things outside the gender binary. I can hope that as more young people become adults and have a larger effect on my country’s culture the conversation will change into something more than just a man in a dress.