Shatter – Gender and Being Transmasculine

Shatter is a short film about gender and being a transmasculine person. It explores the visual transition of a trans boy and the violence he receives for his honesty about who he is and what he is.

Poem- To Every Suicidal Trans Kid

I am here with you
We exist in a world not made for us

Called freaks
Called deceptive
Called kill yourself

We don’t understand what we did wrong
We hide in closets more like coffins
Hope to god
Or something
That we will be able to escape this wooden prison
one day but it’s not safe out there
Theres too much soil holding us down
And every time we move another splinter enters our body somehow

We exist on cliffs
Not holding on to enough for all of us to survive
1 in 3 transgender people will attempt suicide by the age of 20

I know not to blame myself
if you’re over the edge tomorrow, wether you’re jumping or falling
it’s not my fault.
Yet if I can keep my arms around your waist to hold you here
instead of letting you tumble yourself into becoming
Not a pile of broken stars
and tattered lace on the pavement today
and a newspaper headline tomorrow,
that would be enough for me.
If I could steal all your blades and replace them with flowers I’d be a happy boy,
that is until you find a new way to spill red.

Our average life expectancy is about 23-30 years and
Quickly dropping.

Wrestle with the uncomfortable fact that the world doesn’t care until we’re already dead.
Until we’re a headline,
If we even make it that far.

But dear
Listen to the soft whisper of you heart still beating and remember the complexity of your existence,
every cell,
dividing,
Every organ working together in harmony.
Remember that your spine is as strong as spiders silk
Your hands are graceful even as they shatter glass
Your body is a form; just a form-

Clumsy and inexpertly carved
But think of the shapes it makes
The arcs and curves when you move
The way it crumples and folds when you’re tired or prone or empty

Think of the shapes it makes at rest
And the ones it creates by your command.

It is is not an easy thing to let yourself live in your own body
And certainly for some of us it’s near impossible
But you will survive in this body
With this body

So to those who decided our bodies,
our identities were wrong
Eat.
Chew your words carefullylike communion crackers,
holy and meaningless and flammable,
meant to be drowned in wine.
We will swallow our
fears drybecause over coming nature is supposed to hurt for a little while.
Drink nerves like whiskey,
fast and thoughtless,
it’ll always be a little toughto hold down liquid courage.
Take the pain in and crush it between hard won teeth,
pull it into yourself because

it can’t hurt you if you own it.