Do we really need to disclose ?
Ok so this one is for film nerds lowkey, it isn’t that big of a deal I think but it’s bugging me a little.
I recently got to bond with a friend of my wife who doesn’t know I’m a trans woman. I spent some days with her in another city cause my wife was working there for a few days and she offered to host me so I could explore her area a little. We spent a lot of time together and specifically watched a lot of movies together.
Since we ended up talking about the fact that she hasn’t seen a lot of movies directed my women, she asked me to help with that cause I have tons in stock. So we watched a couple of these and at some point ended up on Bound from The Wachowskis, which I completely forgot was made before they transitioned. I realized that when the credits started and it was signed “Directed by The Wachowski Brothers”.
She instantly was like “what????” And I said “oh yeah they’re trans women” to which she chuckled and said “oh well you didn’t tell me that”. After that the conversation was super ok, she didn’t make it a big deal at all and was actually happy to have discovered that there’s top notch trans women directors out there. She’s a safe person and I might tell her I’m trans eventually but this reaction made me push it for a little bit.
My point is : when you present a trans artist to a cis friend or whatever, is it really that important to disclose they’re trans ? In some cases I guess it can be but in others I don’t really see why I would disclose that information, it’s not really important. It just feels like she didn’t consider them 100% female directors but “trans directors” instead and I kinda hate saying of an artist that they’re “trans” before what they actually do, I feel like it reduces us to our transness when there’s so much more to our identity.
I hope this is clear enough, I don’t post on Reddit very often.