| Abstract |
Regretters gives heartfelt voice to two transgendered people who underwent sex change surgery to become women. Now, years later, they would like to return to their original, masculine selves. Through their experiences we learn how very complicated gender identity is; morphing from one gender to another is not accomplished solely by sexual reassignment surgery. Orlando and Mikael are Swedish, now in their sixties. Meeting for the first time, they face one another on a stage and engage in a spontaneous dialogue. Orlando, an androgynous dandy dressed in a red velvet suit, had one of the first sex change operations in Sweden in 1967. He tells of his eleven year marriage to a man who never suspected that his wife had not been born female. Mikael, dressed as a man, underwent the surgery in the 1990's when he was fifty years old. He has tried to convince his doctors to change him back, as he feels desperately lost between genders, trapped inside a body that is not his. Regretters is frank without being sensational. It will be important material for any discussion of gender. |
