Artifact 8 Sex and Gender

Reflection

Robert Eads and the documentary that featured him, Southern Comfort, provided a window into not only the intimacy that many people fail to understand occurs within transgender relationships, much like its hetero counterparts, but also the disparity in medical care and the social stigma of transgender patients in America’s healthcare system. While society and the cultural values fuel personal misgivings on transgender relationships can be understood and to some extent pardoned predicated on a lack of information, the refusal of care for transgender individuals by hospitals and doctors flies in the face of the hippocratic oath and fosters misgivings and distaste in the mouths of laymen and staunchly anti-trans activists alike.

Artifact

Born a woman, Robert Eads was married and had two children before beginning his transition in his early 40’s. Moving to Florida brought him closer to his treatment center and he underwent testosterone therapy and a double mastectomy, both aimed at the creation of a more masculine physical appearance but he did not undergo phalloplasty and he would retain external female genitalia for the remainder of his life. However, due to his age, doctors advised Robert to abstain from a hysterectomy or an oophorectomy as he was already in the early stages of menopause. This would prove a damning mistake as Robert would later developed ovarian cancer.

Yet Souther Comfort does not pigeonhole itself into discussing the stigma Robert faced in seeking medical care and how, much too late, he was eventually able to find a hospital willing to disregard his transgender identity, no matter how “uncomfortable” their other patients may be. The film instead seeks to humanize Robert and his transgender friends, an important an arduous task for its time (2001) when the transgender rights movement was still in its nascent stage. It does a masterful job of highlighting the love and intimacy between three different transgender couples, from the transgender son with whom Robert is able to play a father-like role to Robert’s friend who is in a relationship with a woman who has been married six times only to realize that maybe a transgender partner could make her whole to Robert’s own relationship, one of kindness and loving compassion where the bond between his partner and himself goes far beyond the physical affection, a level of intimacy heterosexual couples themselves would be jealous of.
While eye-opening and heart-warming, the elephant in the room is the lack of health
care opportunities Robert has available for a cancer that is certainly treatable and manageable. It is this that truly sticks with viewers, the fact that 30+ hospitals refuse care for a human being solely based on his transgender identity, pointing to their desire to keep their patients comfortable and not squeamish. Yet a quick glance over the modern-day Hippocratic Oath does not mention the comfort levels of other patients as a factor in considering the treatment of others. Instead it says this in the third stanza, “I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures which are required.”

Robert Eads passed away in 1999 but the disparity in transgender health care remains relevant today. While strides have been made under the banner of LGBT rights to ensure that gays and lesbians receive the same level of care as their heterosexual neighbors, the ‘T’ in LGBT has been left in the dark. Laws governing homosexual rights, transgender activists are quick to point out, fail to mention transgenders at all. With suicide rates ranging from 16-37% and with more than 27% of transgenders having experienced violence in their lives, transgender patients need physicians more than ever. Hate crime against LGB has gone done in recent years but hate crimes directed at the ‘T’’s still remain a significant problem for members of the trans-community. Yet positive steps are occurring, with Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel urging a review of the military’s exclusion of transgender individuals stating, “Every qualified American who wants to serve our country should have an opportunity if they fit the qualifications and can do it.” While it remains to be seen what good will actually come of this, it is important to keep the discussion of transgender rights in the limelight because it can, like it has in the past, be ignored in the discussion of LGBT rights, something that must not happen again.