My Transsexual Summer

Background

In April 2010, non-profit organisation Trans Media Watch published a study called "How Transgender People Experience the Media", which found that there is "an endemic problem with negative and inaccurate representations [of transgender people in British media stories], and observed that this leads to considerable real-life suffering".

The following September, the Westminster Media Forum hosted a keynote seminar on the representation of LGBT people in British mass media. Two speakers in particular addressed the subject of transgender representation: Stuart Cosgrove, Director of Creative Diversity at Channel 4; and Tim Davie, chairperson of the BBC Working Group on Portrayal and Inclusion of Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Audiences. They noted a general absence of transgender people in British broadcasting, and reported that "transgender storylines… are frequently lacking in breadth and substance." In a later interview, Cosgrove added that there are "high levels of inaccuracy" in British media reports about transgender.

In an effort to improve this situation, Trans Media Watch drafted and published a memorandum of understanding for media companies: signatories of the memorandum agree to "work toward… increasing positive, well-informed representations of transgender people in the media." In March 2011, Channel 4 became the first company to sign the memorandum. "Our editorial independence always come first; but it is part of our remit to reflect the diversity of the UK", said Cosgrove.

After signing, Channel 4 engaged journalist/activist Paris Lees of Trans Media Watch to be a production consultant for the show; Lees served as consultant for the duration of production.

Production

Channel 4 gave the programme the working title Girls Will Be Boys and Boys Will Be Girls. Mark Raphael, the commissioning editor for documentaries, contracted a British production company called Twenty Twenty Productions to make the series. Twenty Twenty was at the time a subsidiary of Shed Media. Former commissioning editor for documentaries Meredith Chambers served as executive producer for Channel 4, and Sam Whittaker was executive producer for Twenty Twenty. The series producer and director was Helen Richards.

Filming began several weeks after the signing of the memorandum, and continued over a period of four months. My Transsexual Summer aired on Channel 4 in November 2011.

Participants

The participants in the programme are four trans women and three trans men from different parts of the British Isles. They range in age from 22 to 52; five of the participants are under 30.

Drew-Ashlyn Cunningham

Drew-Ashlyn, a 22-year-old trans woman from Wakefield, has been living as a woman for more than four years. Her family are supportive, but before the show she had never met another trans person—let alone trans people near her own age.

Fox Fisher

Fox (age 30) is a screen printing artist from Brighton. He started HRT six months ago, and is all-too aware that the hormones are slow to manifest visible changes.

Karen Gale

Karen, from Essex, worked for many years as a police officer, and later as a lorry driver. She divorced in 1985, and wants to be able to see her daughter again. At age 52, she is about to undergo vaginoplasty.

Lewis Hancox

Lewis (age 22) is from St Helens, Merseyside. Like Drew, he says he has never knowingly met another trans person before. He decided at age 18 to transition, and he has been living as a man for three years.

Sarah Savage

Sarah (age 29) is from Jersey. She has only recently begun presenting as a woman full-time; during the course of the show, she comes out to her mother.

Donna Whitbread

Donna is a 25-year-old from Norwich. She and Drew have both been on hormone replacement therapy (HRT) for two years.

Maxwell Zachs

Max is a 25-year-old trans man from Tottenham. He is Reform Jewish, and hopes to become a rabbi. Max was living in New Zealand when he began preparing to undergo mastectomy. After seeking help locally, he had the procedure done in Thailand instead.

Response

Before the first episode aired, journalist Patrick Strudwick asked, "Channel 4, why call your new documentary My Transsexual Summer? It sounds like gender tourism, a fun little trip to the other side." Sarah Dean, an entertainment editor for The Huffington Post UK, called the title "sensationalist". Although Sarah Lake of Trans Media Watch found the title contentious, she defended it by pointing out that transition is a temporary process like coming of age; even so, she believed the title to be "only slightly better" than the "dire and totally inappropriate" working title, Girls Will Be Boys and Boys Will Be Girls. Her overall assessment was that "although the programme makers undeniably made some compromises to draw in viewers, millions will have enjoyed the company of these seven, shared in their lives and learned a lesson in diversity.… They will now have an entry point to broadening their understanding of the rich and joyful diversity of gender experience, something which has always existed but of which they were previously unaware."

Politician and activist Zoe O'Connell described some of the wording in the narration as "cringeworthy", but felt that "it’s more than just a step in the right direction, it’s a programme that pretty accurately reflected how many trans people carry on with each other in private."

Musician, activist, and writer CN Lester listed some ways in which the show perpetuated misconceptions or otherwise fell short, but still saw it as a turning point in the representation of transgender people on television: "It felt like a game changer. The overall feel of it—of hope, of warmth—that felt totally new to me. And hats off to the seven trans people... for putting that across."

When the second episode aired, transgender journalist Juliet Jacques posted her thoughts to the New Statesman's politics blog, The Staggers: "At this point... the limited level of improvement in trans representation on TV shown by My Transsexual Summer is probably the best we can expect." She felt the major barriers to better representation to be "producers' prejudices about what viewers will accept or understand" and extremely narrow bandwidth for "minority subjects".

After seeing the first three episodes, Maxwell Zachs called the series "a disappointment". One reason for this, he says, is that although "we see... lovely, endearing transsexuals" portrayed in the show, "what I don’t see is anything that is going to make people think or feel any differently about what gender is or how it limits us all in one way or another." He lamented that expressions of nuance in gender identity and discussions of genderqueerness were absent from the broadcast edit of the show.

Following the broadcast of the final episode, Juliet Jacques penned a retrospective article for Time Out. In her conclusion, she speculated: "It's possible that, three decades from now, 'My Transsexual Summer' might seem as outdated as the 1980 documentary 'A Change of Sex' appears today. Should that be the case, it would be attributable to the program's role, despite its imperfections, in steering trans-related television towards a more affirmative path."

Karen, Drew, Max, and Donna

Less than a month after the final episode of My Transsexual Summer aired, Karen Gale delivered part of Channel 4's 2011 Alternative Christmas message on Christmas Day. The theme of the broadcast was "Just Be Yourself". In February 2016, Karen's local newspaper, the Romford Recorder, interviewed her about what life was like before she transitioned.

Drew-Ashlyn Cunningham made speaking appearances at schools, universities, and youth groups. She became a supporter of Gendered Intelligence (a nonprofit organisation that aids trans youth), and a "celebrity patron" of the 2012 and 2013 National Diversity Awards. In 2012 she became a make-up artist for Illamasqua, and also wrote for Gay Star News.

Maxwell Zachs is a writer, Judaic studies scholar, and trans activist. Since 2011 he has written for various publications on subjects pertaining to gender and Judaism. In 2012, he started a petition calling on the WHO to delist transsexualism from the International Classification of Diseases. After a period of charity work, he moved to Stockholm to study at Paideia, the European Institute for Jewish Studies in Sweden, on a one-year fellowship. In 2013, while living in Stockholm, he published some of his plays, as well as a dystopian novella called The People's Republic of Nowhere.

Donna Whitbread is a stage and festival performer. In 2014, she joined the cast of cabaret act Ladyboys of London—a company of three trans women plus four male dancers, with choreography by Kamilah Beckles. They debuted at the Hippodrome Casino in London's West End on the 29th of December, and Donna opened the show with a fire breathing act. One year later she announced that she has a role in John Cameron Mitchell's film How to Talk to Girls at Parties (2017).

Sarah, Lewis, and Fox

After her time with her new friends at the retreat, Sarah Savage was optimistic. "I left the retreat with a different outlook on life, I could feel my confidence growing, slowly." She appeared on chat shows ITV Breakfast and Live with Gabby in 2011, and returned to television in March 2013 as a guest on The Alan Titchmarsh Show. She took a job in Brighton, and has a blog that she started during the production of My Transsexual Summer. In the spring of 2013, she started HRT. 2013 was also the inaugural year of Trans* Pride Brighton, the first transgender pride festival in the UK, and she and Fox Fisher served on the organisation committee. In 2015 Sarah and Fox published a picture book, Are You a Boy or are You a Girl?, which Sarah wrote and Fox illustrated. "Before I started transitioning, I never wrote, I never... did anything creative," said Sarah in a 2013 interview. "For some reason... living in a female role has allowed me to be more creative."

Lewis Hancox' fundraising events attracted donations from TV viewers; among those who gave to the cause were Stephen Fry and Graham Norton. Later that year, Lewis began preparing for a more complicated gender-confirmation surgery: metoidioplasty.

Lewis moved to London to study Digital Film and Video at London South Bank University. In 2013, he and Fox Fisher started the My Genderation project, in which they make short documentaries about transgender people and gender variance. Their production company is called Lucky Tooth Films. The Independent on Sunday placed Lewis and Fox on their Pink List for 2013, a list of "101 gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people that make a difference". In 2014, The Guardian included Lewis on their "30 under 30" list of "top young people in digital media".

Fox Fisher (aka Raphael Fox) continued to work as a freelance screen printer and visual artist. In addition to his creative projects with Lewis and Sarah, Fox wrote a few pieces for The Huffington Post. Like Sarah, he felt a new creative freedom from transitioning: "It's easier to make art now because I feel like I've got a huge chunk of my life out of the way."