M6 is interested in transidentity, beware of moral panic

• M6 broadcasts this Thursday, at 9:10 p.m., the documentary

  Trans, unique in their genre

  .

  Director Delphine Cinier followed two trans women, Aëlia and Emma, ​​and a trans man, Zach, for several years.

• “People forget that we are human beings, deplores Aëla.

  They do not yet have the click to say to themselves "I have no right to hurt this person, even if I do not understand who they are and what they are going through."

  This is where we need to provide education and answers.

  »

• The documentary will be followed by a debate that risks fueling moral panic about transidentity among minors.

The documentary

is broadcast this Thursday, at 9:10 p.m. on M6, while the climate is uninhibited transphobia.

In August, a simple Family Planning poster on its support for pregnant trans men provoked an avalanche of insulting and discriminatory remarks.

A minority fringe of feminists is also struggling to exclude trans women from its struggles.

On another level, the editor with whom Delphine Cinier, the director of the documentary, has been working for eight years has refused to collaborate with her this time.

"He said to me: 'It doesn't interest me, I don't want to know them [trans people], it makes me uncomfortable, I don't want to'", she says. .

She couldn't make him change his mind.

“People forget that we are human beings, deplores Aëla, a trans woman in her thirties whose journey was followed by the cameras of the sixth channel.

We are almost reduced to a state of furniture or animals that we would have the right to attack as if we were creatures from a parallel world.

Some do not yet have the click to say to themselves "I have no right to hurt this person, even if I do not understand who they are and what they are going through."

This is where we need to provide education and answers.

»

"You have to communicate, it's a human subject"

It is thus to do a work of pedagogy that Aëla agreed to testify in the documentary.

Same thing for Zach, a 20-year-old trans man.

“Before discovering what transidentity was, I was in pain without knowing why.

It is thanks to the greater visibility granted to this subject that I knew that it existed.

To not talk about it would be to deny the reality.

»

Emma, ​​60, third protagonist of

, echoes her: “We have even been criticized at times for communicating too much because, supposedly, it tires the public.

So what do we do ?

Do we continue to hide?

I believe in communicating, it's a human subject.

»

Delphine Cinier admits that she knew nothing about transidentity before starting the documentary.

“I could make a lot of mistakes when talking about transgender people,” admits the director.

It was Karine Le Marchand, who, with her flocked Potiche Prod producer cap, offered her this project in 2019, in order to follow the three witnesses over several years.

"I always decide to tackle themes that I don't know," says the host of

.

I arrive with my ignorance and my received ideas.

I need to enter into people's lives and understand who they really are so as not to make caricatures of themselves.

»

Karine Le Marchand and her big clogs

But as the (almost) saying goes, hell is paved with good notes of intent.

On screen, we find the Karine Le Marchand style: the role of good friend with an attentive ear and heavy clogs.

She claims to have shown a working copy of the documentary to Zach, Aëla and Emma.

“After doing it, we didn't change anything, because we didn't water down the message or change the reality.

That the witnesses tell me that they recognized each other is the best compliment that can be paid to me.

»

As a spectator, however, one can feel a certain uneasiness in the face of a tendency towards misery or in front of the useless reconstructions of certain scenes, including one of physical aggression, illustrating the testimonies.

The fact that the first names that Emma and Aëla had before their transition are pronounced several times will no doubt challenge those who know how much the use of

represents violence for the people concerned.

Moreover, Zach explicitly refused that his first name be used.

“I don't want people to imagine me with a female name.

We do not want to remember the discomfort in which we were in the past, ”he explains facing the camera.

However, he agreed to entrust childhood photos, "to testify one last time, before turning the page".

Emma, ​​she has given her consent so that her identity before her transition is explicitly mentioned.

“I transitioned late, I wasn't going to throw 60 years out of my life.

I had a man's life,” she says.

moral panic

But it is above all the debate led by Karine Le Marchand at 10:55 p.m., after the broadcast of the documentary, which is likely to make waves.

Entitled

, he will invite, around the table, Zach, witness of

, the psychiatrist Serge Hefez, Solange who, according to the press release, is "mother of a transgender daughter and refuses to accompany her child before that he does not begin a psychiatric analysis of several years” and Blandine, presented as “resolutely feminist” and “opposed to the very notion of the choice of gender”.

We find the latter among the signatories of a forum considering “that trans people should not be included in spaces reserved for women, nor be at the center of the feminist agenda”.

"The system put in place by M6 brings face-to-face (...) a young transgender man and two activists encouraging transphobic discrimination (punished by law), one being presented as a simple worried mother, a guarantee of credibility, when you don't let your child speak", indignant the Fransgenre association in a press release signed by many feminist organizations and groups and/or fighting against LGBTphobia.

The subject of the transidentity of minors, very fashionable in recent months in the media, stems from a moral panic mixing alarmist remarks and disinformation, as Slate recalled last year.

"I understand the caution, it's normal, but we must not forget that the law does not allow you to do just anything", underlines Emma.

“We have always been there”

And to add that feminists excluding trans people from their struggles, called Terf according to the acronym of the English expression "trans-exclusionary radical feminist", are "a small number, which tends to grow and make a lot of noise " .

.

“They are fighting against the wind, reacts Aëla.

Many think transgender is a hot new concept.

This is not the case.

When you scratch a little the history of humanity, the gender spectrum is much broader, in pre-colonial civilizations, in Malaysia and North America, for example.

We have always been there.

We always will be.

To make sure that we don't exist is to sweep away a part of humanity.

I don't know how to analyze the fear that we awaken in them.

By just being ourselves, we awaken a lot of unconscious things in people.

All the more reason to listen to trans people, directly concerned by the subject, rather than those who speak for them and without knowing.

Company

Transidentity and feminism, a relationship "strewn with misunderstandings and a desire to understand"

Series

"Tender Flesh", the first series whose main character is intersex

• Television

• M6

• Transgender

• Karine Le Marchand

• Documentary

• Company