Boy Meets Girl: Another film that’s not for us

In January, 2015, Davey and Gage were copanelists, along with the director, after a screening of Boy Meets Girl. We had been asked to respond to the film from our perspectives as trans community members.

The panel did not go as planned, so we decided to write this article together as a forum to say what we would have liked to say then about the film.

Boy Meets Girl is a sentimental small-town romantic comedy featuring a trans woman character, Ricky (Michelle Hendley). In the realm of feature-length films by cisgender filmmakers that include trans characters, Boy Meets Girl is way better than it could be. It is basically sympathetic, avoids some of the most offensive tropes about trans women, and portrays the trans character as a whole person defined by more than her transition. Plus, the actress is trans, which is (sadly) a big deal! Unfortunately, it doesn’t go much further than that.

Because Boy Meets Girl is relatively inoffensive, and because there are so few films featuring trans protagonists, it makes sense that some trans people are really excited about it. If you’re trans, and you enjoy the film, we have no desire to interfere with your pleasure. But if you’re not trans, and you’re excited about this film as a “learning opportunity” – like Scott Elliot at Big Gay Picture Show who says “I think it should be shown in schools,” or like the audience members who told us they had never knowingly met a trans person, but appreciated the film for helping them “understand transgender issues” –  we’re gonna burst your bubble. Boy Meets Girl is fictional, and not particularly realistic. And because it will be held up as “educational” in a way that most films aren’t, it deserves critical attention with regard to its representation of trans people and potential impact on audiences’ understanding of trans issues.

We want to be careful not to present any one opinion as “the voice of the trans community.” So rather than either of us reviewing the film, we’re doing it together. Below are some questions we have asked ourselves and each other, and each of our responses, which together provide a critical trans and queer perspective on Boy Meets Girl. (Note: this review absolutely contains spoilers, as well as slightly graphic sexual language.)

Who are you? What perspective do you bring to your reaction to this film?

Davey: I’m a genderqueer trans person. I’ve been “out” as genderqueer and trans since 1999. I’m also a consultant who provides professional development training around trans inclusion to educators, service providers and community members. I’m approaching this film from my own perspective as a trans community member, and also from the perspective of someone who spends a lot of time with would-be allies who are new to trans issues.

Gage: I’m a trans woman in my early 20’s. I’m approaching this film from my perspective of a young trans woman, for whom one would hope a young trans woman character might resonate.

Let’s start with some basics: How does Boy Meets Girl fair with regard to the Topside Test and the Bechdel Test? How basically feminist is it?

Gage: The Topside Test was created to highlight a problem in mainstream media, where trans characters are always portrayed in isolation, even though in reality, most trans people are part of trans community or have relationships with other trans people.The test requires a) two trans characters b) who know each other and c) talk about something other than a transition-related medical procedure. Boy Meets Girl has only one trans character, so it fails the Topside test on the first criterion.

The Topside test is, obviously, inspired by the Bechdel Test, and Boy Meets Girl fails here too. The Bechdel test requires a) two named women characters b) who talk to each other c) about something other than a man. Even though much of the film focuses on Ricky’s relationship with her new friend Francesca (Alexandra Turshen), they never make it through a whole conversation without talking about the men in their lives.

Davey: With regard to feminism, my biggest critique of Boy Meets Girl is that, like most romantic films, it uncritically buys into the romance myth – the idea that falling in love solves all of life’s problems. There are many well-documented feminist critiques pointing out the problems with the romance myth (see e.g. All About Love: New Visions by bell hooks, and this by Dean Spade). The fact that in this case one of the characters is trans does not fix any of those problems. 

What is one aspect of the film you each really enjoyed, and one moment you really struggled with?

Davey: I enjoyed the rural setting of the story. In queer cinema we have a lot of stories in which small towns are represented only as a past and place that the characters ran away from. As a rural queer, I appreciate the depiction of a trans person living in imperfect but livable harmony with the rural people she grew up with.

I struggled with many aspects of the film. One I’ll highlight is the scene where Ricky is shown fully naked. Hypothetically that shouldn’t need to be a problem, but we have to consider the context of that trans women have been exploited by the porn industry for decades. For many men who access hetero porn, that’s the first and most frequent image of trans women they are exposed to. So it feels problematic for Ricky to be the only character who is shown naked – especially since the same scene shows her as surprisingly sexually available (more on that below).

Gage: I enjoyed that we weren’t constantly encouraged to think of Rickey’s femininity as “artificial” or “fake,” at least not in the extremely overt ways that are so common when a trans woman shows up in movies. For example many depictions of trans women include prolonged scenes of shaving or putting on layers and layers of foundation, and we didn’t see that with Ricky. Instead Ricky’s gender is portrayed as pretty “natural” and something she’s at ease with.

Like Davey there were many parts of the film that were hard for me. One moment I will focus on came near the end of the film, when Francesca (Ricky’s new friend) and David (Francesca’s fiancé) are talking to each other about their future. The first disturbing part of this scene comes when Francesca says that it is okay with her for David, a recently returned marine, to hate people in Afghanistan, but not okay for him to hate Ricky for being trans. This surprised me because I thought I came to see a “transgressive” romantic comedy, not American Sniper Part 2. The scene is particularly hard because it reminds me of the trend of attempts by “liberal” organizations (like the HRC) to assimilate trans folks (and more generally LGBTQIA+ people) into colonial institutions like the military. The other challenging aspect of this scene was when David told Francesca that he and Ricky had sex in the past and that is why he was so awful to Ricky. When I viewed the film in a theater, many cisgender audience members laughed throughout the scene. But the part of the conversation that is supposed to be funny is the fact that this dude slept with a trans women. Sorry to break it to you but laughing at the idea of sex with a trans woman isn’t edgy, progressive, or new but just the same played out transmisogyny that shows up all over in our culture.

How realistic do you feel the depiction of Ricky is? In what ways?

Davey: As Gage mentioned, it is great that Ricky’s gender is not portrayed as overly constructed (with makeup scenes, etc.). However I saw many gaps in her realism as a character. To take just one example, there’s a scene where Ricky has a little pity party tantrum about being totally unique and alone in the world, as if she has never met or even heard of another trans person. As a young adult with her own YouTube channel, Ricky would have no problem finding trans people to talk to on the internet. Of course many trans people have moments of feeling isolated and/or unique (as do most teenagers, whether trans or queer or not). But Ricky is portrayed as significantly more mature than that, except for this one really huge gap where it never occurs to her to click on another trans person’s YouTube video or get in touch with them (and see above re: the Topside Test).

Not only is this portrayal unrealistic, but, as HB Lozito explains, it also plays into a problematic trope of trans people as isolated,  “special,” “weird,” or unique, and as needing cis people to validate our identities. The trope is tired and outdated, and ignores the reality that trans folks are connected with each other, are part of communities of cis and trans people, and have been working together successfully to build political and cultural power for decades.

Gage: Another part of the movie’s depiction of Ricky that I found unrealistic and offensive is during the climactic events after Robby (Ricky’s best friend since childhood) tells Ricky, in an angry outburst, that Ricky has never really been a girl. This obviously upsets Ricky, and she runs off distraught, but what happened next was unbelievable to me. Robby chases after Ricky and when he finds her (naked by the swimming hole) she is super ready to have sex with him! Telling a trans woman she isn’t really a girl/woman is really hurtful, and I can’t believe Ricky being ready to fuck Robby almost immediately after he said that to her.

I also found how the movie depicted Rickey’s sexual desires a little unrealistic. Through out the movie Rickey is depicted as wanting to use her body in the same way that cis men do and how the film presents her sexuality it makes it seem like this is true for trans women more generally. However is not how I like to fuck and it also is not how many other trans women I know/have fucked enjoy using their bodies either. While it is really beyond the scope of this article to describe different ways that some trans women have sex I want to plug the giant zine “Fucking Trans Women” that Mira Bellwether wrote and you can buy here.

Who is this film for? How do you think it comes across to trans audiences and cisgender audiences?

Gage: This movie definitely wasn’t created with a trans audience in mind at all. I laughed at how ridiculous the film was a couple times, but the cisgender audience laughed far more often, and often for different reasons. More generally I just didn’t feel like I saw any of my experiences reflected in the film or really much meant for me to relate with Ricky about. Basically the only way that the fact she was trans impacted the film is that it meant that Robby needed to “work through” the fact that he had feelings for her. Having a dude be interested in a girl but also a jerk to her because she is trans isn’t interesting or new or something that speaks volumes to trans viewers.

Davey: I agree the film is obviously for cisgender people, and more specifically it’s obviously for straight men. I say it’s for cisgender people because there are lots of jokes which, while not exactly at the expense for the trans character, are only funny if trans experience is totally unfamiliar to you. When Francesca asks if Ricky has a tampon she can use, and Ricky just raises her eyebrows, the (cisgender) audience laughs for several minutes while Francesca realizes her mistake. Are they laughing at the characters’ miscommunication? Or are they laughing to relieve their own discomfort with trans bodies? My guess is it’s both. The realities of trans people’s bodies – such as a trans woman not having periods, or a trans man having periods – and the awkwardness caused by cisgender people’s well-meaning ignorance about them, may be hilarious to audiences that have no relationship with trans communities, but are ordinary quotidian hassles for many trans folks and our close people.

I say it’s for straight men because there’s a major theme about straight men’s discomfort with anal sex. It begins when Ricky comments early on that men want “dick” but are afraid of it. For the rest of the film there’s this constant string of conversations in which all of the straight guy characters express extreme discomfort with even the mention of anal sex, and then later disclose shame and confusion about having had a sexual experience in which they were penetrated anally by a woman. The film shows what feels to me like an unreasonably extreme compassion for the dilemma of straight men who are interested in being penetrated anally but uncomfortable with the idea. I guess this might have resonance for straight men (and maybe women?) in the audience, but from within a sex positive queer community, it’s pretty boring. Of course we’ve all internalized some societal shame about assholes and dirtiness, but for the most part I think queer communities have come to consensus that some people enjoy anal sex and it’s not a big deal. So in all those scenes where the awkwardness about discussing anal sex was supposed to be funny, I got the feeling that straight audience members were laughing with the film, sympathetically with the characters, while I and my queer friends were laughing at the film, at the ridiculousness of straight people who spend so much screen time agonizing over whether getting fingered in the ass threatens their heterosexuality.

What are your thoughts on the differences between the ideal and the reality of language around trans folks. Many of us might cringe when Ricky uses terms “biological girl” or “the full surgery,” and there are also trans folks who would use that language.

Gage: There is a HUGE difference between trans folks using whatever language they feel comfortable with to describe their own experiences, and cis people who aren’t describing their own lives and should use respectful language. For example just because some trans women use the t-slur doesn’t make it ok for other people to use it or write it into their movies. I don’t really know that I feel comfortable with the idea that a cis man decided to write those lines and I definitely do not want cis people who see this film to think that they can talk that way.

Davey: Absolutely. Beyond that, I think it’s important to think of language as a tactic for a trans liberation movement, not as an ultimate goal. Of course we want cisgender people to use respectful language about trans people, but we don’t push for respectful language for its own sake, we push for it in order to increase the opportunities for safety and self-determination for trans people. 

What’s the role and/or responsibility of a film like this to educate?

Gage: I don’t really have grand ideas about the role of art or its responsibility to society or anything. I will say however that the current situation in this moment means that putting trans characters, and especially trans women, into movies is a way to make the film “edgy” and get much more attention than it otherwise would receive. We’ve seen this with Dallas Buyer’s Club, Transparent, and now also with Boy Meets Girl. Keeping this in mind I think that films which are using trans women and benefiting merely from including a trans women as a character have an obligation to at least do a good job with their representations.

Davey: I’ve been thinking about what art/media representations of trans people “do” for the community/movement, and what they don’t do. Do they “change everything”? Of course they don’t, but I often hear that assessment from well-meaning cisgender people (along the lines of “Laverne Cox was on the ___ show, so now ‘everything’ will be better for trans people”). What more can/should they do? And, I’ve been thinking about what trans people need to see/hear in media representations of trans people, as opposed to what we want cisgender people to see/hear. In some cases it may be different! And if it’s different, what does that mean for how we put art out into the world that might be more “for” one group or another?

What do you think it would take for trans people, particularly trans women, to have the resources to tell their own stories and have them be heard (e.g., make movies that will have a significant audience)?

Davey: For one thing, it would take funding. Trans women are economically marginalized, and mostly lack the resources needed to launch artistic endeavors on the scale of a feature-length film with paid cast and crew. Even before that point, discrimination in education and employment means that many trans women are excluded from opportunities to get the training and experience needed to create something on this scale. Fund trans-led work!

Gage: Trans women are telling our own stories and have been for decades. But these stories are rarely heard by cis folks (and especially straight cis folks). Beyond funding, I think we need to examine the cis audience’s attitudes. We need cisgender audiences who are excited to see movies (including in straight/mainstream theaters) in which they’re not centered or the intended viewer. Trans women who have interesting stories to tell are writing them with other trans women in mind as the audience. Plenty of other people can also get a lot out of these stories, but the stories won’t pander to a simplistic straight cisgender understanding of gender and sexuality like Boy Meets Girl does.

Any examples of great media made by trans women that you’d like to share out?

• Nevada by Imogen Binnie
• A Safe Girl to Love by Casey Plett
• Redefining Realness By Janet Mock
• Janet Mock’s show So Popular
• Three books by Ryka Aoki Seasonal Velocites, He Mele a Hilo, and Why Dust Shall Never Settle Upon This Soul
• The zines “These Were Free on My Blog” by Merritt Kopas and also her games plus she just edited this book about Twine entitled “Videogames for Humans”
• The Black Emerald and The Dream of Doctor Bantam both by Jeanne Thornton
• Dane Figueroa Edidi has a musical Roaring, a book Yemaya’s Daughters, and a new book coming out Brew
• Topside Press seems to always be publishing something new that is awesome, including two new poetry books Which One is the Bridge and Improvise, Girl, Improvise, and also reviews other trans media with their Topside Spotlight series
• The webcomic Manic Pixie Nightmare Girl by Jessica Udischas

Special thanks to HB Lozito and Green Mountain Crossroads for hosting our local screening and for making space for trans people to share their perspectives on the film.