Will Ferrell’s Netflix doc Will & Harper is flawed but essential for cis people | Will Ferrell

LLet’s admit it: cisgender people are very curious about us trans women. They want to know things like: What’s it like to have a surgeon rearrange your genitals? How did you know all along that you were really a girl? Is it stupid to be on the flip side of sexism now?

For our part, trans women are also curious about cisgender folk. We want to know things like: Do you really think I’m a woman, or am I just a deluded man in a dress to you? If I try to have a beer in your bar, will you violently attack me? Will I ever be able to use a public toilet again?

These two forms of curiosity come together in problematic, uncomfortable, and sometimes satisfying and even moving ways in the documentary Will & Harper, which is about actor Will Ferrell who realizes that his old friend and SNL collaborator is not, in fact, the man he loved. always thought she would be her. are. No, she’s actually a trans woman named Harper Steele, and they’re going on a road trip through the red parts of America to find out what their friendship is like now.

Will & Harper is partly about Steele’s process of figuring out which parts of America are actually physically and emotionally safe for her now that she’s medically changing her gender, and it’s also about Ferrell learning how to live with a trans friend. The best thing about it is how raw it shows all the uncomfortable emotions, glaring missteps, and acts of genuine kindness that are necessarily part of this process.

As someone who did this dance so many times with so many cis friends so many years ago, I really sympathize with Steele’s vulnerability, as much as I cringe at the countless times Ferrell does something to her that you should never do to anyone. transwoman. Will & Harper see their educational journeys as two sides of the same coin – which they are to some extent – ​​but it should be pointed out that the stakes here are extremely unequal: Ferrell’s power and privilege are absolutely in the shadow of that from Steele.

Case in point: Midway through the film, Ferrell asks Steele point-blank, “How are your boobs?” and then proceeds to press her for the details of what it was like waking up after breast enlargement surgery. He follows that up by essentially asking her if she’s going to get a vagina. I really can’t imagine anything that Steele could demand of the cis world that is even remotely comparable to that. And if she ever tried to do that, it could be an extremely dangerous moment for her.

Later, when Ferrell and Steele are at the Grand Canyon, a random woman asks Steele how long she knew she was a girl. It turns out that the reason this woman wants to know this is because she is a therapist. In the 1980s, she had a client who was likely a trans woman in the early stages of coming out, and she is guilty of the way she treated this client.

In these moments, I burned with outrage at the way these people were using Steele for their own gratification, and I longed for her to set some boundaries. That’s not what Steele does: throughout the film, she’s able to answer whatever questions the cis world has for her, even giving Ferrell complete carte blanche to ask her anything. She gives no indication that she feels the sense of assault that many of us feel at such personal invasions.

I once felt that too. Giving in to so many things that the cis world demanded of me for its own sake, because I was hurting so much, because I wanted so badly to be seen and heard, because I felt like I had to do anything to please these people who held my future in my hands. Looking back, I sometimes wonder if it was right to compromise myself so much – but the fact is, I never had a real choice. It is extremely difficult to survive a transition with your dignity intact, largely because very few people consider that a man trying to transform into a woman is in an infinitely more powerless position than she is.

Steele says she is about a year and a half into her transition, which I remember as an extremely delicate time in my own process. There is a unique vulnerability in feminizing your appearance and your personality, and putting yourself forward for the world’s approval. You’re doing the one thing you’ve absolutely been screaming out for – your entire life – that you would never, ever do. You go against every survival instinct you have because that’s the only way.

The people around you deal with it as best they can, but it is inevitable that you will get hurt a lot in the process. And yet you continue to open yourself up to more. Because you want so badly to know what they think of you, and you want nothing more than to fit into their world again. I understand that intense desire to make yourself understandable to the world, to reveal the story of your life that has been hidden for decades, to share all the pain you have hidden away. Watching Will & Harper, I really wished Ferrell had wondered why his girlfriend seemed so eager to tell him about every last personal detail of her life and why she was willing to expose herself to one dangerous situation after another couples during the movie. their road trip. They’re the questions I wish my cis friends had asked themselves when I was in the middle of it.

One of the reasons the transition is so risky is that you place yourself on the fringes of humanity for a number of years, and there is no guarantee that you will ever get back into it. I was one of the lucky ones who managed to regain my access to humanity, and now I have the immense privilege of deciding who exactly is safe enough to inform about my past. Those who are not so lucky must do their best to find a place in a world where we are a widely misunderstood, stigmatized and increasingly vilified 1% of the population. That is an extremely difficult task that results in things like unemployment, depression, homelessness and suicide.

Will & Harper portrays Steele at a time when she is trying to find her path back to humanity. Partly this is a matter of learning to live with bars full of rowdy Donald Trump supporters, but more fundamentally it’s about finding safety around the friends and family who are trying to learn how to socialize with her. It’s important for the cisgender world to see, and Will & Harper does its best to portray it in a thoughtful and honest way. It’s a film with some blind spots, but it’s an honest, valid effort. I sincerely hope that those who watch this film are ready to see it.