Other thing is, there’s talk of rape in this, too.

Now, I went to see The Skin I Live In (La Piel Que Habito) on my own, which was possibly a mistake, the reason for which you’ll realise as you read on.  I have a little snippet of anxiety left over from school whereby if I go to do something alone, I’ll be afraid I’m in the wrong place.  I’ll get my ticket, read the ticket, go to the place it says on the ticket, but I’ll still be a bit scared that I’m somehow, magically, in the wrong place.

So there I sat in the Arts Picturehouse in Cambridge, nervously clutching my mug of tea (THEY LET YOU BRING FUCKING TEA INTO THE FUCKING CINEMA OH MY GOD HEAVEN IN AN AUDITORIUM!!!!), wondering if, when the film started, it’d be the right one or not.

Ten minutes of sumptuous interiors, high-angled shots, hyper-saturated film and an onslaught of seething, brooding madness in, I realised with great satisfaction that yep, I’m watching a goddamned Pedro Almodóvar film.  That man has his favourite toys, tropes and themes, doesn’t he?  This is another film that watches class through a fish-eye lens, focussing on the life of a very well-off, in-demand surgeon (Antonio Banderas), who is currently undertaking research into the growth of synthetic human skin for the treatment of burns sufferers.  He has “help” and a housekeeper and everything.

Also, he keeps a young woman (Elena Anaya) as a pet in a locked room and does experiments on her.

This is just the set-up.  This is all revealed in the first extravagant slice of immaculately tailored, dressed and designed film.  It goes further. Every single character in this film is broken in some fundamental way.  Or if they don’t start out that way, they become that way.

The only truly sympathetic character, I found, was that of the housekeeper, Marilia (Marisa Paredes).  She’s stalwart and practical, caring and protective, and I wish she survived ’til the end, but she doesn’t.  I was surprised, actually, that there were any purely sympathetic characters at all in this film – it’s Almodóvar, no-one is innocent ever!  And, indeed, she is the only fully likeable, empathic person in the film.  Everyone else is absolutely horrible in some ways, and deeply sympathetic in others, leaving you with absolutely no bloody idea what to make of them overall.

So far, so Almodóvar.

Now, while I was watching this, absorbing it like a sponge, my thoughts drifted – as they are wont to do – to the rest of the Almodóvar canon.  My favourite film of his by a long shot is Bad Education, and if you’ve not watched it, you really must – but he really does have this ongoing obsession (theme, exploration, whatever you want to call it) with transgender people, and the process of transforming gender presentation, and whether or not transformation redeems.  He’s also good at casting real trans* people as transgender characters, which is something that Hollywood has yet to realise is a thing that they should fucking do, too.  “Huh,” I thought, with this in mind, watching Antonio Banderas’s distressingly hot surgeon-gone-mad leaking deep-eyed insanity all over the cinema, “There’s no trans* folk in this!  Weird, for Almodóvar, to not at least have one of us.”

And then everyone was trans* and everything hurt.

No, I’m serious.  Holy shit.  Yes!  Indeed, ALL film literature on this is meticulously devoid of spoilers (and I’m ruining that now, hahar!) but the pretty young thing Scary Dr. Richard is keeping as a toy/pet/experiment/wife replacement/wall-to-wall security camera work of art (I’m not even joking) is the bloke that raped his daughter and has been surgically rebuilt to look like a cis woman as punishment.

Now, before I explore that comprehensive cinematographic clusterfuck in more detail, I’m going to make a quick aside here and say that this film also deals with consent and choice, and what happens to our minds when these basic human rights are removed from us.  There’s a lot of relatively graphic sex in it, and not all of it is 100% doubtlessly consensual, so please bear that in mind if you’re off to watch it.  There’s also non-consensual body modification and surgery, none of which is graphic, but the treatment of it is brutal and plays upon the mind’s ability to patch in worse realities than that to which it’s denied visual access.  And there’s also kidnapping, gagging, drugging, imprisonment and so on, all of which is beautifully and luxuriantly filmed for your horrified pleasure.  Nothing is sacred, no-one is innocent, and everything is broken.  It’s amazing.  It’s like, as the film goes on, it peels off layers of scabs to reveal more horrible things underneath.

Back to the sex reassignment thing, then.  This is the first time I have ever seen in a film the notion of sex reassignment as punishment.  I’ve seen castration as punishment (The Ladies Club), I’ve seen rape as punishment for being transgender (Boys Don’t Cry) but I’ve not seen this.  Now, my initial reaction was, “ASDLAKSJFLDKG HOW DARE MR. ALMODOVAR USE THE REALITY OF SEX REASSIGNMENT LIKE IT’S SOME KIND OF DREADFUL, FEARFUL THING THAT ANYONE WOULD HATE TO HAVE HAPPEN TO THEM” and then I realised that he’s actually written a pretty good precis of what it’s like to be a trans man.

Vicente, the rapist of Richard’s daughter, and let’s ignore the rape part for the moment, is taken away and forcibly reassigned “female”.  He’s given a vulva, new skin and breasts, and from the looks of it, a new bone structure and voice, too.  (And there’s also the bit where Antonio Banderas chains him up and shaves him with a straight razor, which gave me that’s-my-kink related problems…)

But he still identifies as Vicente – despite quite literally wearing Richard’s dead wife’s face (the reason, I presume, that the part of Vera is not played by a trans woman) – is tortured by how he now has all these different dressy, make-up-y and vaginal intercourse-y expectations of him, and finds solace in yoga and opium to help him forget the pain.

Dude, that’s me.  Except without the yoga and the opium and… a few other things, too, but the main theme is there.  This is the non-consensual assignment of a sex and attributed gender role that you just aren’t.  He plays along and acts the part, but only as long as he absolutely has to before he can escape.

So that was the first time I ever sympathised with a rapist in a film, the end.

Seriously. Watch his films and tell me if I'm wrong. I'm not.

Apparently, people walked out of the preview screening here in Cambridge, which surprises me.  There’s nothing graphic (other than sex) in this film, and really, then, you’re only left with the themes to run with, and I can’t really see how you could be disgusted to the point of walk-out over the themes in this film.  The cynical feminist in me wonders if the very idea of sex reassignment is really that disgusting to some people…

You should see this film because:
– It’s Almodóvar’s most comprehensible and accessible film that I’ve seen, and would make a nice introduction to how brilliant his work is
– It’s absolutely brutal, terrifying and bizarre, and those are all qualities that make good cinema
– It’s beautifully made, perfectly cast, and the soundtrack made me cry
– You won’t see another film like it, ever

You should not see this film because:
– HOLY NON-CON TRIGGERS, BATMAN
– Antonio Banderas is problematically hot and it’s difficult to watch him being such a terrifying pile of mess and insanity without fancying him a lot
– OR AT LEAST I THOUGHT SO, BUT THEN, I DO HAVE THE WORST TASTE IN MEN EVER

Exclusive behind-the-scenes footage of your host EVERY TIME HE HAS TO ILLUSTRATE ANYTHING

Kinda like that issue of Time Magazine where they said "the person of the year is everyone", only less cheesy. (photo via Flickr, taken by user Jessica E Sideways. Shared under a Creative Commons license.)

This post, then, is about those people; people who are getting on with the everyday business of making change happen. That ranges from people who work in charities, NGOs, and support organisations; people who lobby and campaign; and people who are acting on the change they’d like to see in their interactions with the people around them.

So here, then, are just some of the many organisations run by awesome people, doing awesome things on a daily basis.

• African Feminist Forum – They run biennial conferences for feminist activists in Africa, and make efforts to include the voices of groups often marginalised within African feminism (and arguably feminist movements in many countries) – commercial sex workers, women with disabilities, and bisexual rights activists.
• Central American Women’s Network – They’re working to improve the political, social and cultural rights of women in Central America through advocacy and campaigning, and raising awareness in the UK and US. Freedoms in Honduras have been a particular issue since the coup d’etat of 2009.
• Women’s Budget Group  – Based in the UK, they’re bringing gender analysis to economic policy, because it’s hard to work for an equal society when the vast impact of government expenditure is skewed in favour of one portion of the population.
• British Insitute of Human Rights – Because human rights for everyone is very much a feminist issue, and the BIHR are one of several fantastic groups supporting that. (See also: Liberty, Amnesty International)
• Race On The Agenda – Too often the history of feminist discussion has been marred by an unfortunate exclusion of the voices from often-marginalised groups such as the Black and Asian communities. ROTA are one of the organisations helping to keep things more inclusive.
• Powerhouse – Women with disabilities are another group that’s been too often pushed to one side or rendered invisible. Run “by and for women with learning disabilities”, Powerhouse bring focus to this.
• The Feminist Library – Libraries are basically the most awesome things ever, and this one carries a huge stock of feminist literature. It should hardly need explaining why this is an entire industrial-sized vat of pure brilliance.
• The Survivor Project – I want to include these folk, because judging from what I’ve read they’re awesome, but unfortunately they seem to be without a website currently, so, er, you’ll have to find them yourselves later. They’re a non-profit working against domestic and sexual violence against anyone, but with a particular focus on trans* and intersex survivors. It’s an issue that’s all too often ignored in the mainstream. (If in the future a website becomes available, hopefully we’ll be able to draw attention to it.)

This list isn’t even remotely exhaustive, and couldn’t possibly hope to be. There are more people out there working to support good ideas than I have any chance of adequately enumerating here. The fact that I can only post a tiny, miniscule example of some of the many groups and organisations involved in this is, honestly, brilliant. It’d be a worrying sign if every beneficial organisation could be summed up in the space of one post. For more comprehensive overviews of the groups out there though, do check the members list for the Women’s Resource Centre and the National Alliance of Women’s Organisations. (Of course, that only covers groups based at least partially in the UK. The list gets even longer when we go global.)

And then of course there’s the fact that the above list has only covered organisations, groups, and charities. We’ve yet to even touch on the vast array of feminist bloggers, writers, artists, and others out there making their ideas visible. Or the yet wider group who don’t have a public podium from which to spread their message but are engaged in thinking about, discussing and living with this as a part of their daily world view.

What I’m saying is that there’s a lot of us, and the collective weight behind this set of ideas is formidable. And that’s seven shades of kickass.

• Unsung Heroes: spotlighting fascinating people we never learned about at school. Rob Mulligan also blogs at Stuttering Demagogue. Stay tuned for future Heroes, or send your own in to [email protected]!