I’ve been mentioning the Susan Stanton CNN documentary lately. They followed her for almost two years beginning shortly after her story in Largo became national news. The result of these efforts is an 80 minute “CNN Presents” movie that they are releasing to Film Festivals throughout the country.
I first met Susan at the NCTE Lobby Day event in Washington DC in 2007. That was supposed to be her “first time” out as Susan in public and turned into quite the zoo. A small group of us met for lunch and at the time I wondered if she was really ready for what I expected was to come – this naive newbie thrust onto the national stage as the next great Trans hope. None of us could have imagined how things would eventually unfold.
The premier of the film was this past weekend in Miami. The Miami Herald published a brief review (they gave it 3 stars):
As city manager of Largo, Fla., Steve Stanton had a lucrative career, a loving wife and son and a wide social circle. He also had a secret — that he was planning sexual-reassignment surgery. And when that story leaked to a St. Petersburg Times reporter, Stanton lost his job, marriage and friends and eventually found himself on the wrong side of many transgender activists.
Dave Timko’s thoughtful documentary explores the numerous facets of Steve’s dramatic change into Susan, examining his hopes, fears, dreams and mounting frustration as he realizes he may never find a new job. Stanton’s ex-wife Donna reads her remarks off camera, but teenage Travis exhibits a remarkable ease with his father’s transformation. ”I was really shocked, but I got over it,” he says, offering a ray of hope for tolerance.
Her Name Was Steven ends on a melancholy note, with Stanton still jobless and questioning whether becoming a woman was worth all the pain. She sadly concludes no, it wasn’t, but real life offers a happier ending: On April 7, Stanton was hired as Lake Worth’s city manager.
I’m told that it was well received and at the end when text comes up indicating that she has recently been hired as a City Manager again the audience applauded.
CNN has a version of the trailer to embed in blogs (but doesn’t seem to show up sometimes). Here it is:
I have seen the documentary and have a number of thoughts on it. For some it may pull some scabs off old wounds that have almost healed over – Susan has never been shy about bluntly expressing her opinions and that’s true here, too. I could have told you that even before seeing it. But I hope people are willing to look deeper than that because there’s so much more there.
It’s also important to note that the producers had no idea where this would go when they started it. They simply tell the story, or at least, allow the story to tell itself. There is no narrator other than the people in the film talking. There is no explanation of context or broader attempt to “explain” transgender. It’s not that kind of documentary.
This story is actually two stories in one. On the outside it is, in essence, one person’s personal story. For better or for worse this is about Susan – who loses her job, her career, her marriage, her sense of identity – all in very public ways. I give her credit for allowing a camera crew access to the deeply personal journey that is a gender transition – I told her I could never have done that.
On a deeper level, however, it is a journey of self-acceptance, of self-discovery, of becoming, with which many of us can relate. That is a journey shaped by life experience that forces you to expose your deepest secrets to a world ready to judge based on ignorance. As a result the Susan at the beginning of this journey is different from the Susan at the end in many, many ways.
Susan is a fascinating person – a study of contrasts, a product of any number of life experiences. In some scenes she allows the softer underbelly of her journey to show. In others, she maintains the stiff facade and thick walls that keep viewers at arm’s length. I, too, remember that difficult time in my own transition where taking those walls down and exposing myself to vulnerability was as difficult to imagine as it was terrifying.
You’ll probably cringe at some scenes, as I did. That’s just part of the journey. For those of us who have transitioned it’s difficult not to think back to our own experiences – for better or worse – and realize that we’ve been there too. At the end, however, I find that the most “sympathetic” character in this life drama isn’t Susan. It’s her son – the innocent who continues to love and accept her “dad” unconditionally.
The paradox of Susan’s story is that she very much seems to be what makes her uncomfortable in others. She is both harshly judged and critical judger. She is both a victim (both of circumstance and her own self) and a champion. She is a poster child for workplace discrimination yet she finds a way to justify it when it happens to others. She seems focused on her decisions but in the background there is always questioning.
This movie will provoke different responses in different types of audiences. Those who have been through many of these same experiences will react differently than those who have never seen “behind the scenes” of a gender transition. And, in fact, I find that the most significant benefit from these kinds of things isn’t necessarily in the story itself but the opportunity it provides to broaden the conversation. In that regard I think the film-makers have done a wonderful job avoiding much of the sensational and focusing more on the “human” side of this journey.
Susan is Susan. She is a personal friend. She is a sister, a bit of a lost soul sometimes, still looking for answers. There are two specific scenes that I find particularly poignant. The first is when she is unexpectedly served with divorce papers by a process server. How many of us have been there – too stunned to even talk?
The second is the day of her SRS when she enters the hospital with her little suitcase in the early morning and is sitting in that large waiting room filling out papers, all alone. For me, that scene symbolizes this journey. And although there are times in the movie when I just wish she’d stop for a second to really think about what she’s saying – that scene brings me back to connections that many of us share but few of us can put into words.
If you have a chance to see it – please do so. Please use it to start the conversation, or to broaden the dialogue. Because the more of us who can humanize ourselves the more that ALL of us will benefit from each others journeys.
She is now the face of our community in Florida. I can only hope she is a success. I can also never forget the” harsh critical comments “she levelled directly at the activists in the Tampa area and her use of multiple public forums to spout her views. As she was vilified by the religious right, she modelled clothes for the paper. Again, my experiences with her left me very sad and disappointed. I hope this faze is over. I know she was a “newbie” thrust into an unwanted spotlight, but that was no excuse for calling the transgender staff of the only HIV/AIDS risk reduction program in Tampa Bay useless from the stage of a Rememberence Service. She had no knowledge of this program to make such judgements. PEACE
Let me clarify. I meant the only HIV/AIDS program focusing on our community. This is also the first program to ever provide “safe shelter” for us in Tampa Bay. Her comments were not only extremely hurtful, but made all of us wonder what WE had done wrong.
Yeh… Not sure what to say about all that.
I ’sort of’ met Susan at the Be-All in Chicago. By that I mean that I said hello to her in the elevator while she stared at the ceiling.
So . . . all I know is what I read. So until I see the documentary, I guess my opinions are shaped by what you say Donna and what Susan herself has said . . . I considered placing a link to some of her comments, but since she’s your friend I think it would be inappropriate here.
Understood, she was just starting out and didn’t have a clue back then. I wonder, has she recanted any of those comments that she made way back when? Does she do so in the documentary?
The fact that she was thrust into the spotlight doesn’t necessarily make her the face of our community. I wonder how things might have turned out differently if she was actually given more of an opportunity for self discovery during transition instead of having a camera and microphone shoved in her face during and after being terminated. I know I’ve made enough of my own mistakes during this process, but I’m certain I’ve learned a lot.
I empathize with her struggles, and I only consider her a leader from the way she revealed her vulnerabilities to a vicious world. You gotta give the girl some credit.
She is a “leader” because the media will declare her one if she allows it. As for elevator manners, back when she was in Chicago, she used that speaking engagement to trash the transgender leadership in Florida as too radical for our own good. Of course she didn’t speak on the elevator because that was her style at the time. Like many of us do, we import ingrained male behaviors to our new identities. She was , from what I hear, a rather conservative Republican as Steven and did not totally shed this persona. Her comments about various people in the transcommunity in Tampa actually brought her closer to a lawsuit for slander than she may have realized at the time. Thank goodness that she is gainfully employed and hopefully she will not seek out people in the “trenches” to defame ever again. I learned not to assume anyone is a supporter . I wonder what she learned?
I just watched that video and it brings back memories of mobilizing the community to support her. My supervisor spoke for 6 minutes at the Largo hearings as to how employing transpeople was not a problem. We first met at a benefit for her in St.Petersburg. I went up to her to show my support. She said we would speak later. We met and she told me that I am an angry radical in her view and to stay completely away from her and not to offer any further help. I was in shock to say the least. But I don’t think I am an ugly man in a dress, but since I can’t figure how to upload a photo, nobody knows.
Thanks, Donna, for a thoughtful and critical review of the documentary. Hopefully it gets to us here in Wisconsin. Hope you are well!
Every time I read this it is hard for me to shake the memory of publically uttered words like ” angry”, obnoxious”, “radical”, can’t accomplsh anything”, and “useless” to describe myself and multiple colleagues . Then I saw her go to DC on “Lobby Day” and smooze Transgender activists who say the same stuff we do in Tampa, but have a national name. Maybe those people she met on her retreat to Arizona saw another side, but to us in Tampa, she was just incomprehensable. When the religious right called her vile names at her hearing, she said they were misguided, but sincere. She had no such charity for her own kind who supported her. I only knew her as a harsh critic and an antagonist and I will only assume it was internalized transphobia that caused this. She was offered the full service of a national corporation to assist her and it was turned down flat. I later learned that this because she didn’t like me and at that point we had never met to my knowledge. My family told me that there was nobody home, so just get over it. I admit it was hard because at the time, her support could have helped the only trans-focused therapy program in Tampa Bay.
When I say help the program, she could have attracted new clients, raised the caseload count, and helped sustain our grant. This had nothing to do with her expressed feelings for me. She could have completely steered clear of me and met with straight hetrosexual managers and lent her positive and popular reputation to this program. San Fransisco had 20 some programs focused on transpeople and Tampa had ONLY ONE. She did court gay men from other similiar programs FOR GAY MEN , but avoided ours. Go figure.
She is now our City Manager in Lake Worth, Florida.
[...] Glenn Garvin of the Miami Herald also used the "thoughtful" label for the documentary. An earlier Miami Herald review noted that Stanton’s son Travis "exhibits a remarkable ease with his father’s [...]
I just can’t believe that she’d be fired over this!?!
Ignorance is not bliss.
How can people be so cruel? She should of never lost her job, she was totally capible of doing a great job as she did in the past, I think she should sue the board that let her go. She always is well manered and professional and dressed the part, im glad she found a job after two years of searching, I was about to lose faith in this world.
How ironic. One of the biggest criticisms I have about the Steve / Susan Stanton story is how quickly people abandoned him. The city leaders of Largo, Fl turned their backs on him after Steve’s private life became public. And you Donna turned your back on him when he got off script. I thought Susan was being honest and transparent. The men in drag comment was funny and a genuine observation. The Stanton story is tragic and confusing (ie when his son calls him dad, which he always will be.) But even though it will be very tough, I think Susan will be better off not aligning with people who will not stand by him through the toughest part of his life.
Steve Stanton was a terrible City Manager in Largo and should have been fired long ago. He was ineffective and everyone on the City Council knew it. They used his tragic “unveiling” as an excuse, but it was their failure to take action that was the tragedy here. Susan deserves to get a chance to be a great City Manager in Lake Worth, FL; only time will tell if she can do a better job than she did in Largo.