As a preamble to this call for abstracts, we want to specify that we are using the terms “transgender” and “trans identities” as umbrella terms for people whose gender identity and/or gender expression differs from what is typically associated with the sex they were assigned at birth. Our use of “transgender” or “trans identities” thus encompasses a variety of experiences within and outside the gender binary, and a range of expressions, as trans individuals pursue many different options (medical changes, clothing, make-up, etc.) to bring their appearances into alignment with their gender identity, or may choose not to.
“Transsexualité, transidentité: un tabou français?” (“Transsexuality, transidentity: a French taboo?”[1]): such was the title chosen by the online French news magazine France Info for an article published in 2015 that discussed the lack of visibility and biases transgender people still experience in French society. Indeed, the production of images and narratives about transgender people in a French context is a complex process that demands to be further analyzed. On the one hand, there has been an increasing visibility of trans individuals in film and TV in recent years. TV documentaries such as Devenir il ou elle (Lorène Debaisieux, 2017) and Être fille ou garçon: Le Dilemme des transgenres (Clarisse Verrier, 2017) follow the lives of adolescents as they transition into their authentic gender; director Sébastien Lifshitz dedicated a documentary to one of France’s first individuals to have undergone gender confirmation surgery with Bambi (2013), and he hired a transgender actress to play the main character in his film Wild Side (2004).
