Yeah, it's confirmed

You can cross-dress if you are a hot/cute girl and you have already proved it. It will actually make you look more cute, and/or hotter. Just make sure to make it obvious that you are just playing with it. It's all good.

Obsessed, as usual

I'm a little bit obsessed with the presence and portrayal of cross-dressing and transgender folks in the media and popular culture icons. What about literature, also? I feel like I have to read all the classics again; are transsexuals always prostitutes in literature? I'm pretty sure there is more to find. Is there any big-big classic piece slightly talking about cross-dressing? I can imagine this being a topic among the Victorians. The Romans, maybe? I'm not surprised, though, at the intensity of this interest. This is really who I am: all my research as a history student was on representation, otherness, that sort of stuff. Identity construction, yes, but more on the artistic representation of "others." A lot of image-based analysis. What happens is that I ended up reading my own context through the same lens. I over analyze the PR industry, music videos, commercials, advertisement on the public transportation...
Below, two videos: Fey (so 90s!) and Gloria Trevi. In Spanish, sorry, but I'm not so sure you really need to understand the lyrics, and most of Americans can deal with some Spanish anyways. I said I'm obsessed with this, so it is for sure I'll be posting about English-based stuff soon.


Oh, wait! I'm so cool that I found it with English subtitles ;)
A word about G.Trevi: she got involved in really, really messed up stuff, and then spent several years in jail. And then, this song came. It was weird, this song to be her "comeback." I think she saw a thing or two in jail.

HIV to be spread by the legalization of gay marriage?

Seriously? These are the things that make me mad! What else are they going to come up with to ban gay marriage in DC?
We shouldn´t even worry, tough. It is an unstoppable force. It´s gonna happen, and they better be prepared to accept it. Marx comes to my mind: "Un fantasma recorre Europa..."
Don´t know the quote in Eng XD!

Stop! I found it, I found it. It would be: A spectre is haunting DC. The spectre of....GAY MARRIAGE :))))))

Can I be Mickey?

After this project, I can see myself reacting differently to some things. Some of them are stupid, some are really important, and some seem stupid but actually mean a lot.
For example, Mickey. I have always been a fan. I am also a fan of costume parties. When I turned 22 years-old, I celebrated with a costume party and dressed up as Minnie. I "conformed" with Minnie: I look back now and I see that what I really wanted to be was Mickey, but I just didn't have the guts. It wasn't even a matter of sluttiness: I wasn't "sexy Minnie" anyways. I welcomed my friends with the dress, and then put black pants under the skirt. I feel like I could be Mickey now. OR ELVIS! Instead of the Backstreet Boys, I had a pic of Elvis in my bedroom when I was 15: would LOVE to be Elvis for Halloween or something, but I really don't think I could have ever gathered the guts for that if it weren't for this project :)
All this might sound exaggerated for some, but keep in mind that I'm SHY, OK? SHY! Being Mickey or Elvis would mean a lot!

This is pretty much the conclusion of this project

From GerderFork

 BUT I would have a follow-up question for this person: if it's so overrated, why would you make it the center of your activism?  Aren´t there any other more urgent causes?

After the vigil

I imported the footage from the vigil. The sound is not as bad as I thought it would be. I wish I had a boom mic, but well, I guess I can´t do it all. I´m not a magician.


I was going through the clips and, for the first time, I feared something could happen to Aiden. Something bad, something violent, because of being trans. Just the idea of it is like, no. No. My brain just rejects it; after meeting all these people, I can´t even stand the possibility of something like that to happen to any of them, or to Aiden.

I would be guilty, too. Not only I would feel guilty, but I would be guilty if something bad were to happen to Aiden. It is his decision to go so public about being trans and he is doing it on many platforms, but he is also doing it through resources that I, as a journalist, am making available to him. So, whether I like it or not, I would be responsible, too, if something bad were to happen to him. I know most journalists would disagree. Not that I really care: too much about individual rights and too little about social compromise among journalists.

It´s interesting how these feelings came when I was editing, but not when I was filming. Is it because of the repetition? Because I look 20 times to the same 20 seconds of footage? Is it because I´m alone in the editing room, and it´s late at night? Or is it because, when you are filming, you hide behind the viewfinder and “filter” whatever is going on? It´s funny because, when you watch a documentary you are like “oh, my God, look what he had a chance to witness; it must have been so hard to be there,” but that´s not how the filmmaker experiences what he films. I am learning about it now. It´s like not being there. During the vigil, every once in a while I would put my camera down so I could connect with what was happening. But during the actual filming, I feel more like an animal. A machine, a beast, you name it. I only begin to process things in the editing room.

They say this is dangerous. Think about war reporters: you just get closer and closer to the action, because you are not feeling it is real. Heck! What am I talking about! I´m CHILEAN! We know about this: Henrichsen. This foreign reporter filmed his own death during Chile´s dark days. He got trapped in his filmmaking and, well, the Chilean military men of the 80´s know nothing about limits …
 

Follow up on HIV/AIDS

Confirmed.  I goggled and did my homework. The main issue is invisibility: transgender people are not always targeted by the studies and statistics regarding HIV.  Sometimes, M to F folks are just treated as MSM (MEN who have sex with men!) because the statistics don´t include gender identity as something different from sex. Alternatives had been proposed regarding data-collecting methodology. M to F individuals tend to work as prostitutes and engage in risky behaviors. F to M individuals tend to engage in high-risk sexual behavior, too, even though, so far, the disease isn´t badly spread among them. I found this very nice article at The Body, from where I´m quoting (bolds are mine):

Inclusion of FTMs in studies is not as common. The limited data shows that, compared to MTFs, HIV-infection levels among FTMs are low (e.g., 2% in San Francisco and 3% in Washington, D.C.). The available data on HIV risk, though, gives cause for concern. For example, a colleague and I analyzed data from two needs assessment studies in Philadelphia and Chicago, which included FTMs, to compare risk for HIV infection between MTFs and FTMs. We found that compared to MTFs, FTMs were significantly less likely to have used protection the last time they had sex and significantly more likely to have engaged in recent high-risk sexual activity.

Where do we begin to fix this mess?

The things a journalist has to do...

What he doesn't know is that I hate-hate pictures. It doesn't matter whether I look good or not, I just really don't like them. There are about 4 years in my life in which no photograph of me was taken, because I hate them so much. How did I look like when I was, let's say, 14? No way to know. My boyfriends never have pictures of the "happy couple" either. But here I am, voluntarily in front of the lens so he can test his settings!

HIV/AIDS

Now that I´m about to finish this project and my whole journalism program, I´m tiding things up. I had a class in which we reported on HIV/AIDS in DC and I was very into it, did lots of extra research on my own. I might launch a project on HIV once I get back home in Chile.

Whatever, the thing is that I have been thinking about how transgender man can protect themselves from HIV/AIDS. Let’s be serious, but honest: the body of a transgender man is different from the one of a genetic male. I don´t think there are condoms for a transgender man. Then, how do they protect themselves? They have penetrative sex, so they are at risk. Should they rely on their partners’ responsibility? Bad idea. Just go and ask African-American women and Latinas about trusting their partners and the HIV/AIDS rates they have been getting lately. If I learned something during my class is that, if you want to stay away from the virus, you need to take care of your own business. Yep, that means being a girl who carries condoms in her purse.

Back to transgender men: how do they protect themselves? And if you are a girl dating a transgender man, how do you protect yourself? Do you assume that, because he is trans, he doesn´t get much action and therefore you are safe? Sounds risky to me. Also sounds like looking down at him.

S.O.S!!! Susan, WHERE ARE YOU?!

I want to ask Susan so many questions. She is a great documentary filmmaker who gave a class in my program during the Spring. I think she is the only filmmaker I have had as a professor, and now that I'm going through this project I want to ask her so many things.
How is that documentary filmmakers hire editors? I think I could never do that. I mean, that's to give someone else SO much power over your story! Does Susan edit her pieces? Does she hire someone, build a strong relationship, and then that person is always the editor for her movies?
I think I would like to be a documentary filmmaker who gets her hands dirty and just edits her own pieces. At least, I would like to be the one selecting the clips and, of course, building the structure of the piece. I can hire someone to do the color correction (oh,yeah!!!!!) but not for the editing itself. But it's pretty obvious that there is something that I'm missing here, since you can see editors other than the director in the credits of each and every respectable doc.
I think I'll try to attend one of Susan classes before I leave the country, since she's running again the class I took. I mean, this question is just the (how do they say it here?) top/tip/point of the iceberg. I need her advice on the relationship you establish with your subject, and she is THE ONE to ask about this, because she worked on the same subject for 8 years. She is a really warm, nice, sensitive person and I'm pretty sure she gets really attached to her subjects. Susan, come and SAVE FROM MYSELF!

This is Susan's doc trailer

No dummies

Why do sources think we are stupid? Why do they think they can hide stuff from us? Why do they think they are smarter than us, therefore, that they can make some things unnoticeable for us? GUESS WHAT: we DO see those things, it´s just that we go home, then EVALUATE if it´s relevant or not for us to ask about them. Sometimes, the conclusion we reach is that if you are hiding stuff from us is because it would do great damage to you if those things were to be published. And we might decide to protect you and not even touch the issue. Sometimes, we find that we would impact the current relationships in your life if we were to ask. Those times, after a lot of thinking, we might decide to play dumb, not to ask you about it, not to impact your life too much with our story. But we see what you try to hide. We are TRAINED to see things, ok? YOU SMART.

What about us?

We should be protected, too. We, as journalists, should be taught how to emotionally protect ourselves from our sources. It´s all about how do we, journalists, protect them, sources, from emotional damage. Well, who takes care of us? We make sure they understand that we are not their friends, even though we would go to jail in order to keep their off-the-record confidences. We are also all about making sure our intervention in their lives does not impact them too deeply. We make sure our presence doesn´t reshape any previously built relationships they may have. We even “prepare” them for the moment in which we will be gone. That´s all fine and good but who, please who! protects us from the emotional damage that they may cause in us? and from getting too involved? We help them to digest the experience of being featured; who protects us from the impact of their stories? What about their presence in our lives and the impact of that presence?

Who protects me when I´m trying to go back home and tears won´t let me drive safely?

War reporters get help, but war is not the only place where stories can be too much to handle and people too hard to leave behind.