Last night I went to a special showing of the film, Just Charlie.
I had read that the film had received awards and was aware that the story was about a transgender teen and his/her struggle to be the person he/she felt inside.
But not for one second was I prepared for how beautiful and powerful the film was.
We live in a world very changed from previous decades. Inter-racial marriages no longer raise an eyebrow, there are just as many single parents as there are married ones, being gay is considered a third gender and we all cheer on the Paralympic athletes.
Yet transgender kids seems to strike a different note somehow. It is, I believe, the last taboo. And that's very strange.
We have personalised sex dolls now flooding the market, quite recently I heard that a man had professed to being in an active sexual relationship with his car, and if lots of reality shows are to be believed, it seems that everyone under the age of 25 has slept with everyone else under the age of 25.
Yet we have difficulty accepting that someone who looks on the outside like a boy or girl, may feel that on the inside, they are the opposite gender.
I guess the best way of explaining it is that when we cut open an apple, we don't expect there to be an orange inside.
But that's exactly what these kids are. They effectively have the wrong wrapper on them.
And if you raised your eyebrows at my explanation, think on this. We all have wrappers.
We all are different on the inside to how the world perceives us. It's one of the reasons, I believe, that we have depression and suicide within society.
Wouldn't the world be a happier place if we could all just be how we truly want to be, as long as no harm was caused to others?
Ah but therein lies the crux of the problem.
As Rebekah Fortune, the director of Just Charlie explained after the showing, the situation with transgender kids is not just about them, it's about their families and friends, even the ripples which lead out - diminished, but still there - to the wider community.
A transgender person makes us question how we really feel about the situation. And that's exactly what this brave and wonderful film does.
Showing not only Charlie's psychological pain, it shows his parents' pain and fears. Fears not only that Charlie is mistaken about how 'he' feels, but that he is choosing a path in life that will lead only to pain and humiliation.
And let's be honest, most of us as parents would baulk at the idea of our child changing sex. Not just because we'd feel that perhaps we never really knew them if we hadn't noticed something different... but that because as parents, we are hard-wired by nature to protect our offspring.
So whatever you have to do, to get to see this film which is available on Sky Cinema, whether it's to drop in unexpectedly on friends who have Sky, or to stand in the TV section of your local electrical retailer, I strongly advise you to do it.
You won't regret it.
Carmen. x
Showing posts with label gay. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gay. Show all posts
Monday, 26 November 2018
Monday, 26 May 2014
Well what an education Saturday was!
My almost 14 year old son had read that he could have his PlayStation controller customised for free by renowned graffiti artists if he took it into Birmingham City Centre on Sat 24th March.
Being part Scottish [and therefore 'careful' with money ;)] this sounded like an interesting idea to me and so train tickets in hand, we set off for the City.
This might not sound like a big thing for many of you reading this blog but believe me when I say that Bromsgrove town centre in no way compares to the hustling, bustling city it sits just beyond the fringes of.
Even though I once lived in Birmingham for over a decade, I am filled with a sense of wonder whenever I approach near enough to be drawn into its overwhelming aroma of perfumed shoppers, designer bags clutched at the ready, which sits comfortably atop a miasma of poverty, the two placed in juxtapositions to one another like a bad oxymoron.
It was raining. Hard, sharp rain which seemed to blister the sky with its anger. The sort of rain that soaks you in under a minute flat. The graffiti artists were in a modified cubicle outside, the queue already almost half a mile long by the time my son joined it.
My daughter and I left him to it, promising to return in half an hour to judge his progress. Little did we know it but this was to be a recurring theme throughout the day as it took just over five hours for him to get to the front of the queue.
During this time my daughter and I wandered the shops, I had a makeover [it used up at least ten minutes of the time and amused my daughter] and we got caught up in the Gay Rights Parade. I hadn't know that this was on and so was amazed at the sheer volume of people who lined the streets to watch it pass by.
I am a traditionalist as perhaps you know from my writing but I do uphold a belief that no one system of beliefs has any more right to exist than another. I actually don't care what people's sexuality is. What I do care about is that they treat each other with respect and dignity and receive the same in return. So therefore I have to say that whilst I understood the desire for the march and as some might protest, the 'need' for it, I would have preferred that it had been a little more tastefully done, a little less pantomimed as it were...
Brazilian dancers with costumes which left nothing to the imagination, men in drag, women in jackboots, men wearing nothing but a pair or underpants and a smile...it was all there. I watched the audience with curiosity. Had they all stumbled upon the parade as I had? Unlikely! The crowd was far too huge for that to be a probability. I saw same sex families with young children [adopted perhaps?] held aloft, the more traditional male/female pairings with young children, gay couples of both denominations and groups of heterosexual men and women ...and to my knowledge and undying pride, not a foul word was spoken by any of them. And it brought a lump to my throat.
Across the world people slay other people, they fight in brutal, bloody wars over little scraps of land or ideals that demand tyranny and oppression of the masses...and yet here was Birmingham being open and accepting and liberal and I loved how it made me feel!
So well done Birmingham! Well done all you Brummies. You rock!
Happy reading.
My almost 14 year old son had read that he could have his PlayStation controller customised for free by renowned graffiti artists if he took it into Birmingham City Centre on Sat 24th March.
Being part Scottish [and therefore 'careful' with money ;)] this sounded like an interesting idea to me and so train tickets in hand, we set off for the City.
This might not sound like a big thing for many of you reading this blog but believe me when I say that Bromsgrove town centre in no way compares to the hustling, bustling city it sits just beyond the fringes of.
Even though I once lived in Birmingham for over a decade, I am filled with a sense of wonder whenever I approach near enough to be drawn into its overwhelming aroma of perfumed shoppers, designer bags clutched at the ready, which sits comfortably atop a miasma of poverty, the two placed in juxtapositions to one another like a bad oxymoron.
It was raining. Hard, sharp rain which seemed to blister the sky with its anger. The sort of rain that soaks you in under a minute flat. The graffiti artists were in a modified cubicle outside, the queue already almost half a mile long by the time my son joined it.
My daughter and I left him to it, promising to return in half an hour to judge his progress. Little did we know it but this was to be a recurring theme throughout the day as it took just over five hours for him to get to the front of the queue.
During this time my daughter and I wandered the shops, I had a makeover [it used up at least ten minutes of the time and amused my daughter] and we got caught up in the Gay Rights Parade. I hadn't know that this was on and so was amazed at the sheer volume of people who lined the streets to watch it pass by.
I am a traditionalist as perhaps you know from my writing but I do uphold a belief that no one system of beliefs has any more right to exist than another. I actually don't care what people's sexuality is. What I do care about is that they treat each other with respect and dignity and receive the same in return. So therefore I have to say that whilst I understood the desire for the march and as some might protest, the 'need' for it, I would have preferred that it had been a little more tastefully done, a little less pantomimed as it were...
Brazilian dancers with costumes which left nothing to the imagination, men in drag, women in jackboots, men wearing nothing but a pair or underpants and a smile...it was all there. I watched the audience with curiosity. Had they all stumbled upon the parade as I had? Unlikely! The crowd was far too huge for that to be a probability. I saw same sex families with young children [adopted perhaps?] held aloft, the more traditional male/female pairings with young children, gay couples of both denominations and groups of heterosexual men and women ...and to my knowledge and undying pride, not a foul word was spoken by any of them. And it brought a lump to my throat.
Across the world people slay other people, they fight in brutal, bloody wars over little scraps of land or ideals that demand tyranny and oppression of the masses...and yet here was Birmingham being open and accepting and liberal and I loved how it made me feel!
So well done Birmingham! Well done all you Brummies. You rock!
Happy reading.
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