The Gendercator Catherine Crouch 2007

Picture a world without gender variance, without butches and fairies and—gasp—softball. Even worse, imagine passing out at a 70s barbeque and waking up 70 years later a la Rip Van Winkle to a dystopian nightmare, where the drugs have clearly worn off but you’re still not quite sure where you are or when the cat started speaking Japanese. This is the world of The Gendercator, a short film by Catherine Crouch, in which gender exists in only two ways: you’re either a head-butting, bearded rugby man or a subservient, feminine woman. The faux-hawk is a thing of the past, my friends, and so are the lesbian co-ops. And don’t even try to look to Ani to solve your problems. She, like flannel shirts and Celestial Seasonings, will be of no use to you here. In this futuristic foray, our protagonist Sally awakens from her pot-induced cat nap to find that she has been asleep for almost a century and is technically 98 years old. The doctors don’t quite know what to do with Sally, whose short hair and tendency to “dig” women make her a viable candidate for gendercation (aka gender reassignment surgery, kind of). She’s locked in a room with expert Gendercator Tork, who was born a woman but is now a full-fledged, frat-tastic hetero. Tork tries to convince “Sal” that she should turn in her Birkenstocks for the much more alluring beer gut and receding hairline that await her in manhood. To make his case that much more convincing, Tork takes Sally to meet his friends Mano and Lem (“You get to choose your own name!”) for an old fashioned romp through douchedom, equipped with shoving contests, dudeness and pectoral worship, among other things. Not that Sally has any choice in the manner because in the police state that the U.S. has become (it’s like a brother to me!), gender malleability is not an option. And neither is cunnilingus. What will become of our dear Sally? Will she be gendercated? Will she be rescued by the futuristic underground lesbian mafia? Will she awaken from this nightmare, perhaps vowing to think twice about wearing yellow plaid and dancing to Ozzy Osborne with such abandon? Find out when The Gendercator premieres at Chicago Filmmakers this Saturday…

Anna is a freelance masochist who's seen almost every bad lesbian movie to date and secretly loves them all. You can contact her at banannarama01@yahoo.com