Ridley Scott’s Alien is the best sci-fi-horror flick out there. It has all the trappings of a slasher except it’s set in space. As you’ll come to find, I’m a total sucker for slashers, and this movie just hits me in all the right ways. There’s a single Xenomorph hiding in the shadows with its only purpose being to hunt and kill, and it’s very good at what it was engineered to do. The perfect war machine. The movie is not only a testament to Scott’s eye for horror, but also to the brilliant mind that was Hans Ruedi Giger. His set design and creature work are truly brilliant; it changed the world and the way people view Aliens. This creature isn’t your typical Star Trek or Stargate bipedal alien. This thing doesn’t look like a human with some prosthetics glued to their forehead. It’s something new, something different, and something entirely unique. I strongly believe that’s why the Xenomorphs are still popular today.
When Aliens was unleashed upon the world seven years later, it changed the direction of the series from slow-burning slasher in space to a big ol’ action flick with more Xenomorphs, Chestbursters, and Facehuggers than you can shake a stick at. It introduced one of the biggest motifs that runs throughout the rest of the series which is the power of the matriarch, exemplified by the Xenomorph Queen trying to protect her offspring and Ripley trying to protect her “adopted” daughter Newt. It brought an entirely new dimension to the series where it is shown that being a woman, a mother, and a person with emotions doesn’t preclude badassery; in fact, it makes it more apparent and powerful.
With female empowerment in mind, I will be talking about Joan Lambert (Veronica Cartwright), a crew member on the Nostromo in the original Alien. Near the end of the film, it’s only her and Ripley against the Xenomorph. Every male character has died and Lambert has helped to take out Ash, saving what’s left of the crew from a secondary threat. Even though she is killed, there is a SMALL amount of empowerment that can be found through not only her actions in the first movie but also a major retcon shown in Aliens. It’s a small piece of a step towards bigger and better representation for trans characters which is especially surprising for a movie that came out in 1986. This happens to be the same year a movie called I Was a Teenage Boy was released as a “comedy” about a tomboy that drinks a potion to change their gender, which was full of tired stereotypes. But time and time again, even with inadequate representation, horror still comes out ahead in that department.
In any event. In Aliens, after Ripley has been “saved” and resuscitated she is being put through a briefing about what happened in the previous movie. To remind us of the characters, there are headshots and scrolling text on screens behind her. If you pause the movie at the right time, it’s revealed that Lambert either went through a process called Despin Convert or she is referred to as a Despin Convert; it’s not shown whether that’s a title or just the name of the surgery. The exact text shown on screen is: “Subject is Despin Convert at birth (male to female). So far no indication of suppressed traumas related to gender alteration.” It is rare but not implausible that she suffered no trauma from the doctor’s reassignment surgery. Some intersex people have no issue with their genitalia; everybody is different. Sometimes the doctor gets “lucky” and sculpts the “right” genitals, sometimes a good doctor leaves them alone.
This makes Lambert transgender, intersex specifically. When she was born, her genitals were not congruent with the doctor’s idea of what genitals should look like so they put this baby through sexual reassignment surgery. Her death isn’t shown fully on screen; we only see a silhouette of the Xenomorph’s tail creeping upwards. It’s implied that Lambert is raped before it kills her, shoving its tail up inside her where the doctor already mangled her. The revelation that Lambert is intersex makes her already horrific death even worse. In a movie that heavily deals with rape as its subtext, this is even more shocking. Think about it the next time you watch Alien.
According to the Intersex Society of North America, “Intersex” is a general term used for a variety of conditions in which a person is born with a reproductive or sexual anatomy that doesn’t seem to fit the typical definitions of female or male. For example, a person might be born appearing to be female on the outside, but having mostly male-typical anatomy on the inside. Or a person may be born with genitals that seem to be in-between the usual male and female types—for example, a girl may be born with a noticeably large clitoris, or lacking a vaginal opening, or a boy may be born with a notably small penis, or with a scrotum that is divided so that it has formed more like labia. Or a person may be born with mosaic genetics, so that some of her cells have XX chromosomes and some of them have XY.
Just a quick aside here for the people who believe that chromosomes determine gender; as you can see here, intersex people’s gender is not defined by XX or XY. Bodies are weird and there is no hard and fast answer to how gender is determined. It’s all about internal identity and performance; some trans people even go through body language therapy to help them blend in better. Trying to use chromosomes to prove biological sex is dubious and inaccurate. So the chromosome argument regarding trans people not being “actual” women, or men, is a non-starter.
Exactly like in the movie, this happens in real life. Doctors decide to just “fix” what’s there without even giving this person a chance to grow and figure out what their gender might be. I’ve even heard of instances in which the doctor decides to do the surgery real quick without the parent’s consent. The doctor’s reasoning is usually something like wanting to give the child a better chance at a “normal” life. You can find many instances on YouTube or personal blogs where a person’s doctor gave them sexual reassignment when they were a baby and now everything feels wrong for them. It’s the wrong genital configuration, and now they have to go through the process of trying to fix what the doctor already “fixed” at A LARGE COST to them out of pocket. This can range from $20,000 dollars all the way up to over $100,000 when all is said and done. Hopefully one day with enough attention being brought to this issue, no one will have to go through forced genital reassignment surgery again. This can cause so much psychological stress that it can lead to suicide which is a LARGE problem in the trans community. The suicide rate of transgender people hovers around 40-50% and that’s just the number of successful ones counted, not the attempts – which is unfortunately a much higher number.
Over the past 10 years I’ve attempted suicide a few times because I couldn’t take it anymore. The stress was overwhelming. Things are better for me now. It’s still not easy, but I have better coping mechanisms to deal with the abuse hurled at me daily by society and media. It’s not a kind world for transgender people (YET) but since I started transition 10 years ago, I’ve seen a lot of things change and like I said in my previous article, things are getting better for trans people. It’s slow, but it’s still progress. You don’t really get wins, you just do a little better each time. Those who come after you, the younger ones. They’re gonna have it easier, just you see.
First you get a blink-and-miss-it retcon, then eventually someone plays you, and even further on down the line, maybe you actually get to represent yourself on screen. Here’s hoping.
Your Horror Tran,
Alice
