Kidman Plays Trans Artist

International News, By Joal, 17th September, 2009

Will Nicole Kidman’s latest role as a trans artist turn a few heads and invigorate the starlet’s career?

Kidman is set to play Danish painter Einar Wegener in the film The Danish Girl. Kidman has played a troubled artist before, including her Oscar award winning performance as Virginia Wolf in The Hours, but Wegener was more than just an artist. In 1930, Einar Wagner was the first person to undergo a sex change, changing her name to Lili Elbe and living as a woman.

Directed by Tomas Alfredson, who brought strange vampire flick Let The Right One In to cinema screens, Kidman is also the film’s producer and sources say the film will go into production soon.

Based on a novel about Lile Elbe’s life, the film was also set to star Charlize Theron, as Elbe’s wife, but Theron is said to have been unable to commit to the project.

After five separate operations that were part of her sex change, Elbe died in 1931 due to complications during surgery. Revolutionary at the time, the surgeries involved removing Elbe’s testicles and attempting to transplant a uterus so Elbe could bear children.

Will the interesting role bring Kidman’s career back to life? Let’s cross our fingers.

Your Thoughts

Dsquare

said ages ago

I'm undersexed :(

Flaneur

said ages ago

I think the vastly simplified version of trans is that your gendered identity is different to your biological one or the one assigned to you at birth. Some, but not all, seek to redress this by undergoing transition procedures such as hormones and/or sex reassignment surgery. However trans is a very broad category which even includes transvestites and such, as opposed to just transexuals, so there's no real cross-section of society which is theoretically incapable of being trans. The way it's explained to me by some trans persons is that you have gender identity (male, female, gender queer), gender roles (e.g masculinity or femininity), biological sex (e.g traditionally male, traditionally female or intersexed), sexual orientation (e.g gay, straight, bi, asexual etc.) and sexual practice. These things are all separate, related but separate. That's why I'm unsure that being intersex and being a trans person (whether you see yourself as transexual, transvestite, gender queer etc.) are all that mutually exclusive. Also, as you point out, intersex is a biological thing and you can't transition from intersex to intersex but whether they undergo transition or not, a trans person is still their biological sex even though they have transitioned (they're not going from male to male or female to female, despite retaining their chromosomes). It's their gender identity which is most important there. I think there would very much be difficulty in separating out what transition means for the different groups though as I know in the past many children were altered by default to fit (wasn't the old policy for the doctor to present the child as a girl with a genital problem to be fixed?) which brings up the point of transition vs. mutilation which is going to obviously be a tense one in anything but an academic discussion. That said, I don't want to overstep my bounds on this topic. I'm neither trans nor intersex and having spoken to a number of the former and read literature about both isn't a substitute for the personal perspective or a stake in the issue.

earthangel

said ages ago

Flaneur, thanks for that information! It would appear from what you are saying that 'trans' seems to be very gender theory heavy. Intersex, being concerned with biology, keeps well away from that, especially given it was formulated and misapplied to us by the execrable John Money in order to justify what many intersex people call Infant Genital Mutilation (IGM) aka non-consensual experimental cosmetic surgery. We want IGM to stop immediately. We want consensual patient-centred medical treatment, not what the doctors currently do to us to our very great cost. They - Money and co - created and misuse gender theory to excuse what they do to us.

earthangel

said ages ago

Just got a news report in about a conference in the US where surgeons will be carrying out televised IGM surgery on an intersex newborn. The stomach turns. IGM as live reality entertainment.

Flaneur

said ages ago

You're welcome. While I do intellectualise it a tad too much, it definitely is rooted in gender theory. I would note though that gender theory (and the queer theory it spawned) are far from cohesive entities. There are bodies of gender theory spawned by some areas of feminism which actively excludes the definition of trans which I've outlined with some feminists regarding them as 'pantomime babes' (a term coined by Germaine Greer) by conflating gender identity and biological sex. Money makes similar conflations, but on different categories, and you can see the results of that. So it's not gender theory (which predates Money by a long way) which is bad but more the conflations people make to justify their actions which is terrible. If it means anything to you, the way gender theory is taught now, at least where I've been taught it, is very different to Money (or Greer); it draws heavily upon sex affirmative feminism, queer theory and the awareness of intersexed persons. Gender theory is what educated me on the fact that intersexed persons exist and that working towards their rights is an important thing (came up in my very first semester, actually). So the most contemporary forms of gender theory are positioned directly against Money and co.'s ideas and actions. I guess what I'm fundamentally saying is that I think gender theory can be helpful, even for the interexed, it's bad and stupid people who are the problem.

Travis de Jonk

said ages ago

I'm not at all a Nicole Kidman fan - at least not as an actor (She's beautiful as a model). But I am totally fascinated by the story. Lets just hope she actually pushes herself and actually acts this time, and does this story justice.

Joal

said ages ago

I've just had a quick chat to Catherine Cummings from Sydney's Gender Centre. Catherine indicated that there are some schools of thought that would consider transgender as a part of intersex. Also, that in situations such as this, it's difficult to be sure one way or the other whether Lili saw herself as transgender or intersex, and to refer to her or one or the other wouldn't be considered incorrect.

earthangel

said ages ago

Hello Joal! Reference to the known facts is in order. The word intersex was first used in 1901 and was in use by Lili Elbe's medical advisers and surgeon in 1931. Those advisers and surgeon noted what they observed of Lili's biology and acted upon it medically with her consent. The word transsexual was defined by Harry Benjamin in "The Transsexual Phenomenon" in 1966. The term transgender was popularised in the 1970s and first appeared print in 1969. These things can be researched and verified. It is unlikely that Lili would have foreseen two words unknown in her time would have come into existence sometime in the future and then would have chosen to apply those words to herself several decades in advance. There are several issues at stake aside from that here. OII, the worldwide organization of intersex people, contends that only intersex people can speak for intersex people. There is a great deal of documented evidence that public knowledge of the existence of intersex has been suppressed and continues to be suppressed, most recently by the medical profession's invention of the concept of Disorders of Sex Development (DSDs). We find being characterized as disorders to be "fixed" objectionable and dehumanizing. Intersex babies' bodies should not be experimental subjects for interactive surgical demonstrations as is about to happen at that conference in the US. Lili Elbe is one of the very few publicly known intersex people, a heroine to many intersex people today, and we need her to be known as intersex which indeed she was. I hope that helps.

earthangel

said ages ago

Hello Flaneur, that is very interesting indeed. It would be helpful if and when a more helpful form of gender theory came into general acceptance, but as we experience it daily, Money's form still heavily if not exclusively influences the medical profession and second wave feminism's form underlies rejection of the existence of intersex people as ideologically incorrect, as it were. Given how those two gender theories have put us in this place of having no human rights, no equality, no patient-centred medical treatment, and at the mercy of those who would abort us or cut us up as newborns, we are avoiding gender theory as best we can!

Spooky

said ages ago

Did anyone see the film Fur? Nicole played famous American photographer Diane Arbus. Be afraid. Be very afraid

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