Quite the amazing crowd who spent a beautiful sunny day with ImageOut! Again, The Butch Factor shows the great diversity of documentary selections we offer this year. I love that ImageOut can become a launching pad and provide a platform for much needed discussions. Who wants to talk about masculinity?NOTE: The short film Sucker was screened in this program.
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11 comments:
I enjoyed this documentary immensely, the filmmakers did a wonderful job with a sensitive and complex topic. I appreciated the diversity of interviewees, especially the F to M transgender.
I thoroughly enjoyed this documentary. It's definitely one of the best I've seen at ImageOut throughout the years. It was very well done. It was thought provoking and very interesting. Thank you for including this in the line up this year.
I loved the SPIRIT of this documentary (and echo Zahra's sentiment that seeing an FtM gay man represented in a film about gay/queer masculinity was refreshing). That said, however, I think the film is REALLY imbalanced and, in the end, fails to live up to its own thesis statement. If the point of the documentary was to assert that there is a spectrum of masculinities/maleness---and that this spectrum is particularly present within the gay/bi/queer community...and, further, that ALL expressions of masculinity are valuable and authentic, then it failed miserably. Even though the film can SAY it's about analyzing and presenting various masculinities, it really spends 95% of its time and energy on subjects who uphold traditional gender norms around butchness and masculinity and it only BARELY scratches the surface of exploring non-traditional masculinities, the strength (and MALEness) of femme men or the problematic sissyphobia in our the queer community (and culture, at large).
Oh those poor men, so butch but they want to suck dick anyway. Their life is SO hard. How will they ever get over the psychological trauma? Pity the poor masculine white boys who can pass, they've never had to build the character that comes with having shit thrown at you your entire life. And then they think that their mole hill rates an hour of my time. Clueless...
This film is brilliant! I am going to recommend it to a professor who teaches a course called "American Masculinities"
I liked the film, and it did touch on some of the things I was expecting. I rated it good over all, and enjoyed watching it. I have to agree with Erik to some degree though in that while the topic of non-masculinity was touched on, it was given lip service as best.
A topic that was glanced over as well was the perpetual state of "coming out" faced by many butch men. More effeminate men may think that the ability to "pass" makes life so much easier (and it can at times). But they fail to realize that there are downsides to being invisible. Having to constantly "come out" to those around you, and being passed over by other men because they assume you are straight can be a real problem in life.
And before anyone gets all "holier than thou" on me, know that I've lived the worst of both worlds. I had a medical condition that caused me to be sickly and ill most of my youth. I grew up as a think weak geeky, and to some degree "obviously queer" kid. In my 20s that same condition caused me to gain a great amount of weight, and in a few short years I transitioned from a hairless emo-twink to a large hairy bear. I now live in a world where I have to be "hyper-out", and indeed still deal with coming out every day, as people assume my sexuality from my appearance in a very different way then the did when I was young.
While I liked this film, I agree with Erik that it was not very balanced. Of course no one ever said a documentary must be balanced, and in fact many are not. I totally disagree, however, with the one subject, who said something along the lines of getting involved in gay culture leads to a loss of masculine identity. I consider myself to be pretty attuned to gay culture and activism, and my masculinity is not threatened by that in the least: I love sports, horror movies (if well-made), and other things that are often considered atypical for gay men. Yet I bristle at the term "straight-acting." I am who I am, no act. If I were feminine, I think I would embrace that also, and I hate the divisions within our community. Everyone has their "type" but that doesn't mean we should ostracize those who aren't like us, or what we consider an ideal partner. We face enough judgment, we should be good to each other-- a point I think was lost on many of the men featured in the film.
I think this film clearly made its point that the concept of masculinity is a social construct with a meaning that varies with time, place and person. I found it interesting that most of the men in the film when asked to define masculinity struggled to do so in politically correct terms with common themes focusing on strength, integrity, honest, perseverance and accomplishment. While I don’t necessarily disagree, are these traits that men can exclusively claim or are these traits that define both men and women of character? While not very politically correct, in the present day and in common usage doesn’t masculinity only derive its meaning as a contrast to femininity? I think if the men who use the term masculine to describe themselves were honest about it, they would state that it means I am not like a women.
I am really pleased to see the great comments about this film that are being posted here. The more I think about this movie and talk about it with others, the more I pick up on things that bugged me. I think it speaks volumes of our community that many others were able to enjoy/appreciate the film while still viewing it with a critical eye. THIS is what I love about ImageOut!
I found this film interesting and a good springboard into a broader conversation about the spectrum of masculinity.
I did not like the short "Sucker" that preceded it. It was porn and no where were we given any warning about that. Sucker would have been better placed with one of the ImageOut There films where audiences expect to see films of that nature.
Regarding SUCKER: It's always difficult to determine what people consider porn. Yes there was full frontal nudity but there was no explicit sex. There was not even an erection. The oral sex scenes were simulated. And the whole point of the movie was not really to show gratuitous sex (there was none) but to show a funny story about finding affection in this age of online hookups. The danger of warning people about full frontal nudity is it becomes more of an attraction and we'd rather not sell tickets to the movie for that reason. And then of course we'll get accused of sensationalizing. Thanks for sharing your opinion.
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