Chapter 23

Gender Change/Orientation

This is a new genre. Quite a few examples have been produced in the last twenty years. I’m not talking about gay love stories where both parties are gay. Those are no different than all the other love stories in this book. Same rules. Same love. I’m talking about when a couple has been married for twenty-five years and Roy, tells his beloved wife and best friend that inside he is really a woman and he wants to become one outside as well. How does love survive a change that big? Is it possible?

Normal (2003, written and directed by Jane Anderson from her play) was one of the early examples of these films, made for HBO, starring Tom Wilkinson as Roy who becomes Ruth, and Jessica Lange as his wife, Irma. They live in rural Nebraska farm country. In the Bible belt. Smalltown church people. And after the initial shock, Irma works to understand and support Roy and they make the shift from husband and wife to best friends and together they stand up in their community. When Roy appears at the church choir for the first time as Ruth, she is asked to leave and Irma walks out with her.

My favorite scene is at Roy’s father’s farm for his dad’s eightieth birthday party with the whole family gathered. Even though none of them knows about the operation that’s coming, the old man can’t stop picking on Roy about what a worthless sissy he is. Roy slips away. Irma looks around and gets worried. She finds Roy in the barn holding a loaded shotgun to his chin, crying, ready to pull the trigger. Without a word, she goes to him and stands behind him and puts her head over his head and her arms around him. If he pulls the trigger he will kill them both. He lowers the gun and she just holds him. It is one of the bravest, most powerful acts of love I have seen. And what we are looking for here? Ways to dramatize love.

Lange, Wilkinson, and Jane Anderson were all Emmy nominated for this one.

There are more films about relationships where one member of a couple comes out as gay. Grace and Frankie (from 2015, created by Marta Kauffman and Howard J. Morris), the comedy series on Netflix, is about two older couples played by Jane Fonda and Martin Sheen and Lily Tomlin, married to Sam Waterston. (All Aaron Sorkin alums by the way, Martin and Lily from West Wing and Jane and Sam from Newsroom.) When the two husbands, who are law partners, turn out to be partners in other ways, it leaves their wives abandoned in their seventies with a lot of things to work out about their lives. And the women become fast friends, as their husbands become a couple. The goal is to try to keep love alive between all four of them in the face of reconfiguring relationships.

The young couple in The Danish Girl (2015, Lucinda Coxon adapting David Ebershoff’s book) are more nearly newlyweds, but the problem is the same. Can love transcend gender? This film is inspired by the true story of Danish artists Lili Elbe (formerly Einar Wegener) and Gerda Wegener. Einar undergoes the first successful transgender surgery to become Lili. Alicia Vikander won the Oscar for her performance of the supportive wife and Eddie Redmayne was also nominated for his performance as Einar/Lili.

Transparent (starting in 2014, created by Jill Soloway) is one of the first transgender series. How does a family manage to adjust to Dad becoming a second Mom? With laughter and tears. Jeffrey Tambor as Maura Pfefferman has already scored the SAG, Emmy, and Golden Globe Awards for his transgender performance.

Carrington (1995, written and directed by playwright Christopher Hampton of Dangerous Liaisons fame) is the true story of artist Dora Carrington (Emma Thompson) who loved the famous writer, Lytton Strachey (Jonathan Pryce), in 1920s England. He is a man who can’t return her love because he’s gay. This one is heartbreaking. When human beings try to love each other in unconventional ways in spite of society’s or their own heart’s rules, it can end in tragedy.

The Object of My Affection (1998, playwright Wendy Wasserstein adapting Stephen McCauley’s novel) has pregnant Jennifer Aniston falling in love with her gay best friend (Paul Rudd) and wanting to raise a child with him.

Change in gender orientation or change in gender itself is one of the challenges facing people seeking love in the twenty-first century. Which means we will have many more films and TV pieces to look forward to.