Planet Sex with Cara Delevingne (2022) s01e04 Episode Script
What's Your Gender?
1
Ladies, gentlemen, and those of us
smart enough to transcend a gender.
I know I'm fabulous.
My pronoun's a fat bitch.
For me!
This place is wild.
It's rule-breaking, gender-bending,
and it's at the forefront of
what I see as a gender revolution.
Gender: it's a subject that gets
a lot of people very worked up.
Leave the kid alone.
People get so upset when they
see someone like me in a dress.
What exactly is it?
Bender-gender, cis-tem offender.
And why does it matter so much?
- I wanna be a daddy.
- You are a daddy.
I want to find out, for me, for you,
for all the eight billion
inhabitants of Planet Sex.
PLANET SEX WITH CARA DELEVINGNE
Is this actually meant
to be serious? No
Quite? Half?
Quasi.
For me, I think gender is probably
the most interesting thing
that runs through all
of humanity and society,
but it's the conversation
that people have the least.
This is probably the first time
I've spoken about gender like this,
ever in my life and
it's been 29 years too late!
When I was a little girl,
I liked dressing up in boy's clothes.
I didn't like Barbies, I
liked Action Men. I liked cars.
But then if someone mistook
me for a guy, I'd be like,
"No, I'm a girl. Can't you see that?"
I started having these gender
identity crises as a teenager.
I felt very alone. Completely.
There was no one I could talk to.
The whole thing is very odd.
I'm still figuring it out.
- That's so sweet.
- That was good.
Shut up!
To understand myself better,
I need to discover what gender
feels like for other people.
So I'm putting myself out there
and going to meet some
fabulous gender queer folk.
There's no better place to start
than with someone who's had an
extraordinary gender journey.
This isn't the right place.
This is one of my nearest
and dearest friends, Mik.
You might recognise him as Gottmik,
from the legendary Ru Paul's Drag Race.
All right, stunning angel of my life.
This is Roland's studio.
A lot of artistry happens here.
I got ready for Drag Race here,
covered this place with all my stuff.
This is iconic.
I'm a trans man,
which means I was
assigned female at birth,
and then transitioned into a man.
But I definitely love
playing with femininity.
That's why I love drag so
much, it allows you to do that.
I wake up as a guy and
go to sleep as a guy.
Gottmik, that female-ish persona,
is 1000% just my art form.
When did you first discover
that people can transition?
I'm from Arizona, where
it's very conservative.
I didn't even know what trans was.
When I was 18, I met
a bunch of trans women
who taught me what trans
was and it just clicked.
I didn't transition for so long
because I was very feminine,
and all the trans guys I ever
saw were just very masculine.
So I used drag to see what
I was comfortable with.
It kind of helped me find
my gender and realise that
I'm 1000% not a girl and 1000% a guy.
It's amazing.
I started hormones and it was
like everything fell into place.
It was almost like every issue
I had was solved in one second.
It was like the world was like,
"You're on the right path, bitch."
And it was game over.
Mik's journey, from being
assigned female at birth,
to a trans man who loves
to play with femininity,
has got me thinking about my own path.
If someone had asked me as a
kid if I wanted to be a boy
- Yeah
- I do wonder about this a lot.
If I hadn't become famous,
would it be different?
If I wasn't a model, would
it have been different?
It is scary.
When I started transitioning, I
was a celebrity make-up artist.
It was scary, I was like, my
God, what am I going to do?
Go up to my celebrity clients
and say "Hi, I'm a man today"?
I can't even imagine even
like playing with gender
and trying to figure out shit
in front of the world like that.
All right, so where do you
think you're headed with this?
I honestly don't know.
The older I've gotten,
the less I'm trying to get
approval from my family.
I wonder if I said, "Guys, I want
to transition into being a man,"
what they would do?
And by the way, I would
never say that to them.
This is the thing, it's nothing
against them. They love me.
It's just, some people don't
understand what that is.
And they look at you like
they don't know you, suddenly.
I love you so much, for who you are.
No, but I mean, that's
- I wanna be a daddy.
- You are a daddy, no matter what.
Maybe one way to explore
my inner masculinity
and play with gender
is to dress up in drag.
So Gottmik's put me
in the make-up chair.
- I love this, thickening your brows.
- Yeah, you are.
I haven't ever dressed in male
drag apart from when I was nine.
I would go down the
street dressed as a boy.
I used to get the foam shaving
cream and put it on my face
and pretend to shave with the end
of a moisturiser, because it's hard.
I used to do it next to my
dad, because I wanted to be
I get so nervous.
What are we trying to
build? Like a gender
Bender Cis-tem offender.
Yep.
- I'm writing it down.
- Why are you doing that?
- I think I have a problem.
- Bender gender cis-tem offender.
- Now we transform her.
- OK.
Fem-gen-gen-man, welcome to the world.
It's scary. But in a good way.
- You look like Zac Efron.
- It matches my eyebrows perfectly.
I mean, it's not not
You honestly look hot as all hell.
And after a bit of that Gottmik magic
I'm really feeling it.
Wow. What gender is
happening here, ladies?
Yep. Gentlemen.
You're cool.
For me, drag is an outward expression
of how I feel inside, in
some way, shape or form.
My gender is this kind of like
multi-coloured sea of
sometimes it's wavy and
sometimes it's completely still,
sometimes there's miles of
tidal waves, it's just
For me, it never feels fixed.
But hold off a second.
Before we dig too deep here,
I want to clear some things up.
Like, what actually is gender?
And is it different
from what sex you are?
Let's talk about gender, baby!
Gender.
So I've called in my fellow Brit
and expert, Dr Ronx.
- So right now
- This looks fun.
We're going to do cue cards.
- I'm a bit nervous.
- Gender.
Oh, my God, that's
- It's not an easy starter for ten.
- What is gender?
Gender is essentially
how somebody feels inside,
an innate feeling.
It's not necessarily related to
somebody's sex assigned at birth.
Shall we talk about what sex is?
Because I think people
can confuse sex and gender.
Yes, exactly. Sex.
OK. Sex
Sex is essentially a term
that's given to people at birth
and it divides people into two,
binary constructs, male or female.
It's usually related to
their external sex organs.
So What is your sex?
I mean, my sex is I have a vagina.
So society assumes that
if you have a vagina,
you are going to feel
that you are a woman.
And if you have a penis,
that you are going to
feel that you are a man.
Not everybody goes on to
fit neatly into the box
that society says they should fit into.
Wow. So true.
Trans / transgender.
So, trans people feel that their gender
isn't aligned to the sex they
were assigned to at birth.
So for example a female child
may not grow into a woman.
They might identify as a man.
But the thing we have
to be very clear about
is that the trans experience
is different for absolutely everybody.
I personally have grown up without
feeling like I have a gender.
But it's more that I didn't belong
in any of the gender stereotypes.
For me, the whole feminine
identity was so annoying,
I was like, I am a person
who likes to play outside,
build, climb, do crazy things,
and this dress my mum
used to try to put me in
with really long hair, I was like,
"I can't do any of those things."
So for me, for example, I don't
feel as though I'm a woman.
So I would call myself trans.
I have a vagina and say
that my sex is female, fine.
But that doesn't mean I
have to walk around the world
in a kind of
- As a woman.
- Yeah, of course.
Some estimate that
for around 98% of folk,
their sex and their gender match up.
But about 2% feel differently.
Growing up in the UK,
I've been deeply influenced
by my culture's belief
that boys should be boys
and girls, well, girls.
But there are other cultures
where sex and gender aren't
thought of so rigidly.
OAXACA MEXICO
500 miles south of Mexico City
live the indigenous Zapotec people.
And for more than 500 years,
they've recognised not
two but three genders:
men, women and muxe.
I'm not a man, I'm not a woman,
I am proud to be muxe.
Welcome to my home.
Felina, like most muxe people,
was assigned male at birth.
I was in primary school
when I realised there were men
and there were women,
and I didn't fit into either.
Because I'm not a woman,
I don't feel like a woman,
but I'm not a man either.
But my brothers, my
aunts and my cousins,
they knew as soon as I started
walking that I was muxe.
It's a collective discovery,
it's not individual.
We don't have to prepare our
parents for when we tell them,
"I am muxe."
Instead, everyone knows.
I love that.
Muxe make up about 6% of
people in Felina's hometown,
where they play a unique role.
Some choose to dress in
traditionally masculine clothing.
But most wear dresses and work
in stereotypically feminine trades
such as cooking,
hairdressing and weaving.
Today, Felina is bringing together
muxe from all over the state,
for an annual festival
celebrating muxe culture,
visibility and bravery.
For me, it's very important
to keep our customs
and traditions alive,
so that they never die.
It gives us the opportunity
to get together, to hug one another,
to dance and spend time together.
The Catholic Church isn't known
for supporting gender diversity,
but here in Oaxaca, it's a big
part of the muxe festivities.
As muxes, it's very important
to receive a blessing.
The priest says we
are all God's children.
Oaxaca is not paradise,
but we have worked
to gain visibility and recognition.
Bravo!
It's the first festival
since before the pandemic.
Today I feel very proud, very happy.
What can we show to the world?
Well, obviously, tolerance
and acceptance as people.
I think we should be loved
and accepted as human beings.
I am what I am.
This is part of me, of my culture
and my way of being.
I feel proud of my identity.
It turns out, it's not just Oaxaca
that has more than two genders.
India has the hijra,
in Naples, Italy, there
are the feminielli,
many indigenous Americans
recognise two-spirit people,
whilst Samoa has the fa'fafine,
and an island in Indonesia even
recognises up to five genders.
No, come on, don't eat the birds.
I think the Western
culture that I grew up in,
with just two genders, men and women,
is far too restrictive.
It's no wonder some people
just can't help but rebel.
Like Alok, who defines
themself as non-binary,
meaning they feel neither
like a man nor like a woman.
What do you want from me?
Alok's taking me to a
tailor in the West Village
whose family has been dressing
the gender non-conforming community
for 35 years.
- Hi.
- How are you?
- Oh, my God.
- Your dress is ready, I think.
- That looks great.
- I want you to try them.
OK.
- How do you like it?
- It's really great.
- The length is good.
- Yeah.
- It looks good.
- Can we get more room up here?
- More room here?
- My shoulders are kind of wide.
- We can do that.
- Thank you.
People get so upset when they
see someone like me in a dress.
They'll go, "That's a man in a dress!"
So what?
Why are we so concerned
with policing fashion?
Do you think the binary
has affected us badly?
- Yes.
- Is that more along the lines ?
We're constantly saying,
"You're not masculine
enough, feminine enough."
We're constantly made to
feel like we're not enough.
Being a man has to be
opposite to being a woman.
It only gives us two options.
There's so many different
genders and sexes and sexualities,
in animals and plants and humans.
Gender and sexual
diversity is what's natural,
not dividing billions of complex
things into two categories.
Why, when it comes to humans, do we say,
you all have to be this way?
Yeah, put it in a box, black
and white, this or that.
Meeting you, you're
so outside of gender.
And you have such confidence
in your masculinity.
And for me it was a wake-up call
that all of us are in this journey
of trying to figure out who we are
outside of what we've been told.
And that, actually, in a world
without that societal pressure,
who would we be?
These things are so ingrained in us,
I realise how much internalised
shame I have against myself,
not to anyone else,
But it's still whatever your
parents or grandparents believed.
It does take a long time to change
but the quicker it happens, the
more people will find freedom.
I often say, they'll try
their best to destroy you
and call it love.
But it was often the people who
said that they loved me first
who were policing my gender.
I had to
deny myself, erase myself,
invisibilise myself,
So I didn't allow any
video recordings of me,
I didn't want any photos
or audio recordings,
because I felt I was too feminine,
my voice and gestures too girly.
I was literally in a straightjacket.
So I wouldn't express myself at all.
Can I ask how your relationship
is with your family now?
It's so much better now.
I think because they saw how
this is what happiness is.
Yeah, it's so important.
I want to be happy, I want to be me,
I want to live life outside
of norms and binaries,
I want to live the question.
And one of the things
I wanted to ask you is,
modelling, do you feel
like it's difficult
to figure out what your own image is?
Yeah.
Yeah, really.
My identity as a person, I
don't really know what that is.
In the way of, like
I went from being a
suicidal, depressed teenager
to going straight out of school
and becoming a famous model.
I don't know who I am. Lots of
people don't know who they are.
- Right.
- I'm nearly 30 and I feel like 16.
Our experiences show
how harmful rigid ideas about
masculinity and femininity are.
Not just to people who
feel they don't fit,
but to all of society.
For what it's worth, if
I had grown up in a world
that understood the complexities
of gender a bit better,
I think my childhood would have
been a lot easier and happier.
When I was a teenager,
I mean, I had a lot of
mental stuff going on.
Pretty heavy depression,
suicidal thoughts,
you know, I had a mental breakdown.
It was all to do with finding
identity and sexuality and gender
Yeah, I think a lot of
that was pretty rough.
Because I wasn't like everyone else.
But actually, I was wrong.
Like me, a lot of people growing
up feel confused about gender.
The big question is, why?
Well, gender can be influenced
by how and where we're brought up,
social pressures,
and science tells us that some
of it is down to our biology.
That's you there, in the womb,
with a soup of sex hormones
running through your body.
One key ingredient is testosterone.
For many people, the more
testosterone in the mix,
the more male you may look on
the outside and feel inside.
Low testosterone may make
you look and feel more female.
But hormones combine in complex ways,
meaning sometimes you look one
way and feel quite different.
That's why gender is more of a
spectrum than just men and women.
And, perhaps surprisingly,
so is your body.
Genes and hormones influence whether
you develop a penis or a vagina,
and there can be dozens
of biological variations.
Meet River Gallo.
They are not male or
female, they are intersex,
meaning their sex at birth was unclear.
I used to religiously
not step on cracks.
Of course, me too.
Two in a row's good,
three in a row's bad luck.
You have to spin round ten times,
kick a lamp-post, spit
and go, "Aye, aye, sailor."
Ow
That's what happens when you're
with your bad luck friend.
Fuck you, tree.
River's family runs an
El Salvadorean restaurant.
I cannot wait to find out more
about their extraordinary story.
- This is my mom.
- Thank you so much for having me.
I'm Cara.
Hi.
- Baby.
- Hi, Mom.
And to try their famous pupusas.
- These are really good.
- Cheese or meat.
Yes, pupusa!
I always say, the pupusas
paid for my college.
Tell me a little bit
about you growing up.
I knew there was something
different about me since I was 12,
which was when my doctors told
me I was born without testicles.
So the idea was, we're going
to give you the hormones,
you're going to turn into a boy.
You're going to have these testicles
and you're going to
look male down there.
And, essentially,
I was put on testosterone to
start going through puberty,
and then, when I was 16, I had a surgery
to implant prosthetic
testicles into my scrotum.
I wasn't until I went, I
want to make a film out of it
that I realised that my
condition was intersex.
So it wasn't until I was
26 that I realised that
- Twenty-six.
- Yeah.
There was a word that existed
and it was me that looked it up.
River's groundbreaking
short film Ponyboi
follows a young, intersex
runaway navigating love
and seeking self-acceptance.
It's one of the few films ever
to star an intersex
person as an intersex lead.
It opened up a whole
new world for River.
While writing the
screenplay, I discovered that
my condition is part of
the larger intersex umbrella
and found that there were
these intersex activists,
who were really vocal
about their experiences.
Was it something you were scared of?
Or were you just so happy to find out
- I mean, like, surely
- Yeah
Definitely, both.
It was a relief because it
was community, people, support,
and at the same time it was like
What the fuck? Why
did it take this long?
Why did no doctor, in these last
10 or 12 years, tell me anything?
I recently looked at my
journals from that time.
It was heartbreaking,
because there was a lot of
talk of not wanting to live.
There was a lot of,
like, just confusion
Are you going to cry? OK
- Just checking.
- Shut up! God, you're annoying.
- It breaks my heart, though.
- My heart was broken.
I was crying, reading
these journal entries.
It was just, like, wow,
nobody was really
I needed help. I was, like,
"I don't feel good, I
want to see a therapist."
My parents got me therapists.
- Were you not really pissed?
- Yeah!
I turned that anger into activism.
Is it still the norm, if you're born
intersex, to be assigned a gender?
Pretty much, yeah. Most doctors
say, this is what has to happen.
Leave the kid alone!
It's also doctors preparing
children to have heterosexual sex.
Because that's what it is, it's
a hetero-patriarchal agenda.
That's part of the reason why this,
what I like to call the intersex
tipping point is now happening.
Now we're finally realising
that our shared experience
is collective power
to get these laws made,
so that no intersex child has to
go through what we've been through.
It was really, really
nice to meet River.
There was a sadness about like
being emotionally unsupported,
going through all this
medical stuff alone.
How crazy it would have
been to have someone
make medical decisions that I
couldn't even have control over.
So our sexual biology is actually
this kaleidoscope of diversity.
It's estimated that up to
1.7% of us humans are intersex,
about the same number
of people with red hair.
Our bodies don't always fit
neatly into two categories.
So is this the same for our minds?
The University of Cambridge,
home to Britain's brainiacs,
where scientist Dr Christelle Langley
has been investigating if
gender shows up in the brain.
What we tried to do in our study was
to look at whether we could identify
typically male or female brains.
Brain scans of almost 10,000
people from all around the world
have been analysed with
artificial intelligence
trained to pick out
patterns of neural activity
that differ between males and females.
Interesting. But why
are we looking at a cake?
The brain is made up of a
number of areas and regions,
much like the ingredients of a cake.
It's similar in the brain,
in that we can't identify
these individual components.
The important thing is how the
whole brain functions together.
Male and female brains are
structurally very similar,
but the team discovered differences
in the way they communicate.
Brains were given a score
for how typically male or female
their connection patterns are,
and plotted onto Get ready for it!
A brain-sex continuum.
You'd maybe expect the 10,000 brains
to neatly divide into two
groups according to their sex.
But what Dr Christelle
discovered was a surprise.
So in our study, what we
managed to show was that
approximately 25% mapped onto
the male end of a continuum,
and approximately 25% mapped onto
the female end of the continuum.
The really interesting
finding was that 50% of people
had what we call an androgynous brain,
and didn't show any of these
very stereotypical
male and female traits.
So the majority don't have brains
that are clearly male or female.
They're somewhere in between.
The brain, in terms
of sex, is a spectrum.
And that's not all.
We also showed that the 50%
that had the androgynous brain
actually had better mental health,
specifically internalising symptoms
such as depression and anxiety.
Both the female and male ends of
the spectrum had worse mental health.
The study showed people
with more androgynous brains
are happier and healthier.
All things, considered, I would
choose a slice from this cake.
It's dropping. Sorry!
I think it is way too
easily seen for most
as black and white, male and female.
It's so much more dynamic
and interesting and fascinating
than just what it is.
But it's so much more complicated
than just the simple
way that you're born.
The whole thing is so
archaic, in so many ways.
Okay, story so far:
Rather than being
strictly male or female,
our bodies and our minds
are more fluid and varied
than they ever thought possible.
A massive mix of circumstances
creates millions of unique people
with their own gender identity.
and that's generating
lots of revolutionary ideas
about who you can be in the world.
In Japan, there's a gender phenomenon
that's grown over the last 15 years.
Touch your tie.
Dansō: people assigned female at birth
working and often living as men.
I became dansō when I
was about 20 years old.
My identity is complete
when I am dressed as a man.
There are dansō boy-bands,
dansō bars and dansō heartthrobs.
But behind the showbiz glitz
of dansō as entertainment,
lies a really authentic way of life.
Meet Jin, who lives
as a dansō full-time.
Welcome.
I usually explain that I live
my daily life behaving as a man,
while acknowledging that I am female.
In the past, in Japanese society,
men should be like this,
and women should be like this.
I feel there's a lot of pressure.
I don't like it, I think it's wrong.
Like many dansō, Jin
works as an escort.
A strictly non-sexual one,
playing the perfect boyfriend.
Jin's got an escort date tonight.
- Ayaka?
- Yes.
Good evening. Nice to meet you. I'm Jin.
- Are you nervous?
- I am nervous.
It looks so good.
I'd love to hear what you've been up to.
I work in sales.
I think that most women have
a strong desire to be heard.
Cheers.
Because I was born female,
I know what a woman wants.
It certainly seems Jin knows
how to make a woman feel special.
But I'm curious to know
whether wearing masculine
clothing is enough for him.
There was a time
when I wondered if I was transgender.
There are parts of me that are female,
I can live as a dansō,
so I decided not to have surgery.
I am going to live with both the
inner part of me that is masculine,
and the feminine part of me,
That's what feels right to me.
I think it's a new form,
a new way of belonging.
I totally get why the dansō
want to live and dress like men.
So far, I've only expressed my more
masculine side through what I wear.
I've never quite worked out whether
I should go further than that.
I'm going on a date Wednesday night,
so what are we doing on Thursday?
Oh, my God, you'll never escape.
When I first started
learning about trans people,
I was like, "Wait, but I felt that,"
or "I went through
that when I was young,"
or "that's kind of crazy "
And then thinking, "Am I living a lie?"
"Is this this giant secret
that maybe I should be a man?"
And then like, but also, "No."
Alfie
I love him so much.
What would it be like
to have a man's body?
And is that me?
That's a tough question to answer.
There's someone in Spain
who can give me a taste
of what that might feel like.
This lushly-coiffed
cognitive neuroscientist,
Dr Marte Roel Lesur,
is the brains of a
cutting-edge laboratory
packed with very cool tech.
Welcome to the gender swap.
It's just so cool.
I'm very excited. Can we do it now?
Ready?
You can sit down here.
Here comes the curtain.
Say goodbye to yourselves.
Apparently, I'm going to swap bodies
with the guy sitting
opposite me, Carlos.
I don't know why, I'm a little scared.
My VR headset is not showing my body,
it's showing his, on me.
They have a camera in front so
they can see their full bodies.
What we do is swap the cameras.
The sensation is making me feel queasy.
But my head is actually starting
to get in sync with this male body.
My God, this is so weird.
Cara will see how we grab
his hand, and stroke it,
And at the same time, my
colleague is stroking Cara's hand.
It really feels like
I'm in the body of a man.
I've got man hands!
No way!
That is crazy, guys.
We open a curtain that is separating
the space between the two people,
and they face themselves
as another person.
This is your hand. This one, right here.
- No, so confusing.
- This one.
What?
I feel like I've become Carlos.
Dude, this is crazy.
Our self identity, the
way we perceive ourselves,
is very grounded on our bodies.
However, it is possible to shift this,
to feel that we are somebody
else, something else.
This tells us that
gender is much more fluid,
it's not as fixed as we once thought.
I'm so confused.
That's so weird.
The coolest thing in
the world oh, my God.
The experiment is short
but so intense and
completely mind-bending.
That was so crazy.
I knew it was going to be amazing
I just didn't understand
exactly how crazy that was.
- That was.
- Yeah, it's really a lot.
There is a moment when you lose
your perspective as your body,
and then you are fully into that body.
Once you're in it for
a while, it's like, wow,
you get so used to it.
How come I've got such muscly legs?
It's like, that's me but
then how to feel me?
You know? It's
But it was emotional at the end,
when you see yourself and hug yourself.
It's quite shocking, yes.
That really made me feel quite
sad, it was like, that's adorable.
That was just so scary,
and so interesting.
I don't know how much I liked
it, it was quite uncomfortable.
The feeling, the sensation
of touching someone,
that's when it became real,
otherwise it was "This
is cool, technology "
But when you touch
it was "I'm in a man's body!"
It was really quite crazy.
It made me happy to be
a woman, in so many ways.
It was like, I'm weird.
Because usually I but would
I want to look at my dick?
And it was like, not really.
It made me feel weird.
Trying to be a man, I realised
I was a lot more feminine in the
way that I move than I thought I was.
I am a she, right now.
But I also like dressing
as a man and being a him.
I could just be a woman that
wants to be a man sometimes.
I know I started this journey as
a slightly confused young woman,
not quite sure of my place in the world.
But this bizarre experience
is making me realise
that gender is way more interesting
and fluid than I ever imagined.
Maybe I don't have to
put a label on myself.
I'm in my home town, London!
I'm ending this journey where I started,
with the fabulous folk at
cabaret night Bar Wotever.
A very, very special haven where,
gender-wise, you can
literally be whatever you want.
Tell me what it's like.
I've never been here.
- I'm
- Your first time.
Bar Wotever is The name says it,
it's a night that we put on
where everything's welcome.
All you have to do is
walk through the door
and there is a room, a whole
community of people right there.
- It's so incredible.
- That's so cool.
How do you What are your pronouns?
They, them, she, her.
He, him, they, them.
They, them.
She, her, she-daddy.
She-daddy, I like that.
I feel it's going to make a
lot of people happy when they
I like that.
There's no pressure, everything
should be allowed to be fluid.
You can try pronouns,
try different names,
different expressions.
There's just so much freedom within it.
Especially at a night like
this, it's just freedom.
It's liberating to now
feel able to talk about
this tricky subject that I
used to just run away from.
This is the place to see,
both on and off stage,
just how diverse gender can be.
Ladies, gentlemen, and
those of us smart enough
to transcend a gender.
Come on, it's time for the world
to open up its arms to gender
in all of its fantastic forms.
People need to have
conversations about gender,
no matter where you're
from, how old you are.
So let's talk about it.
Now I feel like I dance between
the lines, I sway back and forward.
Whether it's masculine or
feminine, it's just who I am.
I'm a loose willow tree,
blowing in the wind of gender.
I don't think there are actually
words to express how freeing,
and how "right" I feel in myself now.
I've realised that
gender has no signifier
on how you look, how you talk,
what you do with your life.
I don't think it should matter at all,
people should just be people.
despite what their gender is, or isn't,
I hope that in the future,
we can all exist in
the same space together.
And every single gender
expression is completely valid.
I'm just living off this queer energy.
It's a beautiful place.
I've never really been out and
seen this community in this way.
It's a lot of emotion, a lot
of support, a lot of love.
People can feel very weighed down
by a conversation about gender.
But it is fun, it should be
fun, it should be an experience,
an experiment, a way of expressing
yourself and playing with it.
Can I go back in?
Okay, here I go, I'm going
Planet Sex, yeah!
Ladies, gentlemen, and those of us
smart enough to transcend a gender.
I know I'm fabulous.
My pronoun's a fat bitch.
For me!
This place is wild.
It's rule-breaking, gender-bending,
and it's at the forefront of
what I see as a gender revolution.
Gender: it's a subject that gets
a lot of people very worked up.
Leave the kid alone.
People get so upset when they
see someone like me in a dress.
What exactly is it?
Bender-gender, cis-tem offender.
And why does it matter so much?
- I wanna be a daddy.
- You are a daddy.
I want to find out, for me, for you,
for all the eight billion
inhabitants of Planet Sex.
PLANET SEX WITH CARA DELEVINGNE
Is this actually meant
to be serious? No
Quite? Half?
Quasi.
For me, I think gender is probably
the most interesting thing
that runs through all
of humanity and society,
but it's the conversation
that people have the least.
This is probably the first time
I've spoken about gender like this,
ever in my life and
it's been 29 years too late!
When I was a little girl,
I liked dressing up in boy's clothes.
I didn't like Barbies, I
liked Action Men. I liked cars.
But then if someone mistook
me for a guy, I'd be like,
"No, I'm a girl. Can't you see that?"
I started having these gender
identity crises as a teenager.
I felt very alone. Completely.
There was no one I could talk to.
The whole thing is very odd.
I'm still figuring it out.
- That's so sweet.
- That was good.
Shut up!
To understand myself better,
I need to discover what gender
feels like for other people.
So I'm putting myself out there
and going to meet some
fabulous gender queer folk.
There's no better place to start
than with someone who's had an
extraordinary gender journey.
This isn't the right place.
This is one of my nearest
and dearest friends, Mik.
You might recognise him as Gottmik,
from the legendary Ru Paul's Drag Race.
All right, stunning angel of my life.
This is Roland's studio.
A lot of artistry happens here.
I got ready for Drag Race here,
covered this place with all my stuff.
This is iconic.
I'm a trans man,
which means I was
assigned female at birth,
and then transitioned into a man.
But I definitely love
playing with femininity.
That's why I love drag so
much, it allows you to do that.
I wake up as a guy and
go to sleep as a guy.
Gottmik, that female-ish persona,
is 1000% just my art form.
When did you first discover
that people can transition?
I'm from Arizona, where
it's very conservative.
I didn't even know what trans was.
When I was 18, I met
a bunch of trans women
who taught me what trans
was and it just clicked.
I didn't transition for so long
because I was very feminine,
and all the trans guys I ever
saw were just very masculine.
So I used drag to see what
I was comfortable with.
It kind of helped me find
my gender and realise that
I'm 1000% not a girl and 1000% a guy.
It's amazing.
I started hormones and it was
like everything fell into place.
It was almost like every issue
I had was solved in one second.
It was like the world was like,
"You're on the right path, bitch."
And it was game over.
Mik's journey, from being
assigned female at birth,
to a trans man who loves
to play with femininity,
has got me thinking about my own path.
If someone had asked me as a
kid if I wanted to be a boy
- Yeah
- I do wonder about this a lot.
If I hadn't become famous,
would it be different?
If I wasn't a model, would
it have been different?
It is scary.
When I started transitioning, I
was a celebrity make-up artist.
It was scary, I was like, my
God, what am I going to do?
Go up to my celebrity clients
and say "Hi, I'm a man today"?
I can't even imagine even
like playing with gender
and trying to figure out shit
in front of the world like that.
All right, so where do you
think you're headed with this?
I honestly don't know.
The older I've gotten,
the less I'm trying to get
approval from my family.
I wonder if I said, "Guys, I want
to transition into being a man,"
what they would do?
And by the way, I would
never say that to them.
This is the thing, it's nothing
against them. They love me.
It's just, some people don't
understand what that is.
And they look at you like
they don't know you, suddenly.
I love you so much, for who you are.
No, but I mean, that's
- I wanna be a daddy.
- You are a daddy, no matter what.
Maybe one way to explore
my inner masculinity
and play with gender
is to dress up in drag.
So Gottmik's put me
in the make-up chair.
- I love this, thickening your brows.
- Yeah, you are.
I haven't ever dressed in male
drag apart from when I was nine.
I would go down the
street dressed as a boy.
I used to get the foam shaving
cream and put it on my face
and pretend to shave with the end
of a moisturiser, because it's hard.
I used to do it next to my
dad, because I wanted to be
I get so nervous.
What are we trying to
build? Like a gender
Bender Cis-tem offender.
Yep.
- I'm writing it down.
- Why are you doing that?
- I think I have a problem.
- Bender gender cis-tem offender.
- Now we transform her.
- OK.
Fem-gen-gen-man, welcome to the world.
It's scary. But in a good way.
- You look like Zac Efron.
- It matches my eyebrows perfectly.
I mean, it's not not
You honestly look hot as all hell.
And after a bit of that Gottmik magic
I'm really feeling it.
Wow. What gender is
happening here, ladies?
Yep. Gentlemen.
You're cool.
For me, drag is an outward expression
of how I feel inside, in
some way, shape or form.
My gender is this kind of like
multi-coloured sea of
sometimes it's wavy and
sometimes it's completely still,
sometimes there's miles of
tidal waves, it's just
For me, it never feels fixed.
But hold off a second.
Before we dig too deep here,
I want to clear some things up.
Like, what actually is gender?
And is it different
from what sex you are?
Let's talk about gender, baby!
Gender.
So I've called in my fellow Brit
and expert, Dr Ronx.
- So right now
- This looks fun.
We're going to do cue cards.
- I'm a bit nervous.
- Gender.
Oh, my God, that's
- It's not an easy starter for ten.
- What is gender?
Gender is essentially
how somebody feels inside,
an innate feeling.
It's not necessarily related to
somebody's sex assigned at birth.
Shall we talk about what sex is?
Because I think people
can confuse sex and gender.
Yes, exactly. Sex.
OK. Sex
Sex is essentially a term
that's given to people at birth
and it divides people into two,
binary constructs, male or female.
It's usually related to
their external sex organs.
So What is your sex?
I mean, my sex is I have a vagina.
So society assumes that
if you have a vagina,
you are going to feel
that you are a woman.
And if you have a penis,
that you are going to
feel that you are a man.
Not everybody goes on to
fit neatly into the box
that society says they should fit into.
Wow. So true.
Trans / transgender.
So, trans people feel that their gender
isn't aligned to the sex they
were assigned to at birth.
So for example a female child
may not grow into a woman.
They might identify as a man.
But the thing we have
to be very clear about
is that the trans experience
is different for absolutely everybody.
I personally have grown up without
feeling like I have a gender.
But it's more that I didn't belong
in any of the gender stereotypes.
For me, the whole feminine
identity was so annoying,
I was like, I am a person
who likes to play outside,
build, climb, do crazy things,
and this dress my mum
used to try to put me in
with really long hair, I was like,
"I can't do any of those things."
So for me, for example, I don't
feel as though I'm a woman.
So I would call myself trans.
I have a vagina and say
that my sex is female, fine.
But that doesn't mean I
have to walk around the world
in a kind of
- As a woman.
- Yeah, of course.
Some estimate that
for around 98% of folk,
their sex and their gender match up.
But about 2% feel differently.
Growing up in the UK,
I've been deeply influenced
by my culture's belief
that boys should be boys
and girls, well, girls.
But there are other cultures
where sex and gender aren't
thought of so rigidly.
OAXACA MEXICO
500 miles south of Mexico City
live the indigenous Zapotec people.
And for more than 500 years,
they've recognised not
two but three genders:
men, women and muxe.
I'm not a man, I'm not a woman,
I am proud to be muxe.
Welcome to my home.
Felina, like most muxe people,
was assigned male at birth.
I was in primary school
when I realised there were men
and there were women,
and I didn't fit into either.
Because I'm not a woman,
I don't feel like a woman,
but I'm not a man either.
But my brothers, my
aunts and my cousins,
they knew as soon as I started
walking that I was muxe.
It's a collective discovery,
it's not individual.
We don't have to prepare our
parents for when we tell them,
"I am muxe."
Instead, everyone knows.
I love that.
Muxe make up about 6% of
people in Felina's hometown,
where they play a unique role.
Some choose to dress in
traditionally masculine clothing.
But most wear dresses and work
in stereotypically feminine trades
such as cooking,
hairdressing and weaving.
Today, Felina is bringing together
muxe from all over the state,
for an annual festival
celebrating muxe culture,
visibility and bravery.
For me, it's very important
to keep our customs
and traditions alive,
so that they never die.
It gives us the opportunity
to get together, to hug one another,
to dance and spend time together.
The Catholic Church isn't known
for supporting gender diversity,
but here in Oaxaca, it's a big
part of the muxe festivities.
As muxes, it's very important
to receive a blessing.
The priest says we
are all God's children.
Oaxaca is not paradise,
but we have worked
to gain visibility and recognition.
Bravo!
It's the first festival
since before the pandemic.
Today I feel very proud, very happy.
What can we show to the world?
Well, obviously, tolerance
and acceptance as people.
I think we should be loved
and accepted as human beings.
I am what I am.
This is part of me, of my culture
and my way of being.
I feel proud of my identity.
It turns out, it's not just Oaxaca
that has more than two genders.
India has the hijra,
in Naples, Italy, there
are the feminielli,
many indigenous Americans
recognise two-spirit people,
whilst Samoa has the fa'fafine,
and an island in Indonesia even
recognises up to five genders.
No, come on, don't eat the birds.
I think the Western
culture that I grew up in,
with just two genders, men and women,
is far too restrictive.
It's no wonder some people
just can't help but rebel.
Like Alok, who defines
themself as non-binary,
meaning they feel neither
like a man nor like a woman.
What do you want from me?
Alok's taking me to a
tailor in the West Village
whose family has been dressing
the gender non-conforming community
for 35 years.
- Hi.
- How are you?
- Oh, my God.
- Your dress is ready, I think.
- That looks great.
- I want you to try them.
OK.
- How do you like it?
- It's really great.
- The length is good.
- Yeah.
- It looks good.
- Can we get more room up here?
- More room here?
- My shoulders are kind of wide.
- We can do that.
- Thank you.
People get so upset when they
see someone like me in a dress.
They'll go, "That's a man in a dress!"
So what?
Why are we so concerned
with policing fashion?
Do you think the binary
has affected us badly?
- Yes.
- Is that more along the lines ?
We're constantly saying,
"You're not masculine
enough, feminine enough."
We're constantly made to
feel like we're not enough.
Being a man has to be
opposite to being a woman.
It only gives us two options.
There's so many different
genders and sexes and sexualities,
in animals and plants and humans.
Gender and sexual
diversity is what's natural,
not dividing billions of complex
things into two categories.
Why, when it comes to humans, do we say,
you all have to be this way?
Yeah, put it in a box, black
and white, this or that.
Meeting you, you're
so outside of gender.
And you have such confidence
in your masculinity.
And for me it was a wake-up call
that all of us are in this journey
of trying to figure out who we are
outside of what we've been told.
And that, actually, in a world
without that societal pressure,
who would we be?
These things are so ingrained in us,
I realise how much internalised
shame I have against myself,
not to anyone else,
But it's still whatever your
parents or grandparents believed.
It does take a long time to change
but the quicker it happens, the
more people will find freedom.
I often say, they'll try
their best to destroy you
and call it love.
But it was often the people who
said that they loved me first
who were policing my gender.
I had to
deny myself, erase myself,
invisibilise myself,
So I didn't allow any
video recordings of me,
I didn't want any photos
or audio recordings,
because I felt I was too feminine,
my voice and gestures too girly.
I was literally in a straightjacket.
So I wouldn't express myself at all.
Can I ask how your relationship
is with your family now?
It's so much better now.
I think because they saw how
this is what happiness is.
Yeah, it's so important.
I want to be happy, I want to be me,
I want to live life outside
of norms and binaries,
I want to live the question.
And one of the things
I wanted to ask you is,
modelling, do you feel
like it's difficult
to figure out what your own image is?
Yeah.
Yeah, really.
My identity as a person, I
don't really know what that is.
In the way of, like
I went from being a
suicidal, depressed teenager
to going straight out of school
and becoming a famous model.
I don't know who I am. Lots of
people don't know who they are.
- Right.
- I'm nearly 30 and I feel like 16.
Our experiences show
how harmful rigid ideas about
masculinity and femininity are.
Not just to people who
feel they don't fit,
but to all of society.
For what it's worth, if
I had grown up in a world
that understood the complexities
of gender a bit better,
I think my childhood would have
been a lot easier and happier.
When I was a teenager,
I mean, I had a lot of
mental stuff going on.
Pretty heavy depression,
suicidal thoughts,
you know, I had a mental breakdown.
It was all to do with finding
identity and sexuality and gender
Yeah, I think a lot of
that was pretty rough.
Because I wasn't like everyone else.
But actually, I was wrong.
Like me, a lot of people growing
up feel confused about gender.
The big question is, why?
Well, gender can be influenced
by how and where we're brought up,
social pressures,
and science tells us that some
of it is down to our biology.
That's you there, in the womb,
with a soup of sex hormones
running through your body.
One key ingredient is testosterone.
For many people, the more
testosterone in the mix,
the more male you may look on
the outside and feel inside.
Low testosterone may make
you look and feel more female.
But hormones combine in complex ways,
meaning sometimes you look one
way and feel quite different.
That's why gender is more of a
spectrum than just men and women.
And, perhaps surprisingly,
so is your body.
Genes and hormones influence whether
you develop a penis or a vagina,
and there can be dozens
of biological variations.
Meet River Gallo.
They are not male or
female, they are intersex,
meaning their sex at birth was unclear.
I used to religiously
not step on cracks.
Of course, me too.
Two in a row's good,
three in a row's bad luck.
You have to spin round ten times,
kick a lamp-post, spit
and go, "Aye, aye, sailor."
Ow
That's what happens when you're
with your bad luck friend.
Fuck you, tree.
River's family runs an
El Salvadorean restaurant.
I cannot wait to find out more
about their extraordinary story.
- This is my mom.
- Thank you so much for having me.
I'm Cara.
Hi.
- Baby.
- Hi, Mom.
And to try their famous pupusas.
- These are really good.
- Cheese or meat.
Yes, pupusa!
I always say, the pupusas
paid for my college.
Tell me a little bit
about you growing up.
I knew there was something
different about me since I was 12,
which was when my doctors told
me I was born without testicles.
So the idea was, we're going
to give you the hormones,
you're going to turn into a boy.
You're going to have these testicles
and you're going to
look male down there.
And, essentially,
I was put on testosterone to
start going through puberty,
and then, when I was 16, I had a surgery
to implant prosthetic
testicles into my scrotum.
I wasn't until I went, I
want to make a film out of it
that I realised that my
condition was intersex.
So it wasn't until I was
26 that I realised that
- Twenty-six.
- Yeah.
There was a word that existed
and it was me that looked it up.
River's groundbreaking
short film Ponyboi
follows a young, intersex
runaway navigating love
and seeking self-acceptance.
It's one of the few films ever
to star an intersex
person as an intersex lead.
It opened up a whole
new world for River.
While writing the
screenplay, I discovered that
my condition is part of
the larger intersex umbrella
and found that there were
these intersex activists,
who were really vocal
about their experiences.
Was it something you were scared of?
Or were you just so happy to find out
- I mean, like, surely
- Yeah
Definitely, both.
It was a relief because it
was community, people, support,
and at the same time it was like
What the fuck? Why
did it take this long?
Why did no doctor, in these last
10 or 12 years, tell me anything?
I recently looked at my
journals from that time.
It was heartbreaking,
because there was a lot of
talk of not wanting to live.
There was a lot of,
like, just confusion
Are you going to cry? OK
- Just checking.
- Shut up! God, you're annoying.
- It breaks my heart, though.
- My heart was broken.
I was crying, reading
these journal entries.
It was just, like, wow,
nobody was really
I needed help. I was, like,
"I don't feel good, I
want to see a therapist."
My parents got me therapists.
- Were you not really pissed?
- Yeah!
I turned that anger into activism.
Is it still the norm, if you're born
intersex, to be assigned a gender?
Pretty much, yeah. Most doctors
say, this is what has to happen.
Leave the kid alone!
It's also doctors preparing
children to have heterosexual sex.
Because that's what it is, it's
a hetero-patriarchal agenda.
That's part of the reason why this,
what I like to call the intersex
tipping point is now happening.
Now we're finally realising
that our shared experience
is collective power
to get these laws made,
so that no intersex child has to
go through what we've been through.
It was really, really
nice to meet River.
There was a sadness about like
being emotionally unsupported,
going through all this
medical stuff alone.
How crazy it would have
been to have someone
make medical decisions that I
couldn't even have control over.
So our sexual biology is actually
this kaleidoscope of diversity.
It's estimated that up to
1.7% of us humans are intersex,
about the same number
of people with red hair.
Our bodies don't always fit
neatly into two categories.
So is this the same for our minds?
The University of Cambridge,
home to Britain's brainiacs,
where scientist Dr Christelle Langley
has been investigating if
gender shows up in the brain.
What we tried to do in our study was
to look at whether we could identify
typically male or female brains.
Brain scans of almost 10,000
people from all around the world
have been analysed with
artificial intelligence
trained to pick out
patterns of neural activity
that differ between males and females.
Interesting. But why
are we looking at a cake?
The brain is made up of a
number of areas and regions,
much like the ingredients of a cake.
It's similar in the brain,
in that we can't identify
these individual components.
The important thing is how the
whole brain functions together.
Male and female brains are
structurally very similar,
but the team discovered differences
in the way they communicate.
Brains were given a score
for how typically male or female
their connection patterns are,
and plotted onto Get ready for it!
A brain-sex continuum.
You'd maybe expect the 10,000 brains
to neatly divide into two
groups according to their sex.
But what Dr Christelle
discovered was a surprise.
So in our study, what we
managed to show was that
approximately 25% mapped onto
the male end of a continuum,
and approximately 25% mapped onto
the female end of the continuum.
The really interesting
finding was that 50% of people
had what we call an androgynous brain,
and didn't show any of these
very stereotypical
male and female traits.
So the majority don't have brains
that are clearly male or female.
They're somewhere in between.
The brain, in terms
of sex, is a spectrum.
And that's not all.
We also showed that the 50%
that had the androgynous brain
actually had better mental health,
specifically internalising symptoms
such as depression and anxiety.
Both the female and male ends of
the spectrum had worse mental health.
The study showed people
with more androgynous brains
are happier and healthier.
All things, considered, I would
choose a slice from this cake.
It's dropping. Sorry!
I think it is way too
easily seen for most
as black and white, male and female.
It's so much more dynamic
and interesting and fascinating
than just what it is.
But it's so much more complicated
than just the simple
way that you're born.
The whole thing is so
archaic, in so many ways.
Okay, story so far:
Rather than being
strictly male or female,
our bodies and our minds
are more fluid and varied
than they ever thought possible.
A massive mix of circumstances
creates millions of unique people
with their own gender identity.
and that's generating
lots of revolutionary ideas
about who you can be in the world.
In Japan, there's a gender phenomenon
that's grown over the last 15 years.
Touch your tie.
Dansō: people assigned female at birth
working and often living as men.
I became dansō when I
was about 20 years old.
My identity is complete
when I am dressed as a man.
There are dansō boy-bands,
dansō bars and dansō heartthrobs.
But behind the showbiz glitz
of dansō as entertainment,
lies a really authentic way of life.
Meet Jin, who lives
as a dansō full-time.
Welcome.
I usually explain that I live
my daily life behaving as a man,
while acknowledging that I am female.
In the past, in Japanese society,
men should be like this,
and women should be like this.
I feel there's a lot of pressure.
I don't like it, I think it's wrong.
Like many dansō, Jin
works as an escort.
A strictly non-sexual one,
playing the perfect boyfriend.
Jin's got an escort date tonight.
- Ayaka?
- Yes.
Good evening. Nice to meet you. I'm Jin.
- Are you nervous?
- I am nervous.
It looks so good.
I'd love to hear what you've been up to.
I work in sales.
I think that most women have
a strong desire to be heard.
Cheers.
Because I was born female,
I know what a woman wants.
It certainly seems Jin knows
how to make a woman feel special.
But I'm curious to know
whether wearing masculine
clothing is enough for him.
There was a time
when I wondered if I was transgender.
There are parts of me that are female,
I can live as a dansō,
so I decided not to have surgery.
I am going to live with both the
inner part of me that is masculine,
and the feminine part of me,
That's what feels right to me.
I think it's a new form,
a new way of belonging.
I totally get why the dansō
want to live and dress like men.
So far, I've only expressed my more
masculine side through what I wear.
I've never quite worked out whether
I should go further than that.
I'm going on a date Wednesday night,
so what are we doing on Thursday?
Oh, my God, you'll never escape.
When I first started
learning about trans people,
I was like, "Wait, but I felt that,"
or "I went through
that when I was young,"
or "that's kind of crazy "
And then thinking, "Am I living a lie?"
"Is this this giant secret
that maybe I should be a man?"
And then like, but also, "No."
Alfie
I love him so much.
What would it be like
to have a man's body?
And is that me?
That's a tough question to answer.
There's someone in Spain
who can give me a taste
of what that might feel like.
This lushly-coiffed
cognitive neuroscientist,
Dr Marte Roel Lesur,
is the brains of a
cutting-edge laboratory
packed with very cool tech.
Welcome to the gender swap.
It's just so cool.
I'm very excited. Can we do it now?
Ready?
You can sit down here.
Here comes the curtain.
Say goodbye to yourselves.
Apparently, I'm going to swap bodies
with the guy sitting
opposite me, Carlos.
I don't know why, I'm a little scared.
My VR headset is not showing my body,
it's showing his, on me.
They have a camera in front so
they can see their full bodies.
What we do is swap the cameras.
The sensation is making me feel queasy.
But my head is actually starting
to get in sync with this male body.
My God, this is so weird.
Cara will see how we grab
his hand, and stroke it,
And at the same time, my
colleague is stroking Cara's hand.
It really feels like
I'm in the body of a man.
I've got man hands!
No way!
That is crazy, guys.
We open a curtain that is separating
the space between the two people,
and they face themselves
as another person.
This is your hand. This one, right here.
- No, so confusing.
- This one.
What?
I feel like I've become Carlos.
Dude, this is crazy.
Our self identity, the
way we perceive ourselves,
is very grounded on our bodies.
However, it is possible to shift this,
to feel that we are somebody
else, something else.
This tells us that
gender is much more fluid,
it's not as fixed as we once thought.
I'm so confused.
That's so weird.
The coolest thing in
the world oh, my God.
The experiment is short
but so intense and
completely mind-bending.
That was so crazy.
I knew it was going to be amazing
I just didn't understand
exactly how crazy that was.
- That was.
- Yeah, it's really a lot.
There is a moment when you lose
your perspective as your body,
and then you are fully into that body.
Once you're in it for
a while, it's like, wow,
you get so used to it.
How come I've got such muscly legs?
It's like, that's me but
then how to feel me?
You know? It's
But it was emotional at the end,
when you see yourself and hug yourself.
It's quite shocking, yes.
That really made me feel quite
sad, it was like, that's adorable.
That was just so scary,
and so interesting.
I don't know how much I liked
it, it was quite uncomfortable.
The feeling, the sensation
of touching someone,
that's when it became real,
otherwise it was "This
is cool, technology "
But when you touch
it was "I'm in a man's body!"
It was really quite crazy.
It made me happy to be
a woman, in so many ways.
It was like, I'm weird.
Because usually I but would
I want to look at my dick?
And it was like, not really.
It made me feel weird.
Trying to be a man, I realised
I was a lot more feminine in the
way that I move than I thought I was.
I am a she, right now.
But I also like dressing
as a man and being a him.
I could just be a woman that
wants to be a man sometimes.
I know I started this journey as
a slightly confused young woman,
not quite sure of my place in the world.
But this bizarre experience
is making me realise
that gender is way more interesting
and fluid than I ever imagined.
Maybe I don't have to
put a label on myself.
I'm in my home town, London!
I'm ending this journey where I started,
with the fabulous folk at
cabaret night Bar Wotever.
A very, very special haven where,
gender-wise, you can
literally be whatever you want.
Tell me what it's like.
I've never been here.
- I'm
- Your first time.
Bar Wotever is The name says it,
it's a night that we put on
where everything's welcome.
All you have to do is
walk through the door
and there is a room, a whole
community of people right there.
- It's so incredible.
- That's so cool.
How do you What are your pronouns?
They, them, she, her.
He, him, they, them.
They, them.
She, her, she-daddy.
She-daddy, I like that.
I feel it's going to make a
lot of people happy when they
I like that.
There's no pressure, everything
should be allowed to be fluid.
You can try pronouns,
try different names,
different expressions.
There's just so much freedom within it.
Especially at a night like
this, it's just freedom.
It's liberating to now
feel able to talk about
this tricky subject that I
used to just run away from.
This is the place to see,
both on and off stage,
just how diverse gender can be.
Ladies, gentlemen, and
those of us smart enough
to transcend a gender.
Come on, it's time for the world
to open up its arms to gender
in all of its fantastic forms.
People need to have
conversations about gender,
no matter where you're
from, how old you are.
So let's talk about it.
Now I feel like I dance between
the lines, I sway back and forward.
Whether it's masculine or
feminine, it's just who I am.
I'm a loose willow tree,
blowing in the wind of gender.
I don't think there are actually
words to express how freeing,
and how "right" I feel in myself now.
I've realised that
gender has no signifier
on how you look, how you talk,
what you do with your life.
I don't think it should matter at all,
people should just be people.
despite what their gender is, or isn't,
I hope that in the future,
we can all exist in
the same space together.
And every single gender
expression is completely valid.
I'm just living off this queer energy.
It's a beautiful place.
I've never really been out and
seen this community in this way.
It's a lot of emotion, a lot
of support, a lot of love.
People can feel very weighed down
by a conversation about gender.
But it is fun, it should be
fun, it should be an experience,
an experiment, a way of expressing
yourself and playing with it.
Can I go back in?
Okay, here I go, I'm going
Planet Sex, yeah!