‘M/V/X is not shocking or emotional. It is especially very Flemish’

Our editor watched the first episode of M/V/X: “The delivers of the most beautiful scuffling on that, in Flanders, is possible.’

‘You can, there is actually not more of bleaching. Ge are also not the first, huh. Allez, yes.’

Everyone in the diving club knows Peter. But the Speedo is now swimsuit: Peter goes from now on …

‘You can, there is actually not more of bleaching. Ge are also not the first, huh. Allez, yes.’

Everyone in the diving club knows Peter. But the Speedo is now swimsuit: Peter is now living as Paulien. There were chairs in a pool, there would be quite some back and forth, thick-set, because the members of the club know but difficult a posture to give. Not that someone has a bad word to speak: “people must know themselves what they want. Allez, yes. Ge know.

The yields of the most beautiful scuffling on in Flanders: a linguistic fumbling of allez yes, hey, how, goh and ‘never say nie never nie’. It will take a few times to happen in the first episode of the four-part documentary M/V/X, in which five Flemish transgender people are followed in their search for a life that better suits them. Namely: the bystanders stamelen. Everyone looks, everyone judges, but with a camera there is the uncomfortable silence.

“What people think, I don’t care’, will Paulien say. Also the four young transgender people Senne, Ariane, Selina and Dylano do their best to make that sentence more credible sound. But the grief, the trauma and uncertainty as a light blue filter over the images. The many close-ups of eyes are no accident: it is where their fear is most visible is when he is unspoken.

Despite the explicit subject matter and the subtle intimacy is M/V/X not surprisingly. Transgender people, ‘you can there is actually not more of the bleaching’. It is also not shocking or emotional. It is sober, sometimes informative, such as the explanation in the UZ Ghent about hormones. But especially: it is very Flemish. Because everyone stammers and shuffles. Not only the members of the club, the aunts and the granny’s, the five main characters themselves. We all know that we are open-minded, but the sequel is, everyone still has to figure it out.

It was perhaps the most refreshing finding. That in times where we are supposed to be each other’s otherness, to accept the box are still not completely removed. “I wanted to be a barbie doll’, ‘skirts fascinated me, “”I played with cars,” say the transgenders. In times of genderneutraal toys and ‘stigmatizing clichés’, these five people hold on to in the box. With an identity that is still the solid ground is looking for, they know little certain except this: I played as a child with dolls so there is a girl in me. I played with cars, so there’s a boy in me. I’m not weird, what I did was the most honest expression of who I really am. The makers of M/V/X have that understood: the story is simple, the looks say it all.