Gendernauts

Gendernauts explores avant-garde concepts of gender fluidity amongst a diverse group of people in the San Francisco bay area, focusing on the ways these “gender cyborgs” have transgressed conventional perceptions through altering their minds and bodies with hormone and surgical treatments. Underground documentary maker Monika Treut boldly leads the viewer into a brave new world where biological women use testosterone to achieve maleness, where men have surgery to become women, and where some men and women are content to exist on the boundaries of gender as intersexuals. Media and gender theorist Sandy Stone provides a thought-provoking commentary as Treut deconstructs assumptions about gender by delving into the life experiences of sex artist Annie Sprinkle, author and transgender theorist Susan Stryker, video artist Texas Tomboy, author Max Wolf Valerio, photographer Stafford, net artist Jordy Jones, former centrefold model Tornado, and self-confessed intersexual Hida Vilario. Juxtaposed with footage from inside drag king bar Club Confidential, and the transgender-friendly Tom Waddell Clinic, these subjects openly discuss their backgrounds, sexuality and fascination with gender bending, revealing just how constrictive traditional observations about the dual nature of gender have been. Excerpts from films such as Annie Sprinkle’s Linda, Les, and Annie (1990), Texas Tomboy’s Alienator (1997), Monika Treut’s Max (1992), Jordy Jones’ Injectible Man (1998), and Shu Lea Cheang’s web feature Brandon (1998) are also interspersed with the interview footage. This documentary had its world premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival Panorama in February 1999.