As a proud Trinity graduate, I would never miss an opportunity to see my Alma Mater on the big screen. Trinity cap on head, I went to the IFI to watch Donncha Gilmore’s ‘Girls & Boys’, which I had been advised was “basically Normal People, but everyone’s Trans this time”. Trinners for Winners, as is said in the film, I suppose.
The film takes place on Halloween night, when Jace, a straight rugby player, meets Charlie, a male-to-female transgender film student, at a party. Early on, Mark, one of Jace’s friends, who had previously been with Charlie, reveals that she is transgender, prompting a Candace–style “transvestigation” moment of shock. As the night unfolds, Jace and Charlie are separated from their friends and wander through Dublin together. Jace is ultimately forced to confront pressures surrounding masculinity and his feelings about dating a trans woman.
The film’s premise is that both the archetypal “jock” and the sensitive, artistic boy are attracted to a transgender woman, the jock secretly so. It’s difficult not to see this as a form of wishful thinking, yet it is the very absurdity of this portrayal of the trans experience that betrays what is likely a very real yearning among transgender people – to be sexually desirable to straight men.
Understandably, this is because the very corporeal nature of sexuality precludes them from the full “female experience”, standing as an immutable reminder that ultimately ideology cannot separate our identity from our biology. The film seeks to comfort this dysphoria between trans-ideology and the real world by offering the viewer a fantasy, that secretly, straight men are attracted to you, because you are a real woman, they just don’t want to be the victim of locker room talk. Moreover, if he was a real man, he would be open about his attraction to you. You’re not insufficient in femininity, he’s just insufficient in masculinity.
Jace being comfortable with dating a transwoman is portrayed as masculine heroism, whereas his friend Mark is left glumly looking on at what could have been, had he only had the balls to go after what he truly wanted – a trans GF.
There’s something jarring about the way the film seems to both crave masculinity and yet portrays it as superficial, regularly taking jabs at men throughout. The typical “lads” are depicted as boyish and immature, lacking the emotional and intellectual depth of their female and trans counterparts. This dissonance felt like a longing for the easy confidence and camaraderie found in ‘lad culture,’ but with a bitterness toward it, as if the film seeks to diminish what it cannot fully access or participate in.
We see this when Jace reveals he abandoned his own passion for filmmaking because his friends mocked him as “gay”. But the film projects a meanness into such interactions that simply isn’t there in real life. It seems to misread the individual’s own insecurity as a fragility inherent to masculinity, seeking to exploit this insecurity to normalise relationships with trans women – It’s what a real man would do. Rather, it’s Jace’ own hypersensitivity to ridicule that limits his capacity to engage with that lad culture, not that he was just being punished for liking films.
This reduced understanding of masculinity is what prevents the film’s angle from being effective. It’s futile to try to shame men into dating trans women by calling their masculinity into question because masculinity, for most, simply isn’t that fickle. Adult men are generally secure in their gender and sexuality, because they don’t have to “perform” anything, they simply are.
Breakout Films describe the main characters as having very different worlds: “Charlie is trans, her circle full of queer artists and creatives, while Jace sticks with the more straight-laced camaraderie of his rugby teammates”. That take is a bit clichéd to be honest. But in my view the fatal flaw in this film isn’t its content, but the fact that it’s also sees narrow options for those with gender dysphoria.
Those critical of transgenderism can be quick to point out the many victims of the extremes of gender ideology: women, lesbians, children, females atheletes. Yet this film serves as a reminder that some of those who seek to transition are likely suffering because of the distortions they’ve been fed by this ideology, and we should have empathy for those people too.
Dean Céitinn
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