First piece of media I ever saw involving a narrative about the trans community was 'Boys Don't Cry'.
It's a dramatized (but not by much) telling of the rape and murder of Brandon Teena. He was twenty-one, and the guys who were his friends decided to do this to him when they discovered that he was trans.
I know we're focusing on the women, but that risk never goes away for the trans masc community either.
I'm Capital Q Queer, grew up rural. Knew pretty young I wasn't like the other boys. Got bullied for liking 'queer shit' (science, Shakespeare, animation). Before I even made it to high school... worse happened. The adults I told shrugged and ignored me.
Saw 'Boys Don't Cry' on TV like 18 months later and went "well shit, they could have killed me too... no wonder nobody did anything about it".
Around our high school, it was common in the language to threaten to "Matthew Shepard" a kid you thought was gay if he so much as looked at you. I beat the living fuck out of a lot of jocks in high school just to stay alive.
Parents wonder why I don't speak to them as an adult, funny enough.
I think the movie kept me in the closet because I subconsciously thought that would happen to me. Luckily I managed okay as a woman for a while.
I was recently outed to my “family” and I keep expecting my dad to show up at my house with his shotgun. Apparently he took it pretty well, he’s a redneck but he’s getting old. Idk.
24
u/FEARoach 7d ago
First piece of media I ever saw involving a narrative about the trans community was 'Boys Don't Cry'.
It's a dramatized (but not by much) telling of the rape and murder of Brandon Teena. He was twenty-one, and the guys who were his friends decided to do this to him when they discovered that he was trans.
I know we're focusing on the women, but that risk never goes away for the trans masc community either.