XXWHY

Entry 16

Synopsis: The film XXWHY on Sree Nandu, an F@M transgender from Kerala, India, poses many uncomfortable issues that questions he notions of social positionalities and fixed gender identities. Twenty five year old Sree Nandu is the first in Kerala to come to public with transgender identity.

‘Like a typical man, like a typical woman, I am a typical Transgender’, declares Sree Nandu. Weaving together his biography “Searching for Space” and his interviews of his partner and biographer, the film explores the modes and politics of representation, the relevance of sexuality discourses in the contemporary social milieu and the dilemmas of the transgender.

The context: Is transgender born, gendered or choice by freedom? How good a female to male (F2M) can root one’s identity in a male-female society? What is sexuality of an F2M while in sex with a woman? The social context was to document the trauma of those who question the hegemony of power structures and notions of fixed gender categories prevalent in the society. Suffering and redemption, destruction and self destruction, love and hatred, pain and joy, all go entwined and entangled in Sree Nandu, while the under current is accumulating trauma and the determination to survive. Quite strange in a social milieu where transgenders are still invisible and inaudible.