I decided to see for myself what all the fuss was about and watched the 6 available episodes. If you like assassin shows, it’s your standard fare. Now, about Sevigny’s portrayal of a pre-op transwoman… It’s good. At times my reaction to her portrayal of gender dysphoria was visceral and may be a trigger for some. At other times, I rolled my eyes at some aspects of the scripted portrayal. Having said that, the good outweighs the bad.

Here are a couple of quotes from Sevigny about having to wear prosthetic genitalia:

“Then looking in the mirror… it was weird. I was lonely and I felt really unattractive. I was confused about my desirability – was I desirable? – in having put that on, and having men see me with that on.”

“I cried a lot when they put it on. I don’t know why. I felt like a freak… which is how my character feels, so it was really good for the part and all the rest, but it was tough… “

I got into a discussion yesterday about how hyped H&M had become. The hype has been one of the main reasons I’ve ignored the show thus far. As part of the hype, I read the above quotes and part of me was like, “Bitch, please. It was a prosthetic that you got to remove when you went home. Did you have to pee through it? Did you have to sleep with it? Did you have to try to navigate being a sexual human being with it? No. So, STFU about it because what you experienced doesn’t scratch the surface of how truly difficult and painful it is.” The fiend I was talking to noted that I seemed a bit judgmental (because I was) and I said that it’s a like a Vietnam vet who lived through the worst the war had to offer hearing an actor cry about how difficult it was for them to portray a Vietnam vet in a movie. Additionally, there’s a part of me that’s just tired of seeing trans folk portrayed as predators or murder victims.

Another (less judgmental) part of me really empathized with her experience of dysphoria when she had to deal with people being aware that she had a penis where here brain told her where her a vagina should be. I should have listened to my less judgmental side and watched the show because, while the show can get cheesy from time to time, Sevigny’s overall portrayal of  gender dysphoria is generally very good. Again, I need to say that it some of the scenes of dysphoria can be disturbing – especially for those who’ve had that dysphoria used as a weapon against us.