Middle Sexes: Redefining He and She premiers on December 6th at 9:30PM on HBO.

Synopsis:

The latest documentary by award-winning filmmaker Antony Thomas (HBO’s Celibacy), Middle Sexes: Redefining He and She sensitively explores the controversial subject of the blurring of gender as well as the serious social and family problems – even dangers – often faced by those whose gender may fall somewhere in between male and female. Narrated by noted author Gore Vidal and filmed in the United States, Europe, Asia, and South America, Middle Sexes examines the ways different societies and cultures handle the blurring of gender, sexual identity and sexual orientation. Through interviews with transgender, intersexual and bisexual men and women, as well as experts from the scientific and academic communities, the film considers the entire spectrum of sexual behavior, personal identity and lifestyles among people of different backgrounds and cultures. From this, a theme of tolerance and appreciation of diversity emerges in the film.

From an interview with the director of the film, Antony Thomas:

HBO: What is the stigma surrounding the blurring of gender?

Antony Thomas: The social pressure to conform to one sexual standard is huge — and this is true, in varying degrees, throughout most of the modern world. In the ancient and medieval worlds, the position was different, but today anything that causes us to question the validity and truth of that universal standard is threatening; and what we fear, we demonise.

Click here for the complete list of showings of Middle Sexes: Redefining He and She.

The name of the film reminds me of Middlesex: A Novel by Jeffrey Eugenides, which I never got to complete and returned to the person I borrowed it from. I need to pick up a copy soon. A little about Middlesex from it’s Amazon review:

“I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974.” And so begins Middlesex, the mesmerizing saga of a near-mythic Greek American family and the “roller-coaster ride of a single gene through time.”