The Fast, the Furious, and the Obligatory Gender Dysphoria Scenes
I'm a masochist for a dumb franchise despite the unrelenting psychic damage.
I can’t stop myself. At a recent family movie night, I made everyone watch the first Fast and the Furious film. Not because I like it, but because they said they wanted to watch something dumb and so I insisted on the dumbest fucking thing I could think of. Now though, I’m infected with the spirit of this abysmally bad franchise. There is NOS in my veins, obscene collateral damage to innocent bystanders in my heart, and the word family perpetually on my lips. For real, every time someone asks a question in these films, any question, I, huddled on the couch like a disgruntled goblin, rumble “family” in response.
“How are we going to stop the plane?!” Family.
“What’s the max speed of your sled?” Family.
“You think you can beat him?” Family.
I fucking hate these movies and I’ve watched all fucking ten of them. The members of a pub quiz team made up of theatre-makers and arts workers looked on in horror as I scored all the bonus points by being able to name them in order.
So, let’s skip past the film critiques shall we. We don’t need to spend any substantial time on how this franchise is literally “Bold and the Beautiful For Bros”. (We just need to spend enough time for me to crack some jokes). Cool your jets before you throw a rod, it’s fucking true. Characters die and come back with amnesia, or they die and then it’s retconned that the timeline of films is out of order so that they can still be in a half dozen more films before they’re killed off again. And when they ARE killed off again, it’s later revealed that the initial death that moved the whole timeline around didn’t matter anyway because they secretly survived it and they’re back again with the only explanation, “that’s a great question for another time!”.
Then there’s the tragic death of an actor, which they ignored by keeping his character alive but off-screen, using heartfelt references to him that all read as though he IS actually dead. There’s this odd, out of place gravity when a characters speak about him? Someone asks, “where’s Brian?”, and it’s met with, “Oh, he’s out back taking a piss” and then everyone wistfully looks off camera, misty-eyed and mumbling things like “…and I miss him every day”.
Finally, Christ, I feel I could write a whole dissertation about the poor writing choice to call your desert super-car meetup “Race Wars” and then double down on the stupidity of that choice to reveal to the recently revived from the dead character with amnesia that they in fact started “Race Wars” as a way to get them their memory back. I mean… really!? Did no one in that writer’s room thing that name might mean something else? It’s like naming a character “Cock Suckington” and wondering why everyone is snickering. RACE WARS?! Are you fucking kidding me?!?!
Breathe. Where’s your calm place? [Family]
Despite this franchise literally being a glorified soap-opera but with street racing, these films have another notable feature for me: The “Obligatory Gender Dysphoria Scene”. You know the ones… Some character will earnestly proclaim “we need more cars but we don’t know how to get them!” and then two middle-aged men will knowingly smirk at each other before we smash cut to a young woman’s whole ass twerking on the bonnet of a supped-up street-racing car at an illeagle street race meet. Pull back crane shot to reveal a stunning sea of beautiful women, literally every 10 out of 10 twenty-something in L.A., all wearing the hottest of hotpants, the sparkliest of sequins, and showing every inch of flesh possible for a PG-13 rating. All dancing, all gyrating, all living in a micro-dimension of conventional beauty norms, thinness, and feminine joie de vivre… and the same two smirking middle-aged men amidst it all are wearing ill-fitting jeans and $10 t-shirts.
God what I wouldn’t give to feel like the former instead of feeling like the latter.
Every time one of these scenes happen it’s like a punch in the face. Every. Damn. Time. Without fail. Every glistening curve, every dewy lip, every smoky eye, is a reminder of how I do not now, nor will I ever look like this. This body, large and blunt, broad and strong… No delicate wrists, no sumptuous curves… conjures more in the image of Vin Diesel than it does Gal Gadot.
Speaking of Ms Gadot… I’m at the stage where I can’t even look at her. Look I’m not going to resort to any cheap shots here, it would be very easy to point out that this Israeli Defence Force hand-to-hand combat instructor very much tows the line of her government in her social media. It would be easy to point out how she seeks to erase the atrocities being committed in the name of her nationality. It would be SO easy. IMAGINE how easy it would be to point out for ALL THE PEOPLE to see how tone deaf her presence is when SHARING her opinions for ALL THE WORLD to see.
You get my drift? [That’s a Fast and the Furious 3 joke.]
I can’t even look at Gal Godot when she’s on screen. I stare at something else in shot (Vin Diesel’s unending parade of $10 tank tops for example) or just straight up think about something else that isn’t on screen (like the presence of an actual cohesive plot or character motivation). Sadly, the reason I can’t look at her isn’t the laundry list of billable items for a PR company to help her with, no. It’s because she’s so exquisitely gorgeous I feel the coil of my gender dysphoria unravelling in my chest. The yawning maw of my utter loathing for the shape and features of my face thet swallows me whole when I gaze at her.
It’s something I’ve held within me, like when you feel the bile rise in your gullet, steaming hot, corrosive, and reeking. You tell yourself, “no, I got it, I can keep it in.” and it makes it all the way up to your mouth, searing into your tongue with parmesan bitterness. Yet you think “yep, just keep it in.” But then you involuntarily cough and it all come spewing (literally) out of you in firehose spray.
And so, when I revealed my feelings about Gal Gadot to my partner (a cisgendered woman) while sitting on her couch of an evening, spraying this torrent of bitter vileness, encrusted with shame and self-loathing she looked at me and said… “Oh yeah, I can’t fucking look at Amanda Seyfried either.”
And then I realised! Here it was, the thing I had been searching for; a way to explain my yearning, to quantify this feeling, to distil it down for a cisgendered person wanting to know what it’s like to have gender dysphoria. Take that feeling you have about Amanda Seyfried and impose it onto every single woman around you. Every woman. Big, small, tall, short, young, old. All of them. Everything about them makes you yearn to be like them and sick to your stomach that you’ll never be like them.
These feelings overwhelm me on a daily basis. Some days are worse than others. Some days are better. Some days I just think that Gal Godot is just some silly woman with incredible wealth, stunning good looks and an adoring fan base that would literally die for her if she asked.
Nothing to be bothered by at all.
But in truth, the days that are better are not the ones where I look at myself and think “I am attractive”. The days I feel better are usually the ones where I connect with my community, where I talk about how I feel, where I share the self-loathing and then find that it sounds so ridiculous coming out of my mouth and actually, there’s nothing for me to be worried about… I’m sexy as fuck and my community of support continually reminds me of it.
So, what’s the most important thing to remember here?
Family.
–S
P.S. I can’t fucking believe I’m ending this screed like this.
Honestly I am a believer in AGI, Singularity and Full Dive VR. So basically... in the future you will able to live in a simulation tailored to your specific desires. And in it you'll be able to be the gorgeous girl of your dreams. I have dibs on Kristy McNichol circa 1980.