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Otkin supports the exploration of gender identities, but she urges young women who are considering transitioning to “take the time to live in this body and know this body,” arguing that at 18 years old, no one knows themselves well enough to determine whether they should change their gender--particularly in regard to permanent procedures like surgery and hormone treatments. “Life is an exploration and by all means explore it,” she says, “but be in this body; live this life. Live this life; it's a struggle.”

At the academic and analytical levels the documentary invites commentary from a range of experts and activists. These include noted gender theorist Judith “Jack” Halberstam, best known for her work on female masculinities; Carmen Vasquez, Deputy Executive Director of the Empire State Pride Agenda, who represents, in an open and assuring way, the butch perspective; and Dean Spade, founder of the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, who attempts to inject a social justice and activist perspective to the conversation.

Halberstam provides some of the most thought-provoking analysis in the documentary, giving a critical and wide-ranging assessment of the state of FTMs and the lesbian community. Those who are interested in these issues should watch this documentary for Halberstam's comments alone.

Halberstam explains that before the trans movement had gained the prominence and visibility it has today, the concept of the transsexual was separated into the primary transsexual and the secondary transsexual. The primary transsexual was a person who had from a very early age demonstrated that they felt cross-identified, whereas the secondary transsexual had a weaker level of cross-identification but was open to transitioning if the technology was available. “So now the question is,” says Halberstam, “like 10, 15 years later, technology is available, hormones are available, social service providers are pushing certain forms of identification, where does choice play in?”

It is now, at this moment when choice is more widely available, that the lesbian community feels anxiety about the perceived disappearance of butch-identified women into the ranks of FTMs. Halberstam argues that the discomfort with FTMs in the lesbian community dates back to the discomfort caused by butch/femme identities, and that when trans visibility was on the rise in the mid-1990s, that was also at the height of a resurgence of butch identity.

In order for FTMs to distinguish themselves from lesbians, they also had to distance themselves from butches. As a result, masculinity as a characteristic became more centered in trans identities, and butch-identified lesbians were situated as women, in a more narrow sense.

In the midst of this debate on masculinity, Halberstam notes that one identity category that has been largely ignored is that of the femme lesbian. “What has happened to the category of femme to the extent that it's a companion category, or to the extent that it's completely autonomous from either butch or trans?” she asks. “And to what extent does femme get kind of trapped as this person who has to choose between two forms of queer masculinity that are being presented to her? And then how does that again make her into a secondary player in the real drama that is about the cross-identified queer person?”

Halberstam's question highlights the continuing invisibility of the femme lesbian--something that may thankfully be coming to a close with the growth of a femme lesbian movement in the last few years. In Elizabeth Stark and Kami Chisholm's one-hour documentary, Female to Femme, femme identity is explored and celebrated through interviews with femmes, a femme support workshop, and footage of several San Francisco Bay area queer female burlesque troupes.

Some of the femmes interviewed include Guinevere Turner (Go Fish, The L Word), rock musicians Leslie Mah (of Tribe 8) and Bitch, novelist Jewelle Gomez, and poet Meliza Banales. Female to Femme lacks the sheen and polish of Boy I Am in terms of production values, but it provides a valuable opportunity for marginalized femmes to speak about their identity.

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