Who is Robert Eads?

Robert Eads is an transgender man that lives in the United States. Originally being advised NOT to go through with the gender reassignment surgery, Robert was diagnosed with cervical cancer in 1996. In his life prior to transitioning, he was married to a man at one point and birthed two children. However, he would later say that pregnancy made him feel as though he is more trapped inside of a female body, and would later begin transitioning in his forties.

Southern Comfort

The film Southern Comfort follows Robert’s journey to a conference held in Georgia for those who are also transgender know as “SOCO” or the Southern Comfort Conference. Also, it shows the effects of cervical cancer as well as how the treatment affects the patients. Simultaneously, the film explores the relationships that Robert has with his fellow transgender friends and lover, Lola. This is what he calls his “chosen family”, and the film goes through each of their lives and sheds light on the day to day life of a transgender man or woman as well as their stories of transitioning. I believe that the underlying tone of the film is to show that transgender individuals are humans just like us, and truly does shed light on the idea that they simply want to live their lives as normally as possible regardless of whether they may be different from the norm.

Family Support

The film sheds plenty of light on the idea of family. I myself have learned first hand that social support is an important part of human development with family support being extremely important. We learn early on that Robert’s biological parents weren’t too keen on him transitioning, even going as far as to say that they wished he would have just remained gay instead. However, while this film does delve into the negative reality of not being accepted, it shows that this can all be turned around into something rather beautiful. As mentioned before, Robert has what it called a “chosen family” which consists of his fellow transgender friends and their lovers. Throughout the film you can both see and feel the strong bond between everyone. Their willingness to help each other out in emotionally difficult situations, the joy you see on their faces as they joke around with each other, and the pain felt as Robert eventually succumbs to his illness. All of these factor into the idea that while family has traditionally been biological, it isn’t required to be that way. Robert was not related to a single individual in his group, yet the love and respect they had for one another seemed to be more visible than what I’ve seen in biological families in my lifetime.

Personally, my family is truly the only thing that I have. So if I were ever to lose them for any reason it would certainly crush me as a person. However, I believe that it would be worse if I were to be rejected by them. There’s something just a little bit more painful about the thought of your family making the choice to no longer interact with you as opposed to them passing away. Thankfully, I don’t believe that there’s anything I could do that would cause my entire family to reject me, especially my immediate family. However, the thought still scares me to death and I would never want to risk it.

Stereotypes

From what I’ve seen, the main stereotypes that surround transgender individuals consist of assumptions that these people just want attention, they want to control individuals by dictating what pronouns other people use, and how they’re individuals who are extremely sick in some way. While how them feeling as though their gender does not align with the biological parts that they were born with may be confusing to non-transgender individuals, Southern Comfort shows that this simply isn’t the case. Most transgender individuals just want to be accepted and live their lives as normally as possible. It appears that that’s not where the stereotypes end, however. It appears that when transgender individuals are represented in television shows, it appears that most of the time their character’s profession is overwhelmingly involved with being a sex worker. Basically only being a fetish tool for heterosexual individuals and nothing more. Furthermore, there is a myth surrounding the transgender community that every transgender individual has to have the surgery in order to be considered transgender. This can not be further from the truth. It is solely based on the opinion of the individual, and as we have seen with the example of Lady Boys in Thailand, one doesn’t necessarily have to have gender reassignment surgery in order to feel whole.

 

Cited:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Eads

https://sccfla.org/

https://www.glaad.org/publications/victims-or-villains-examining-ten-years-transgender-images-television

https://www.vox.com/identities/2016/5/13/17938088/transgender-people-rights-myths