Past Event! Note: this event has already taken place.
Hostos: “Happily Ever After: Trans-Made Media on Sex, Romance, and Desire” Talk [Online]
March 12, 2026 at 9:30 AM to 10:45 AM
| Location: | Online |
| Cost: | Free |
Violet (Jen Richards) and Allie’s (Laura Zak) date in Her Story.
Happily Ever After: Trans-Made Media on Sex, Romance, and Desire
Online Talk for the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at Hostos Community College (CUNY).
How to represent trans sexualities in an environment where trans people are hypersexualized or invisible or met with disgust? How to deal with dating cultures that see “no trans people” as a viable sexual preference? And, more broadly, how to be honest about the pleasures of vulnerability and the potentially shattering power of sexual encounters in a dangerous world, one in which many young people equate sex with harm? Trans filmmakers dig into these questions using a variety of strategies, sometimes using film to invite viewers to retrain their desires. They reimagine generic conventions in porn, dramas, and romantic comedies to affirm and construct the desirability of trans bodies, position trans people as possessors of sexual gazes and fantasies, be honest about the messiness of desire, and include trans people in utopian happy endings. While mainstream cinema still has relatively little space for trans sexuality beyond dramatic reveals, jokes, and violence, trans filmmakers are already leading us into other worlds.
In this presentation, Horak will discuss material from her new book, Trans Cinema: Making Communities, Identities, and Worlds (University of California 2026), a first-of-its-kind introduction to cinema by trans creators.
Watch the Her Story web series before the talk!
Laura Horak is Professor of Film Studies at Carleton University and director of the Transgender Media Lab and Transgender Media Portal. She is author of the new book Trans Cinema: Making Communities, Identities, and Worlds (University of California 2026) and Girls Will Be Boys: Cross-Dressing Women, Lesbians, and American Cinema (Rutgers 2016) and co-curator of the 99-film Bluray set Cinema’s First Nasty Women (Kino Lorber, 2022).
Email Christine Choi <CCHOI@hostos.cuny.edu> for a Zoom link to the talk.