(3 of 4)

Sexism "Don't you wish you could paint like your husband?"

The portrayal of transgender people as artificial is based on sexist (and cissexist, obviously) ideas about what is feminine and what is not. Nowhere is this more evident than in how Lili is portrayed. While I don't know what the actual Lili Elbe was like, I have read of her that she attended and hosted parties as herself (not her birth-assigned self, but her real self), something that never comes up in the film. Instead, she is incredibly shy, demure, even described by a man as "old fashioned." It depicts her choice to stop painting as a choice to become a subject rather than the choice to live up to her own expectations instead of those of others. It shows Lili as meek in a way that suggests that the filmmakers view transgender people as caricatures of femininity.

While it seems like, from what I've read, that Lili Elbe did in fact wish to have children, the film's emphasis of this is another example of a limited view of femininity. It doesn't entirely equate womanhood with motherhood, but it does portray the climatic surgery as an attempt to achieve a form of fertility. This is contrasted with Lili's infertility pre-surgery, and her desire to and failure to impregnate Gerda. (See below about intersexuality as well.) The film makes sure to establish Lili's assigned-sex heterosexuality early on, almost graphically, and puts lines like "Can't a man watch his wife get undressed?" into her mouth out of some desire to overemphasize a distortion of masculinity as well. In depicting the sexual relationship between Lili and Gerda coded as heterosexual, it furthers the fetishization of female clothing and seems to objectify Lili in a disturbing way.

Meanwhile, the film spends a lot of time staring at women's legs in a very uncomfortable way.

Sickness Back to the fundamental misunderstanding the film has for transsexuality: it spends a lot of time exploring the misdiagnoses of Lili. If the intent were to show just how hard it was on Lili, to show cissexist and transmisogynistic and transphobic realities, this would have been handled differently. If the intent were to show how difficult it is to put what transgender people feel into words, it might have chosen other ways to go about it, or perhaps found a different story to tell. Instead, we have the story of Lili Elbe and her best attempt to find peace in a world that denied her, like Peter and Jesus (more on that later, too).

The film shows her dysphoria manifesting as a form of dissociation at first, then later in nose bleeds and headaches, and refers repeatedly to Lili's confusion. They put the words "I won't disappear into the bog; the bog is in me" into her mouth. It equates her dissonance with a filthy mire. It equates trans existence with illness. No matter what the DSM (which I will remind you included homosexuality until awfully recently) says, being transgender is not a disease. It is not a mental illness. It is a different gender from what cisgender people experience, and because cisgender people have dominated the world in a way that emphasizes a patriarchal (and white supremacist) view, because the world is encouraged to view atypical gender presentation and sexualities as bad or lesser, we suffer dissonance because it limits our freedom to live as we ought to.

"God made me a woman."

It almost gets it right, but she follows it up with "The doctors are curing me of illness." And then the film fails to correct that idea.

Erasure By many accounts, Gerda Gottlieb was not strictly heterosexual. Because patriarchal history has basically eradicated records of anything else for most people, and because it's still the case that many people are safer not announcing their sexualities, evidence of her bisexuality (or lesbianism) is always qualified by people. Because of this, Tom Hooper tells a story that ignores it completely. Not only does he ignore it, he shows Gerda wiping the lipstick off Lili before kissing her. He takes time to include this gesture to ensure that we don't think for an instant that Gerda might enjoy even a little bit of girl-on-girl, except a brief moment when it seems she is co-indulging a clothing fetish. Even sexuality is reduced to objects rather than people here. Similarly, there is evidence that Lili might have been physically intersex, and this is barely acknowledged in the film at all. Taking time to explore, explain, or understand this is well beyond the scope of Oscar bait. The connection between transsexuality and intersex people is something rarely explored or talked about, and most people never know about it, one way or another.

Meanwhile, the film's focus narratively is never, ever on Lili. It masks this, but the truth is that this is entirely Gerda's film. The title references Gerda (the time this line is used refers to her). The audience surrogate is Gerda, proving this film was made for cisgender people. Cisgender people accuse transgender people of lying to them all the time, but the way this film has been marketed certainly proves that cisgender people have a major issue with honesty. (That's a cheap shot, maybe, but I stand by it.) Vikander's performance--which many people have lauded, inexplicably--is a depiction of a woman put upon by her lover who dares to be herself. The film, because it erased Gerda's bisexuality, delves into the story of a straight woman "forced" to be married to another woman, and then it never once hesitates to blame Lili for causing Gerda pain.

"I can't remember the landscape anymore."

The "crimes" Lili commits against Gerda include quitting painting, which is used as a metaphor for the incompatibility between the two, a representation of how everything Gerda loved about Lili was encapsulated with her past. This is further emphasized as she connects with Hans, who is another symbol of Lili's deep past. (And a cisgender comfort to Gerda when things get rough.) This has the side effect of subtly suggesting that there is a betrayal involved in being transgender, that Lili's acceptance of herself is somehow akin to adultery, despite suggestions from real life that Gerda and Lili's relationship might have been much more open and loving. Little actions like asking to borrow a night dress so shock Gerda that, in Vikander's lauded performance, she is left aghast, empowering her role as gatekeeper and suggesting that what matters in that moment is Gerda's exasperation.

"Not everything is about you."

When Gerda has the chance to go to Paris, Lili is ill and fears she might not be able to travel. She is ill because Gerda pressured her into radiation therapy. Gerda is never called out for uttering the above line in this context. Lili endangered her own life in an effort to please Gerda, but Gerda screams at her the ugliest, most selfish, harmful, damaging, awful thing. She acts out of a need to "protect" Lili from being institutionalized, but couches it in terms that suggest that Gerda is the real victim. She acts as if Lili is a burden throughout the film, and Lili in turn is shown to be apologetic and worshipful of Gerda.

"You heard my wish, Gerda."

Lili accepts Gerda's gatekeeping, because a narrative that gave agency to a transgender person is unfathomable. We don't exist as people, only weights around the necks of the cisgender people who can bear us. In the end, Gerda goes with Hans, the symbol of Lili's past, to the birthplace that misassigned her gender, and there, she releases Lili into the wind, "letting her fly." This symbolic gesture is so tone deaf that I can't believe I saw it. Not only is Gerda ridding herself of the burden of Lili, she's doing so in a place Lili described with intense negativity. It's one last insult before Gerda walks off into the sunset with the symbol of Lili's past, a cisgender man that represents the cisgender ideal Gerda/the filmmmakers wish for Lili.

Surrounding this film has been heavy criticism of the fact that a trans woman actor was not cast as Lili. The usual arguments against it have come up, mostly revolving around the chestnut of "we wouldn't make money doing that." I'd like to add that they probably would not have been able to tell such an unflinchingly cisgender story with a transgender person in the starring role. If they had to tell this story, casting a trans woman would not have hurt the quality of the film. There are a lot of talented trans actresses in the world. It would have hurt the box office and Oscar chances of the film. (This assumes that Eddie Redmayne is not a closeted trans woman, but regardless, there is no visibility for trans women here.)

This is galling mostly because this film is being presented as a Moment for transsexuality, a big, open hug for us, a mainstreaming of it, along with reality television stars and online television shows. Not only is this Moment a cisgender moment because of the story it tells and how it tells it, but also because there is no one in the film that is openly trans. This isn't a transgender story. It's a cisgender martyrdom fantasy.