You Must Be Some Kind of Therapist

Swell AI Transcript: 129. Vaishnavi Sundar.mp3
Vaishnavi Sundar:
The narcissism, the gaslighting, the coercive control, cutting them off from any and all support system that they had made these women succumb to this so hard. It must have taken them every morsel of willpower to get up and leave when I have such profound respect for all these women who agreed to speak with me. Nobody had asked them these questions. It was always about the rainbow flag, this flag, and that flag, and about them, those men, and how those wives are feeling about the man's transition. It's not even about how she's feeling as herself, you know? It's always about them. She was like a ghost, you know?

Stephanie Winn: You must be some kind of therapist. Today, I have the pleasure of speaking with Vaishnavi Sundar. She might be best known, at least amongst my audience, as the creator of a few films, most recently, Behind the Looking Glass, the first ever documentary on trans widows. She's also the creator of the four-part series, Dysphoric, which is about the gender dysphoria crisis. More broadly, she's a writer and a self-taught filmmaker from Chennai, India. Through her films, She advocates for the rights of women and girls worldwide. She founded Lime Soda Films about a decade ago with the aim of highlighting themes of social justice, women's empowerment, and education. She's the founder of Women Making Films, a platform for female filmmakers to collaborate and create works of art, and has the privilege to host the work of members from more than 20 countries. Vaishnavi, it's so great to have you with me today. Thank you for joining me. Thank you so much for having me, Stephanie. All right, so first of all, congratulations on releasing Behind the Looking Glass. I know that's available now for anyone who wants to watch it for free on YouTube. So great job putting that out there. And I think we'll kind of start there because the topic of trans widows is something that I've been asked to address a few times and just haven't really had the right opportunity yet. So I'm really grateful to begin this with you. Tell us about your film.

Vaishnavi Sundar: Sure. Behind the Looking Glass is a feature-length documentary that puts together the experiences of women whose partners have already or are in the process of transitioning from male to female. Now, this film is also about the experiences of these women who are coerced into calling themselves lesbians now because their husbands or partners are self-identifying as female. The film is also a unique blend of different things that affect women in a particular situation like that, because not unlike domestic violence, things are pretty much the same in terms of abuse and other narratives associated with domestic violence. The one striking thing about women in such situations, the trans widows, is that there is now an added layer of silencing and stigma and taboo around them speaking out against their trans-identified husband or partner because apparently they absolutely are the most perfect people in the world and they can do no harm. And if they do, and if these women talk about it, they are not believed, they are told that they are liars, and they are accused of making that man's transition about themselves. So I thought there is a whole vacuum of knowledge that we need to put together in the form of a film by talking to women, different women, diverse group of women from different age group, different belief system, different countries, and just put together a perspective for people to understand that there is a lot going on behind that looking glass in front of which the man is often standing and imagining himself to be a woman.

Stephanie Winn: And with regard to that metaphor of the looking glass, throughout the film, there is this recurrent image of presumably narcissists staring at his reflection in the pond. So there's this element of this man falling in love with himself or with the image of himself as a woman. And this is one of those many places that is so important to explore and yet so taboo. to really look at the intersection between gender ideology and cluster B personality disorders, traits, and behaviors, most notably in your film, the narcissism of these men, as well as their history of other types of psychological, and in some cases, physical or financial abuse of their partners. So tell us about sort of that metaphor that you chose of the looking glass and how the theme of narcissism emerged in your research on this issue.

Vaishnavi Sundar: I didn't arrive at the title behind the looking glass. when I started the research for the project. I just left that open-ended. I wasn't sure about what to call it. I thought of so many different things I could call it, completely unrelated to the ideology, something boring and cliche because it'll be memorable and people won't forget the name of the film if it is like a stereotypical name or something like that. And then at one point, I decided to call it the tale of wives, or, you know, just really, it was just not coming to me then. And then as I was exploring, as I was understanding these women's stories, when they were narrating them to me, one thing just stood out for me about how much about the women's experiences were also about the men. The woman couldn't isolate her experience singularly in a way that is just unique about her. She had to always bring him along or she has to always latch herself onto him when she is explaining her predicament, her thoughts, her emotions about it. So it was very obvious that this man has got a very stronghold, a very powerful control over her in terms of financial accessibility, child custody, and many such situations that we know that members who, men who engage in gaslighting and coercive control usually employ. So those were all things that were already there in such situations as well. But I could, understand that it was everything was about this man's reflection as a woman and in his mind it's not a reflection he's seeing he's seeing himself but we also know that it is the projection of himself that he's seeing as a woman that is seeming to be providing some sort of a titillation to him some sort of a sexual gratification to him we don't know the the the reason why they do it. Not all of them have the same reason, but many of them have a very solid reason of looking at themselves and envisioning themselves as this female. And then all those stories that these women were narrating, in my mind, you know how sometimes when you chat with somebody and when they're narrating a story, your mind subconsciously just tends to build images in the back of the mind, right? So whenever these women were narrating these stories to me about how he would wear these clothes, he would buy a wig that will look like the wife's head and things like that, I imagined those men standing in front of the mirror but then a little bit far behind is his wife who's watching him watch himself. Now I wanted to bring that background onto the foreground and I wanted to really just say that behind this looking glass that these men are so engrossed in looking at themselves and their reflection falling in love with themselves there are these hidden stories that nobody wants to talk about and I suppose it came to me as a collection of all of these experiences and these visual cues that my brain was just very unbeknownst to me creating. And then I decided on this title somewhere, not long ago, actually, just when I had probably finished collecting all the stories, I didn't have a title even then. So it was a big thing, a film about trans widows is what I could say, because I hadn't decided on what to call that yet. So thankfully after having all of those conversations, it just came to me and I decided that there is nothing better that describes this whole paraphilia than to talk about references of images, I'm sorry, mirrors and how these men watch themselves and what's left behind this obsession. That's kind of the story behind the title.

Stephanie Winn: So really taking the woman who's in the background and centering her in the foreground and highlighting what her experiences have been, sort of treated as an appendage. And in a lot of the situations that you uncovered in the film, it was very clear that this man was self-centered and had some patterns going way back, which I want to hear more about. And it's like in any other situation, most, I would like to believe at least, most well-meaning people, you know, professionals who run support groups and provide mental health services, clergy, you know, those who are in a human support role, you would think would recognize that kind of dynamic. and recognize that the woman is the victim here. She's the underdog. Maybe she has some issues with codependency or enabling, but her experiences matter. She's not just an extension of him. But it's just like with everything else, when it comes to gender ideology, the moment you introduce this magical concept, of trans, then people's capacity for critical thought and for seeing clearly what's happening between human beings goes out the window. And now in this dynamic where the woman is already suffering her self-esteem, her autonomy, all of that is in such a disadvantaged position, now she's being told you need to get out of the way even more, right? So all these systems are reinforcing his self-obsession and sort of framing her as the bad guy for wanting anything for herself.

Vaishnavi Sundar: I think in this case, based on the conversations I've had with a lot of these women, I understood that they weren't even asking anything for themselves, you know? At least in the beginning, they were just trying to understand and see if they can fit this into their lives somehow. Not necessarily all the, I don't want to go into the gory part of it, but you understand the intimacy that they didn't want, or a kind of intimacy that they didn't want, or certain things that the men were asking them to do that was making them uncomfortable, things like that. Not all of those things, but in the initial stages when they first find out about something like this, they were on problem-solving mode. They were trying to see how best they could fit this into their little world and carry on as if this information didn't affect their life drastically at all. You know, some sort of a very strange multiple emotions of denial and regret and all of those things bundled into one tiny capsule. They were just trying to see if they can carry on living their lives as normally as possible because whatever they had, they were all happy. There were problems in the marriage probably, but it didn't become such a big issue like their partners now claiming to be a woman. Now, every relationship has problems and women were constantly explaining to me, even though they need not have. The first instance of something that was making them uncomfortable was good enough reason for them to leave. Nobody should have to put up with any form of abuse. It doesn't matter what kind. But all of these women were trying to, you know, see if they can fit things together, mostly because they were worried about their partners, because they were getting so engrossed into the whole thing. And the wife is witnessing this whole thing unravel in front of them. And they were watching that these husbands were losing themselves to this ideology. Some of them had pre-existing conditions, like some of them had Asperger's, some of them were part of the, in the autistic spectrum and things like that. So the wives were on problem solving mode, but also detective mode, trying to go online, finding out ways in which this, this something could be mitigated in the situation. They could find nothing. And then as they tried to progress, they realized that she can't have a say in this whole thing. And then she proceeds to try and see if she can safeguard the children. So she says, well, I'm okay with doing anything that you want me to do. But when it comes to the children, let's just please keep them away from this whole thing. So then that boundary keeps getting broken and broken and broken. And many of these men who have such ulterior motives behind getting their wives to do horrible things to satisfy their fetish, started using those children as a means to get whatever it is that they wanted. So it's not just the fact that she couldn't ask anything for herself. Whatever she did want, were used against her so that she could comply, so that she could affirm, so that she could basically not say anything at all about this whole thing. And as you can imagine, she is cut away from her support system as well in the process, right? She's not allowed to talk about this to anybody. She is watching it happen all over the world, so she understands that she's not going to be taken seriously. If it is a trans topic, she's immediately going to be shot down. Everybody who is anybody is going to tell her, you need to be a bit more understanding. We've had the situation from the 1960s onwards where newspaper columns were writing about, you know, these agony and type columns. Newspaper articles were writing about how the wives have to be even more understanding of their husband's situation and this is not something so trivial and things like that. But this has been going on for years. This isn't a new phenomenon at all. But I've understood that in the end, when they realized that this wasn't going anywhere, when they finally had it with these men and they wanted to leave, things started escalating even further. Because as you can imagine, when you're trying to leave is the most dangerous time, right? So these men were trying to pull all sorts of stunts like threatening them with child custody or financial, cutting them away from financial support and things like that. So this has been a really long drawn process for them. And they are having to fight this just as this one individual. In the meantime, they're also grieving the marriage they lost. They're grieving the man that they fell in love with. They're trying to constantly be hyper vigilant and try to protect their children and things like that. So I can't even imagine what kind of Himalayan grit and willpower it would have taken for these women to, you know, at the end, say that this is it. Enough is enough. I am done with this. I can't put up with this anymore. But I can very confidently say that they did everything in their power to try and see if they can work this out. It was astonishing how I was hearing that over and over again. And they were trying to justify saying, well, it wasn't like the first instance happened and I went away. I tried to understand it. But she needn't have, you see. She did like something. She had all the reason to just leave the marriage at that point in time. But it is always her who's having to oblige, who's having to, you know, move her boundaries around his whatever repertoire of dreams and desires. But he doesn't even lift a finger in the whole process. They self-identify as female. They do no stereotypically feminine things around the house. They do none of those things because it might, I don't know, spoil their manicure, pedicure, whatever it is, you know. These are all actual examples that these women had given me. So yeah, the narcissism, the gaslighting, the coercive control, and cutting them off from any and all support system that they had made these women succumb to this so hard that, like I said, it must have taken them every morsel of willpower to get up and, you know, leave. And I have such profound respect for all these women who agreed to speak with me. It was as if the dam had broken when I started talking to them. They were just waiting to be heard. Nobody had asked them these questions. It was always about the rainbow flag and this flag and that flag and about them, those men, and how those wives are feeling about the man's transition. It's not even about how she's feeling as herself, you know. It's always about them, their emotions, their everything was hooked on to this man's self-perceived identity. So she had absolutely, she was like a ghost, you know, and this man was imitating her, copying her gait, copying the way she's talking on the phone and cutting her, his hair the way she has and things like that, matching on the kind of clothes that the wives wore and things like that. So I can't even imagine what kind of a deeply disturbing few years these wives must have endured. And we owe it as a society to give, you know, the women their voice to finally be able to say what exactly went on. What astonishes me so much is how is this the first ever film on the subject? Why is this the first ever film on the subject? How come nobody even had a curiosity to find out that, wait a second, is it possible that she's actually not happy about this? What about the children? Do they want to call their father mummy? Do they want their birth certificate altered? Do they want any of these things as part of their deeply, I don't know, formative years, do they want to go through with all of those things? Nobody had the curiosity even. They may be not even agreeing to all of these things, politically speaking, but how come nobody had the curiosity to find out if these wives were happy about these things? We only hear about all these happy couples, right, where the woman's openly acknowledging herself to be a lesbian and how the child is forced to say that she has two mothers now and things like that. So yeah, it's a combination of all of that and I suppose I tried to do justice to their stories through my film and talking about all the bits and pieces that you mentioned when you asked me the question about narcissism and all of those things and I tried to talk about what she wanted out of this whole thing, what her experience was. I still have no idea or even they don't as to why they did it because they must have known. Either they know about it at a young age or they just found out about all of those things. But either way, it doesn't make any sense how they would just declare this and expect the whole world to just change and start revolving around that. Now these women are just constantly asking me that question. So because they didn't have an answer and I don't have an answer, nobody has an answer why these men behave the way they do. I decided to portray that as a part of a chapter where they're just asking questions to the society. You know, why didn't you ask me? Why did the therapist say that I should just put up with it? Because some women like this kind of kinky stuff in the bedroom. Why did the therapist say this to me? Why didn't she understand that this was domestic violence? Why did the politicians not think about my well-being when they passed self-ID laws? What about the safeguarding of my children? So I decided that because I didn't have an answer, I have a lot of questions. I decided I'll ask those questions to myself.

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Vaishnavi Sundar: No, yeah, you're so right. Because they did try to do so much. Stephanie, they really bent over backwards, you know, trying to accommodate them, going shopping with them. Not all of them, but some of them. They all did varied degrees of different things that they thought they will be able to do. Most of them just kept saying that they are in love with them. Could we not sort this out in any other way rather than you dressing and living your life this way? I love you. I am in love with you. Therefore, I married you. Can't we figure this out together? Oh, God. And many other women have had to suffer so much sexual violence Many of these women have had surgeries before and the man had absolutely no regard to any pain that she might be having because of the surgery. He just needed what he needed and she had to oblige. And if she didn't, he would use her online to point out that I thought you said you loved me. I thought you said you'd do anything for me. You wouldn't even do this little thing. And then they'll start crying, you know, the whole spiel, the whole narcissistic projection spiel where they will make it about themselves, make the woman feel bad for wanting to have boundaries. And all of these women, they all, they all know that they could have left. And there were so many different things that they had to consider before just getting up and leaving. It's not possible. It's not possible in any relationship to get trans, right? You can't just get up and leave. This whole thing happened because of whatever reason, you know, maybe you were together for years. You can't just get up and leave. And that's what these people were constantly telling me. But with the trans thing added on, Unlike in any other situation where they might have found help elsewhere, they could at least get the feeling that they are not the crazy ones, you know, because most of them kept feeling like they were going mad because they thought nothing was ever good enough, just like you said. What do I, what do I need to do for you to, you know, not torture me this way? And this one particular Australian woman, she asks, what does she want? Does she want my womb? Will he be satisfied then? Is what she says. So all the questions that we have, trans or not, of a woman caught in domestic violence situation in a marriage, we constantly have all these questions, but oh God, it's so horrible. She should just leave. Or how can she, can she, can we help her? What do we need to do about it? Can we get her some sort of support through a community or something like that or a charity or something like that? So all those questions that we might have in our minds when we know about something like this, I have made these women answer those questions in the film itself. So for example, the common question is, why don't you just leave? That's like the standard question. Even now in Twitter and YouTube and elsewhere, people keep asking these women, Oh, why do you need a whole film for this? If you were not happy, you should have just left as if it was so simple. So. They knew, the wives knew that it was not so simple and they explained why. But that became easier for me to answer the trolls or to answer the naysayers who don't think that the women went through abuse and the trans rights activists at the end of the day. who, by the way, won't watch the film, but will rate my IMDb and Letterboxd with half a star because, you know, I'm just transphobic and all of that. That's what we're up against. That's what we're fighting. We're talking about domestic violence in the current scenario. But I fully agree with you that statement stands true. Nothing is ever enough. Nothing was ever enough for them. Even after they came away from all of this, where they found themselves, right, gradually some of them started doing dancing, painting and slowly started, you know, finding their footing and everything. They felt so content with just their little bubble of life, you know. They had this nice little routine. They did the painting and they took the kids to school, came back, cooked for them. They had a nice little time. They were happy. That's all she needed. But when they were with him, it doesn't matter what she does. It was never enough. She didn't do a good job of anything he ever asked because how could she? Even he doesn't seem to know what he wants, right? So I think, yeah, I agree with you that nothing is ever going to be enough.

Stephanie Winn: And you talk about the mimicry and these men's sort of tendency to mimic their wives in every way. And in a in different contexts, therapy and consulting, I've talked now with several women who were not trans widows, but who had some kind of relationship with a trans identified male in their life. It was a friend. It was a roommate. It was a sibling, you know, these different types of relationships where in each case the woman was One said, I was his woman, meaning I was the woman he picked that he was going to watch like a hawk and emulate everywhere he went. There's, again, the same feeling of I'm shrinking, I'm becoming a shell of myself, my boundaries are being invaded. There's an emotion that has to be repressed, which is disgust, oftentimes anger, of course. We feel anger when our boundaries are violated. But another one is disgust, and I noticed that, too, with the mothers I speak with, because I talk to a lot of mothers and fathers of trans-identified young people, and it's interesting noticing with the trans-identified males, the ones who are appropriating womanhood, you know, they're wearing the padded bras or they're taking the hormones, whatever it is they're trying to present as women. Instead, they're coming across as this weird in-between thing. and living in this fantasy bubble. And I notice there's often one parent, sometimes it's the mother, sometimes it's the father, who has the stronger emotions of really grappling with, on the one hand, I want to do anything to see my child. I want to do anything to keep those lines of communication open, even while they're lost down this rabbit hole. I'm trying to avoid pronouns, or maybe for some parents, they've made the decision to go along with the pronouns as sort of a concession in order to just still have their kid in their life. But there is this emotion that they have to repress, and it's often discussed. There's anger, there's fear about what their kid is doing to themselves. But I think we feel disgust naturally for a reason when there's a man appropriating womanhood in that way. And I think it's our instincts telling us something. I think it's our instincts telling us for one that this type of man is more likely to be a predator. And another is that he's wearing his fetish. You know, when a young man wears a padded bra, that's a sexual thing. And we would feel disgust if a man walked around with a boner or, you know, walked around talking about his sex life in detail that we don't want to hear. Why would we not feel disgust if a man is wearing his fetish on display?

Vaishnavi Sundar: There are multiple layers of disgust that the women felt. One was when these men started going down the path of wanting to, you know, become a woman. they started making changes to their body as well. Like for example, taking off all the body hair, shaving, you know, having being clean shaven and starting to wear clothes that look a bit strange and I don't know hideous that these women are supposed to say that you look great. That looks great. That color really suits you. It really brings your hair out or eyes out. They're having to constantly pretend while what they're seeing is actually… this very, this person who gives them the feeling of disgust because that's not the person that they married. That's not the man. A man has a certain, you know, when you love a person, I believe this, when you love a person, you just love so many different aspects of that person and that includes certain physicalities of it as well. And for a large majority of them, the removal of body hair brought in such deep-seated disgust feeling, especially when they were forced to be intimate with that same person, now sans the body hair. They were supposed to pretend like the two of them were lesbians and engage in whatever it is that he wanted her to do. basically sodomize him, demand that she uses certain things in the bedroom, all of which created such a disgusting feeling in her. And this is the most striking thing for me. Now, for all of these men, the fact that they self-identify as a woman It stems from a lot of different things, but for a large majority of them, it comes from a very depraved pornographic exposure. Now, if we have very clearly established that it is this disgust or this humiliation that they are attracted to and they're getting off on, and they imitate their wives, as that humiliating feeling. I don't know if that makes sense to you. Not only are they saying that they are doing this because they think being a woman is a humiliating thing, and the person that they chose to parade around as is their own wife. If I was that wife, I would feel disgusted at multiple levels. I would feel disgusted at him. I would feel disgusted at this version that he has created that he thinks looks like her, looks like me. And I would be disgusted at myself for staying there and having to say that that looks great on him. So they're not allowed to express this disgust of any different, you know, shape or form. They're not allowed to talk about that at all. And if they say so much as, you know, I'm feeling uncomfortable, can we not do this? Could you not shave your facial hair or something? There were no compromises. There's no question of consent in any of these things. I mean, categorically, there was never a time The man would be like, oh, you know what? I understand. I'll respect it. I'm glad that you helped me through this whole thing. Now I also need to respect your boundaries. No. It was constant boundary pushing, like even a tiny inch, but it was always, always, always being pushed further and further. See, disgust plays a very strong role. I felt disgusted listening to the stories of these men, you know, and I felt so angry for these women. to a point where I had to physically make myself active for about two hours every day in order to get that rage out. I have to work out. I have to sweat it out. Now, this is not a normal reaction to a garden variety violence story that you hear in our world. Unfortunately, it's just become too common now. They think, oh, that woman, poor woman was beaten up by her husband. Oh, that is so sad. No. But this is a concentrated like a situation where I'm consuming all of these things and then there are these added layers of these men parading around as women ridiculing her that way and on top of all of that the influence of pornography on it and how that plays out in the relationship that they're having with this woman that they call themselves as well as the wife that they're emulating. So I can't, I can't imagine. I mean, I'm constantly just so hyper stressed for anybody who might still be in a situation like that. And we know now that there are a lot of them, even the ones that pretend like it's all happy and loving and everything. You'll see that down the line, even the celebrity ones, many of them eventually separate and they'll claim that they're the best of friends or whatever. But you know that this can't go on. likes this.

Vaishnavi Sundar: So I feel like this urgent need to, I don't know, like have like a massive aircraft or something and just get all of these women into the aircraft and keep them in some other safe place or something. I don't know.

Vaishnavi Sundar: I feel very, very helpless listening to these stories and I hope that the film is just one way of them to know, for them to know that there are other people who are going through the same thing and maybe they can find help And maybe they can get away from this sooner than they would have otherwise.

Stephanie Winn: Well, sounds like your your own natural human emotions of the protective instinct really kicks in for you. But I imagine it's complicated because of the years of gaslighting and the sort of slow ramp up of the situation or the frog in the slowly boiling pot. Then you have Stockholm syndrome, you know, bonding with the abuser when you have the emotional, maybe physical, financial, or sexual abuse components of it as well, which often go hand in hand, as you point out in the film, then these men are capable of inducing such intense distress and anxiety in women that then it's almost like in that position as a woman who's being abused, you in that moment can only think about getting your next dose of comfort. So it becomes like an addiction, right? And that's how the Stockholm syndrome Developed so rather than the disgust or the anger being used in the way that it's that nature designed it Which is to expel toxins to protect us from that which is not healthy from us It's repressed and then there's guilt like you talked about earlier But I thought was very interesting when you said that you had to sweat it out for two hours a day Because sweat is a detoxification pathway And, you know, disgust serves a very important purpose. It's to tell us that something is going to make us sick if it stays in our system.

Vaishnavi Sundar: Absolutely. And I suppose for a lot of these women, when they were in the situation and they were forcibly made to repress those emotions that would have otherwise enabled them to leave. They knew they couldn't leave so they denied themselves of those emotions at that point in time because they had to think about their children, they had to think about somebody else, somebody who's ailing and financially she's dependent on him to make sure that they're provided with care. Could be any number of reasons, right? But she is having to constantly shift that those emotions and you know turn it around as something that she could limit on herself because that seems like a more plausible thing to do for her because she's realized that she can't do anything to that man because it doesn't matter what you say, it ends up being about how she is a horrible person and things like that. So she starts doing that to herself. She's like, oh, you don't understand him fully and made an effort to understand. And it's not helping the society level gaslighting is not standing by her. She's nobody's on her team. Everybody's on his. So it doesn't help her to turn this whole emotion that was actually humanly designed to make us flee from a distressing situation. She's having to forcibly repress that and turn that around into something else. Some of them also did work out. Jenny used to say to me that at that time, the only thing that would keep her sane was this one hour at the gym. If she wouldn't go, she wouldn't know what to do with herself. And we talk about the importance of working out in general and all of that. And she used to very painfully recall how it was for her. And to think about working out now, I imagine kind of brings back her memory of life at that time. So it's very complicated how our brain maps a lot of these things. that we do for survival and that when we are, even when we are in a better place, away from danger or something like that, it's going to take them years and years and years before they can actually be okay. If they can be okay, that is, depending on how bad the abuse was for some of them. But the most satisfying thing for me as a filmmaker and a feminist was that It was, I don't know, it was, it just so happened. When we were talking, it was probably the way I was questioning them or the kind of questions that I chose that were not about, you know, this whole painful saga of how life was so bad or something like that. I was constantly asking about them, right? What is it that you wanted at that time? So what, how did that make you feel at that time? What did you do in that situation and things like that? that in the end, the women felt like, well, this happened to me. Yes, there is no denying that. But that does not define me. And the reason why I am participating in a film like this, even for those who are anonymous, was because they wanted to say to others, much like what I feel, like this mama bear kind of protection that I feel about these women, right? They feel the same way about anybody else who might be in a similar situation as theirs because they know how difficult it is to come away from it. So I suppose it was easy for them to channel all these thoughts in a way that they were presenting a very formidable, a very beautifully melancholic yet hopeful kind of a situation about all of their experiences. And I think the film worked that way because you notice how in the end, women are asking questions, women are demanding answers. And at no point are they saying, oh, boy is me, you know, my life is just so bad. None of them. And it's not even like I chose not to keep any of those parts in the film. No, they didn't say it. They never felt like they had to explain to me just how bad it was. It was a given. What we were talking about were things like how did they strategize? How did they come away from it? Was that this one turfy friend that they held on to? How did that pan out? You know, things like that. We talked about all of those things that she did amazingly on her own while making sure that two or three children that she had had to be safe and things like that. So it was all about that. It was talking about all of those experiences that in the end, when they were talking about hope, it, it genuinely was hopeful to listen to. I mean, I, I, I tear up even now after having like edited it for years and watching it for like a countless number of times. I still tear up a little bit when I watched the end of this thing where one of them says, I thought I would be dead, but I am here now. And it doesn't matter what new things he's going to throw at me. I'm going to be okay. And the kids are going to be okay. I feel confident enough now that I can take care of things like that. So that's just, I think that's my award, right? Because this film's not going to go to any Sundance or Cannes or any of those things because they won't even touch it with a barge pole because the Will Ferrell movie though, that will go.

Vaishnavi Sundar: The one with his friend who's trans-identifying now. Not ours. Our film won't even make it.

Vaishnavi Sundar: I mean, they wouldn't even acknowledge that it exists. But these women, they are like genuine sheroes and I have like so much admiration and love and sisterhood that I feel with them that I'm, I don't know, I'm just, it's awesome. It's all us.

Stephanie Winn: Let's talk about those women who are still in it. You know, I have this very strange, unique vantage point, given the nature of the work that I do, specializing in being a consultant for parents who are worried about their oftentimes adult children who are in this. And so as part of that role, I sometimes hear about the the trans widows or the potential future trans widows, the parents who come to me and their son is married or engaged to a woman while he's also going through this so-called transitioning process. We talk about how to reach or befriend or support their daughter-in-law. I've seen families make this mistake of using the term trans widow with the daughter-in-law who's still in that mindset of believing in gender ideology, believing that she herself is queer, all of that kind of stuff. It goes just as badly as the parents who give their kids an abundance of medical literature. It's like, if only that worked to just give them the medical literature to say that this is going to be harmful, then people wouldn't need tools like the ones that I develop because it's such a complicated beast psychologically. So I've seen parents, you know, say to their daughter-in-law something about trans widows. And then, of course, she just goes straight to her husband or her fiance and says, your parents are so transphobic. They think I'm a trans widow, yada, yada, yada. And I'm thinking, OK, well, you know, that was that was an opportunity we could have handled a little bit more delicately. I'm curious if you would have any advice for parents of either women who are married or engaged to these men, dating them, or women, parents of the sons who care about their daughters-in-law, Um, you know, about what you've discovered about the mental state of a woman before she's reached the point where she has had the insights, um, that the women in your film has have had, you know what I'm saying? When they're still in it.

Vaishnavi Sundar: I could give it two kind of examples. One is where a woman is not in sync with the whole ideology. She thinks that this husband is now seeking this thing and she should be the supportive wife and she has no idea that any help is available. Whatever little help is available is there for her. She has no idea. She just thinks this is a project now and I'm part of it. I'm supposed to be the flag bearer of it. So that's one set like that. And then there's another set where he is fully aware that what he is doing is abuse. She is fully aware that it is making her uncomfortable but she is having to stay back in the marriage because of a few different reasons and those reasons could be anything ranging from financial dependency, maybe she doesn't have a family, she only had him, And then there is also a situation where she has been vilified within her community to a point that even if she wants to, they will never believe her if she goes and reaches out to them. So there's two sets of people that I've noticed. One where they're just so openly supportive of these men, I suppose. I wouldn't call this advice, but I keep thinking of myself in their shoes and what I would do in a situation like this. I keep thinking that I think I will constantly keep telling the daughter-in-law that I'm there for her, that I'm on her team, that it doesn't matter what she decides. She doesn't have to decide right now. Just knowing that she has a fallback. I think it's the most powerful thing you can give that woman. You know, it doesn't matter which of the two categories that I described right now. She could be very well aware. So you're not going to give her anything new. She has basically consumed, you know, she could write a PhD thesis on the subject. Okay. So she knows everything. You can't tell her anything new. So she's there despite the fact that she's fully aware. Now, it's just a matter of she deciding, okay, now I'm ready. And she knows you're going to be there. She could just come to you and you'll take care of everything after that. I think that knowledge would give them so much more power than just, you know, sitting in a room with crying children, not knowing where to go. And the husband hasn't returned home for like two days. God knows what trans gay club he's in. She has no idea. And one of the woman actually said she had to make a choice between buying diapers and buying pads, you know, for herself. And she just happened to become pregnant back to back, which means she had to also constantly breastfeed the children as well. So she was just busy, physically exhausted, busy. And at that moment of profound low, I think the one thing that would seem like a I don't know, like a light at the end of the tunnel is the knowledge that if I reach out, there's going to be a hand there for me. I think that's what most of these women never had, you know, when they had to try and come away from it. That's why these These films are so important. That's why these communities are so important. That's why the website that Tinsel first created, where she has put a lot of these stories together as a compilation, that was a historic first. The women just came together and they said, because Tinsel had that as her own experience, she decided that she will turn it into something that will benefit anybody else who is in a similar situation as her. It's that, and it is also Emma who created Children of Transitioners. website for children who are suffering from gaslighting and narcissism that their father is presenting them or putting them through. So I think in all of these cases, a lot of people had hands taken away from them. There are people that left them rather than them having the knowledge that no matter what happens, it doesn't matter what I decide, this person is going to always be there for me. That was never there. I think that's what is needed. How can you give women that reassurance when she's in the mix of things? It's very hard. It's very hard to give her that reassurance because I've been in abusive situations and when other people would tell me, if you need anything, just call, I would never take them seriously. I would think, of course, she's just saying it. Of course, I'm going to call her for help. It's not like she's going to come. She's married. She's got children and everything. How is she going to come? I would never know because I never made that call. And she could never show me. So giving them that reassurance is equally hard, but I think persistence is what would be the key there. You know, just wake up and let the other person know that you love them and that you are on their team, you know, rain or shine. I think that is the, I think that's the only thing that you can do for women in this situation because you can't force them out of it because you never know what repercussions it might have on them, on the children. It might even be psychologically very dangerous for her a few years down the line if she's forcefully taken away from it. Much like what happens to people who are deeply indoctrinated in a cult-like situation and you take them away from that, they just don't know what to do with their life anymore. This seems no different from that, you know, years and years of conditioning and projection and self-doubts and all of those things. And then you just left away. Suddenly you don't have to deal with that anymore. You don't know what to do with your life. At least then you were just constantly on a fight mode. You had this activity that you had to do constantly, you know. Now, when you can just relax, sleep, eat, get back your health and things like that, it does not feel okay. to a lot of people. So I imagine that the recuperation from an abusive situation has to happen in its own pace at the right time when she is ready for it. Because if you pull her out of that because you think you know better to do it than the woman who's affected, it might just be really the most dangerous thing that you would have done for her. Whenever I was in an abusive situation, I've always thought like, wouldn't it be so cool if somebody would just come here and scoop me out of this horrible situation? I mean, just take me away from that. I have thought about it. But I suppose if that had happened, my understanding of myself and my coming to terms with the reality of my life, those conversations that I would have had with myself would have never happened. So when I was eventually ready by myself and nobody had to scoop me away, when I was ready to ask for help, I had a lot more clarity in my mind. So that way, when I was coming away from it, I wasn't feeling like I don't know what to do with my life anymore. I immediately knew that all the time that I have wasted, I need to catch up. I need to go meet my friends. I haven't met them in years. You know, I want to go back to doing Weight training, I want to do dancing, you know, things like that. So it's a very, very delicate situation. And I suppose what we can do through films like this, through podcasts like this, is just constantly tell them that there are other people who can understand them, that it is hard. You never take that away. you know, to make her believe that we know it's hard and that whenever she's ready that she could ask for help and it'll be there. This is what I think about young women who are going through this transition path as well, you know, when they desist and they come back. We are there. We are really there. When they come back, they'll know it. But when they are not there yet, when they're still indoctrinated, they'll think that we are the enemies, right? We don't understand them. We don't know their pain. It's such a classic rock-in-a-crazy-place situation for the women who was caught in the crossfire of all these things. But I suppose, yeah, radical love and understanding, I suppose, is the only way.

Stephanie Winn: That's beautiful. I think that's really solid advice for anyone in any type of abusive situation. And I suspect that there's going to be a newer generation of these these women who thought of themselves as queer, you know, because this generation coming up right now, I think you showed an age range, but more a little bit older than this generation that is coming up now. And I wonder about all these women who were brought up with such confusing messaging about gender and sexuality. that they really bought into this idea that they're queer, whatever that means, when in fact most of them are just heterosexual women. And as they are looking to settle down, and they're settling down with male partners who are not accepting of the fact that they are male, that there's going to be this whole other cohort for whom the level of Stockholm syndrome and gaslighting and just the psychological confusion is even going to have this other layer on it as well. Because maybe unlike the women, most of the women in your film, you know, they didn't go into it thinking I'm a heterosexual woman marrying a man. And oh, wow, this is a lot to wrap my mind around, I guess, how am I going to be supportive, you know, instead, it was like, they went into this, thinking something about their own identity. And I imagine it's going to be really complicated to unravel that as they mature, you know, to realize that, oh, I'm actually just heterosexual, but I'm very confused about matters of gender and sexuality, I have trauma, maybe I started seeing porn when I was eight years old, for some of these people, you know, and And for them, there's this added layer of how they thought they wanted this, too, like even more than some of the layers that are already there in the women in your film. Have you encountered any of these, like the younger women who, you know, waving the rainbow flags, calling themselves queer? Have you met any of them in your work?

Vaishnavi Sundar: For this film, I particularly didn't choose to speak to women like that. But of course, in my activism against this ideology, I have met plenty of women like that, some of whom were erstwhile friends. But that's because they didn't want to be friends anymore, not me. I still want to be friends, but they just chose to cut me out of their lives. I have seen these very, I don't know what is the word, this almost like they feel that somebody is watching them and they're going to be rewarded at some point for how much of a supporter they are for this ideology. It's like they think that somebody is watching them. They have to constantly prove, you know, I don't know to whom. But like their very existence, I wonder when they chill. I wonder when they're not stiff, you know? I wonder at one point, do they just say, oh, fuck it.

Stephanie Winn: It's like a combination, if I can, it's like a combination of paranoia, grandiosity, magical thinking, sort of histrionic, like performative behavior.

Vaishnavi Sundar: Yeah, it's all of that and also them believing in this ideology as this sort of an all-encompassing thing that they have to constantly prove in order to gain that social capital. That's why when they, for example, something so trivial like losing a few followers affects them so deeply. Like they have to find out from meta as to why their follow count just dropped one day. So what?

Vaishnavi Sundar: So what that it dropped? What is the significant change that has happened in your life because some 20 people chose to unfollow you?

Vaishnavi Sundar: That becomes a topic of their discussion in all of Instagram for like weeks together. I follow a few of these people, I mean, I mean, it's tedious, it's brain rotting content, but I watch it because I want to understand them. I want to understand what goes on in their mind. When they feel like there's some sort of a judgment that is being made by everybody, right? Especially within the trans circles. Are you supportive enough? How good an ally are you?

Vaishnavi Sundar: It's one of those things where if you slip and if somebody is correcting you, you immediately have to profusely apologize to a point of, you know, just falling at their feet or something because you've done this damning thing of, I don't know, saying something wrong which nobody really cares about. But this whole culture of them constantly trying to prove themselves that they are indeed a good person, supportive of all of these things.

Vaishnavi Sundar: In our film, The much younger demographic that I spoke with, but I chose not to include that bit in the film, were women whose lesbian partners chose to transition. Now the motivation behind women transitioning and leaving their partners behind is completely different from why men do it. And I thought it would be so unfair to have that as just a footnote in the context of us talking about all these perversions and pornography and all of that and then say, oh well, it happens to lesbians too. I didn't want to do that. That's not justice. That's not fair. There's so much more deeper things that we have to unravel, something that I've tried in dysphoric from the perspective of the person who's transitioning. But these women were also, while they were with the partner, they were very supportive. There were all these red flags, but they just felt so sorry for their partners. They didn't want to make their identity known because they worry that their partner will find out and it will make them miserable. It wasn't like, oh, they're going to be doxxed now or he's going to come after me. No. If she finds out that I spoke about my experience, it's going to again shatter her, so you can't show me in public, is what most of them said. They're constantly worried about their partners, as opposed to here, these people were terrified that the man will find out where they live and might, you know, take the children away. So we're not talking about the same world here. But all of those women within that demographic, even if they were heterosexual, for example, they were all of those things that you just described you know they were this very actively flag waving kind of liberal feminist type of thing that anything is queer like I don't I don't know how they managed to do that like emotions are queer water bottle is queer computer is queer you know what I'm saying the kind of extent to which their brain kind of maps this whole thing, trying to prove to the world that they've figured this out. And this constant fight to say that you are more queer than the next person, and you constantly keep identifying these new pronouns, these new labels, because there is never going to be an end to this, because there will be somebody else who wants to outdo you. Then you will find the need to outdo them. So this is really stupid, this rat race is. as opposed to just knowing that you're a really cool female. You know, that's a lot easier and there is no pressure on you. But the other side, if you have to start this whole facade, the charade of being queer, there is no end to that road. There is no end to how much you can do to prove how queer you are or how much of an ally you are. It's just mind-boggling. I sometimes think so highly of therapists who are having to listen to all of these things and not, I don't know, roll your eyes or something like that.

Vaishnavi Sundar: It must be so hard. But I see all of this phenomenon and I'm just like, part heartbroken, part

Vaishnavi Sundar: irritated, you know, these are all young women with so much potential, they're all very talented, they sing, they dance and all of those things. But this becomes entirely about their identity and nothing else. These women, they start putting on so much weight over a period of time. And then there is this need to constantly prove, right, that you are still good, that is still relevant, that people still love you. See, keep pushing their own boundaries somehow. And this one young woman started with this influencer thingy on Instagram. She's now like morbidly obese. And she has a private chat thingy where she does not safe for work content. Because ultimately, that is what it boils down to, you know, sex and porn. Because you've done all of these things, tried to be funny, tried to talk about your queer identity. And now 10 billion other people are doing the same thing. So how do you stand out? Okay, this is my ultimate weapon. So you are now sought by all kinds of groomers who tell you that you're beautiful, you're such a queer, you're the most amazingly queer person there ever is and that's the fodder that they're after? So ultimately it's gonna come down to pornography and self-sabotaging. They probably hate their bodies enough already. That's why they're down this path. Nobody could understand that and prevent them and get the root of it and help them out. Now they hate their body even more. So I'm talking about obese. This little girl, the young girl, became obese, Stephanie, over a course of, I don't know, two or three years that I followed her intermittently every now and then and now she's just having this private chat line where she talks about dirty stuff apparently that's where it leads to unfortunately there's no future in this you can be happily homosexual can be happily heterosexual really nobody cares about all of these things you know what is important is your personality what you do with your art what you do with your life how you help other people any art that you're interested in, how good you are at that, how better you can be. If you practice even more, you know, it has always become about comparing yourself with these people. We don't know what those people want. So how will you win this game? I don't know if I answered the question exactly.

Stephanie Winn: But I went down this rabbit hole. Excellent points. I mean, and, you know, as you were describing how This is also happening to lesbians and that you didn't want to just tack that on as a footnote because their experiences are so unique. And that reminded me of how before we started recording, you were saying the same thing about what you've seen in India. So what I would like to do is take a short break. And when we come back, ask you about what you've seen in India and how you ended up developing several films focused primarily on issues that you were seeing around the world in the West. and maybe what you might expose if you were to give India its own film. I love sleep. Sound sleep is a crucial foundation of good mental and physical health, from mood and concentration to metabolism and cellular repair. And I sleep very well thanks to my 8 Sleep Pod Pro cover. My side of the bed is programmed to be warm when I get in and cool down to a neutral temperature in the middle of the night so I don't wake up overheated like I used to. How would you customize your bed temperature? Visit 8sleep.com and use promo code SUMTHERAPIST to take up to $200 off your purchase. Even if they're already running another sale, this code will get you an additional $50 off. Eight Sleep currently ships not only within the USA, but also to Canada, the UK, select countries in the European Union, and Australia. Thanks for considering purchases that support the show. All right, I'd like to ask you now about what you have witnessed in India. So you're based in Chennai. I believe you had a career that took you all over the world before you dropped that to focus on your own creative interests. And before we started recording, you were explaining that there's a whole other set of problems in India. And you didn't want to just kind of mix that in with the sort of predominantly Western country focus of the issue of your documentary on trans widows. But it seems like some of your experiences in India are part of what shaped your desire to dedicate your career to advocating for women and girls. So can you tell us about that?

Vaishnavi Sundar: I did have a corporate job, and it led let me travel to different parts of the world on my own. And it was all great because I really enjoyed that freedom and the trust that the company had in me that I would do this thing. You know, you're a young graduate in this new job. You want to prove yourself. So I had a really, really nice few years where I did a bunch of things actually. And when I dropped all that in about 2010, I think. probably 2010, 2012 maximum. By the time I would have done, I would have jumped many jobs. So I wasn't one of your career oriented you know, decide on a vocation, pursue your education based on that and spend the rest of your life working within that domain, that sort of person. I think I was never that person. I was always interested in a lot of other things like sports and extracurriculars. I have theater experience that lasted for nearly a decade. I have acted in little films before. So this has always been my thing, these creative side of things were my calling. And when I decided that I didn't want to do this rat race of a corporate life, of course, that was a decision I had to take very carefully because all said and done the corporate job was paying me monthly, a salary that could afford me a life that I was living until then. So I had a completely A complete rehaul of my life when I decided that I will quit my job and I will figure it out. That kind of a luxury not a lot of people could have. And I really did have that luxury. I'm very, very well aware and grateful for that. It was also around the same time when my personal life was going through quite a tragic time and I decided that I was anyway not able to focus very clearly on my work and other things. I was not interested in, you know, performing and climbing up the ladder, breaking the glass ceiling, none of that. I was just so miserable and really depressed and I was in a really bad place. So when I started pursuing creative things, my first ever film was like a semi-autobiographical story that I just wrote as a short story and then a few friends just persuaded me to make it into a film and I made it into a film and then since then I've never looked back. This is perhaps the one vocation that I have stuck with for such a considerable amount of time and I feel like I have just only just understood my potential and I want to do so much more. And I only just figured myself out. And everything along the way, I just taught myself to do it. I have all these amazing people who made amazing films. So I watched films and I learned and talked to people about a film that I watched. And basically, it's just a lot of introspection and a lot of movie watching, just a lot of allowances that I gave to myself to make mistakes, fall down, get up, make mistakes again, new mistakes hopefully, and then get up again and do it all over again, you know. So I could afford to do that at that point. But it was very, very clear to me, even at that stage, that my life, just like any other Indian woman's life, is mired with a lot of stereotypes and restrictions based on the fact that you're female and all of those things. In dysphoric, I would have briefly talked about how I had a conservative family, there were restrictions on what clothes I could wear and what time I need to be back home, whether I can play with this person or whether I can talk to that person and so on and so forth. So it was constantly just this scrutiny that I had to deal with constantly, that I was very, very clear from a very young age, that we don't live in a level, we don't have a level playing field. That much was very clear to me. Probably the day I was born, I sometimes joke to my friends, I, I, my mom gave birth to me. The next day, I was an adult. You know, that's how I think sometimes. It's like, I've never had the opportunity to be a child. I've never had the opportunity to I don't know how to explain this. It's an experience that you have living in a country where in the DNA of people, they don't treat you. in the same way as they would treat a man or a boy. So this kind of thing is like in your DNA also as a female that you convince yourself that you're not good enough because after all he's a boy is better than mom. So male violence against women and this inequality in the society and my constant rage against all of those things have been a constant. I grew up with them. So when I dropped the whole career in corporate spiel and decided that I will pursue filmmaking, it was very obvious to me that I'll make films about women, about all of these things that I'm facing. And I didn't know, I wanted a poetic and a… creative outlet for all the things that I don't have questions for, at least I could ask those questions, you know, much like what I'm doing right now. It's all started then. And I have never lived anywhere outside. This is my briefly lived in a few different places. But I've always come back here. In fact, I haven't even left the city. This has just been my home. Born was forever here. It's fascinating how when you were young and you had these school friends and they are now married and they have their kids and everything and then they get back in touch with you on Facebook or something like that. They're constantly talking about how they're so jealous of me, how they see that I'm now making these films and I'm not married to any man right now. And I'm talking about women's liberation and I'm talking about saying no to patriarchy and all of those things. And these friends of mine, they tell me, oh, I just look at you and I'm just so envious because I'm just stuck in this marriage that I don't even like. And these kids that I have to take care of, I have absolutely no time for myself. So all around me, there were these stories that were waiting to be told. It was not like my life was any easier, but that's not the point. What I'm trying to say is everybody in my life, everybody, every single woman in my life had a story to say. And I think I just took it upon myself to just start saying that one by one. That's when this whole saga of me trying to understand Indian women began. As I could master my attempts at making the film, making fewer and fewer mistakes, I decided I would challenge all my thoughts and energy on things that are in urgent need to be heard. So one of my very important, very big film project that I took up was on workplace sexual harassment. Because in India, if I talked about sexual harassment in general, I'd probably make that film my whole life. So I had to limit it to like, a workplace kind of a situation. Because this is a country that has a rape statistic that is the reputation of which the whole world knows. So I decided to talk about workplace and how it affects women, not just the ones that are CEOs sitting in an air-conditioned office, but also a domestic worker, a construction laborer, or a street hawker who's selling flowers outside the temple when she has periods. And that's her workplace. Where does she go if it rains? Where will she go and hide? And if a man is harassing her, who is just a passerby, will she be able to appeal and explain to the police that this man is harassing me, this is my workplace, provide me with redressal? What happens to women like that? That's what I tried to address in that film and I call that, but what was she wearing? And that is like a… It has been a gradient of women from so many different walks of life and this has never happened in India. Again, to my dismay and utter horror, why is that the first ever film on the subject? Why didn't it occur to anybody before to put these things together and provide that as like a tool that people belonging to at least the organized sector could do something about it because there were now laws that were coming up, people were asked to set up committees and all of those things. So if my film could provide that in some sense, that's a victory the way I see it. So I did that film and that film was supposed to be screened in New York and they canceled it because I tweeted something about women needing free sex segregated safe spaces. I mean, I'm coming from the film that I've just finished making about sexual harassment and, you know, these poor street hawkers, where would they go? I would never forget this image, this mental image. It is agonizing sometimes. This woman, she had to pee. She's selling something on the street. Her house is probably somewhere far away. She had to pee. It started pouring and she just sprinted to one corner and I was able to watch all these things because I was in an auto rickshaw just stuck in traffic and she's there. She's running to one corner and she's just standing there, right? I deduced that what she did was she was peeing. There's no toilet nearby where she could go which would be safe. So she was just standing there, because it was raining, it didn't matter. Her clothes would be wet, she'd be wet anyway. And she was wrapping up her work anyway. And that just, if I can please say the word, fucked me up so badly that I thought, who's going to talk about this, man? And then I was going to my home with the comfort of, a bathroom with clean water, access to clean water, running water, and I could just come and shower because of traffic, you know, and I'm like, I couldn't get her out of my head. I still can't actually. I've gone many days after I finished the film, I tried to go back there to see if I could find her as I could tell her that, you know, she was the inspiration behind the documentary in the first place, but never found her. But this is the story of all the women in India. We're talking about depravity that you have never heard of. I used to joke that if you have an imaginary hole somewhere, there will be 10 dicks that are trying to get in there. It might seem very unsavory. It might seem like I'm exaggerating it, but it's the truth. The implication is you are not safe in this country. Men don't look at women as human beings. Men don't consider female species as somebody who, you know, could have rights of her own. And now with the added layer of the trans thing, it's like whatever little progress, absolutely abysmally tiny little progress that we have made is all useless now because we don't even know what a woman is anymore. And imagine in a country like mine, where we have rapes every hour. I don't even remember the number right now. It's probably just outrageous number anyway. In a country like mine, where I'm not allowed to say I'm female and I want female only space is considered a taboo. Now I can imagine, you know, in a Western country, you say things like this. I can accept that people can want things like this in a country that's rich enough to have this as a problem. But not our country. You know, our country hasn't even dealt with having equal opportunities of women in the workplace. We don't even have laws enough to protect a woman. If she's bleeding and she's going to the police station, the police would ask her, can't you just sort things out with your husband? This is just common in every marriage. Why don't you just deal with it? It's okay. If he's asking you to have sex, don't say no. This is how you make a marriage work. These are things that police tell you if you're bleeding and you're going there to make a complaint against your own abuser. So this is what we are up against in a country which is the world's largest country now. And by default, 50% of it being female. So what's happening with the gender ideology is you're immediately immediately putting that 50% of the population in my country in danger, including the ones that are cheering for the ideology to be progressive and calling themselves queer. You're putting that woman in danger just the same because all these females that are going through this process right now, chopping off their breasts and being part of these forums and everything, there are enough groomers online who want to at the beginning say that you're one of us now, you're one of the guys now, and they have them come gain their trust, make them part of their inner circle, and rape them. Stephanie, these men know that that is a female. Okay, so these trans-identified females are getting groomed into these gangs. And what is the one thing that these women want? Acceptance in a society, right? Like, not look at them as these weird people. They're now presenting as male. They're hanging out with these men. And those are the very same end for raping these girls because they know what a woman is. This is the backdrop of my country. Now, Obviously, as you're aware, four years ago, I flagged this to the Indian mainstream media, wrote to a lot of these media outlets asking them to commission me a piece where I was going to singularly connect pornography and the depravity of Indian men in a piece, right? Very radical feminist in its approach and whatever. I didn't get any response because by this time I was duly cancelled. I said then that any woman who gets raped, right, gang rape particularly, if by any chance the media releases the name of that woman, that poor little girl, the first thing men do is go on pornography website and search her name. If there might be any videos of her being gang raped so they can watch it for masturbatory purposes. And this is not just a one-off psychopath. No. This is a large majority of Indian men. That's the backdrop we're talking about, right? And we know for a fact what porn can drive you to do, including considering yourself to be a sissy, slut, some of these men who are married and have children and have respectable jobs and everything you can see a subreddit called indian sissies please go there if at all you have to go there don't but please brace yourself when you go there indian sissies is a subreddit it's like It's like all the tech bros and the, you know, I don't know, I don't know all of these bros, right, who are part of their, part of this ideology. They have all moved and they have just camped there in that subreddit where they post pictures of themselves naked or in female costume and things like that. One guy who was calling himself a slut wrote a manual, a training manual for primary school teachers as to how they can teach kids, primary school kids, that male and female does not exist. That if they like pink, then they must be a girl. If they like blue, then they must be a boy. Now, this man has pictures of themselves naked in a subreddit called Indian Sissies. Nobody has made this connection and consider him a danger to the society. In fact, he has held, he has moderated panels on endometriosis. He's given that kind of a platform because, you know, trans, he's trans, you see. And there are many such men, many of whom are married. We don't know that. These are, at least these are the attention seeking ones, right? Now there might be many of these men who have Homosexuality is not illegal, but you can't marry. Same-sex marriage is not legal yet. It came this close, but they said no in the Supreme Court recently. So when I'm growing up, at least in the 60s and the 70s, I don't have any role models. So I would think that in order for me to like a man, I ought to be a woman." So there were probably many gay men who considered themselves as women because they were only attracted to men. Because they don't see any other exceptional cases as role models where two men can be in love, two men can be married, and they can be happy together, just as two males, they went down this path. Now, aside from that, there are a lot of these cultural connotations of hijras and other things as well. Unfortunately, it's all become like this really like a mix of things all under this one trans umbrella right now, that you're not allowed to say anything about anything at all, because one way or another, you're upsetting some subset of that trans umbrella. Anyway, so you're not allowed to talk about it. You're not allowed to talk about how pornography has influenced something like this and then they evoke this whole hijra thing and they say this is divine thing. They don't have control over their urges. They have dedicated themselves to God. So you're not supposed to talk about things like that that way in a sort of a dismissive way. But why not? You are the one that has tagged all of them under the trans umbrella, right? But anyway, so a lot of men are porn-sick. A lot of men watch a lot of depraved stuff on the internet and they force their wives to act out certain things that they watch online. Classic male behavior, porn-sick male behavior. And a lot of them are also doing certain things to their wives that is very similar to what these transvideos have narrated. Now the problem is, now this woman who's going through that right now, if I go to her and say that, do you know that what your experience is, is similar to many trans widows who are going through the same thing all over the world, the first question she would ask me is, what the hell is trans widow? what are you talking about? I don't know what it means. Now, obviously, we are a multicultural, multilingual country, right? We don't have one common language. 20 odd states and each state has different language. And there are so many linguistical differences between the same language that they sound like a different language in itself. So basically, we are There are a million things that divide us, that somehow make it really difficult for women to come together as one unit. It's very, very hard. We don't have a common language. Imagine not having a language to unite women. How hard this battle is already. So I know for a fact that everything that I have described in Behind the Looking Glass happens in India. Now, these men put their wives through certain things that are unspeakable. If I would, I would bet that it is far more depraved than anything that's happening anywhere else in the world, because Indian men just have that kind of a reputation of being the most fond, sick people in the whole world. I don't even mind being openly hateful towards these men who engage in pornography and abuse their wives. I have an open hatred for men like that. Anyway, courts are also providing divorce where, you know, the wife is seeking recourse and the court is saying, well, all right, your husband is now identifying as female. Therefore, this marriage is void. Now, the court system is not doing that because they care about the well-being of the wife. No. Or that she might be abused and that's why the court is being lenient towards her. No. Court believes that a marriage between two people can only happen if there is a man and a woman. Now, if a man is saying that he's not a man, the marriage becomes void. That's why these women are getting their divorces. And in India, the victim is removed from the from the system. It becomes the perpetrator versus the state, right? Because we don't have the inquisitorial model. We have the same as Britain. The victim is removed from the justice system. It's always the state versus the perpetrator. And it becomes very hard to find out who this woman is. So now I'm in Chennai and I hear about a case where The court just granted divorce to this woman who is in, I don't know, Jaipur or Delhi or somewhere. I have no way to find this woman out unless I have so much influence and I have all of these legal people under my, you know, in my speed dial or something. I can't know these women. And I can never put a call out for women going through these experiences because we don't have a common language. Imagine doing some sort of a propaganda in 30 languages at any given time, hoping somebody will show up. You already see that this is not just a hard hill to climb. You don't even know what you're climbing. You don't know what is at the end of this whole thing. So, although these things are all happening in India, and I know that there is a significant thing that I can relate to what is going on in Behind the Looking Glass documentary as well, I just chose not to include India at all because, like the lesbian experience, Indian situation warrants a separate investigation on its own. And also, you know, the kind of means that I don't have at the moment, if you have to travel somewhere, everything costs money. For filming somewhere, it requires a crew that requires money and things like that. So I am basically helpless for more reason than one, that there is a language barrier, there's a cultural barrier. And then there is this, just this taboo about speaking up, right? If it is a remote corner of India somewhere, and if I somehow convince her to. What will she say in the documentary? She doesn't even understand it. And for all of those women, they think this is just how marriage is. A man drinks and hits the wife. That's marriage for them. And in one of those drunken nights, if he rapes her and if she becomes pregnant, that's now their family. This is how a majority of India is. A large majority of women don't understand what's going on with them. is something that they can say no to. It's only now that we have all these organizations that are still educating them, helping them come away from it. I am not saying those women are stupid. I'm saying those women are helpless. Those women are brilliant. They are so smart. Imagine no education. heavy poverty, no support system, and they still manage to thrive and they make sure that the kids are okay, they do some odd jobs, they go sell something, they go sell flowers somewhere, you know, deal with all of these men, like that woman who had to go pee in the corner. She's still like hustling and she's still taking care of herself and the children and everything. If anything, she's way smarter than anybody else. But She just doesn't understand that she can say no to it. She's so helpless and the legal system is so useless. We have a pending case of domestic violence charges to the count of hundreds, hundreds, thousands or more. We have pending cases of domestic violence, right? And already we are talking about making domestic violence law gender neutral, so that people who identify as female can also secretly sell under this. I mean, the rage I wake up with every morning and I ask myself, do I really, does it even matter? Why bother with anything in this country at all?

Vaishnavi Sundar: And the amount of willpower it takes for me to get up from bed, sit in front of my computer and get something done is something that I astonish myself with some days.

Vaishnavi Sundar: But this is the reality of India. Some might argue that I'm exaggerating and I'm only talking about the really bad things because of course India has sent a rocket to the moon, India has a female president now, we've had great prime ministers in the past, we've got a lot of chief ministers right now. How is it that you're saying India is still so backward? Because it is. Let's just face it, it is. There are still parts of rural India where women don't have toilets. They have to wake up at like 3 a.m., 4 a.m., brave, I don't know, snake bites and things like that, and go relieve themselves out in the open before the men come and do the same thing. Because a lot of rapes happen in one particular place when they're relieving themselves as well. And they have to go so far away to do that so that no man watches them, you know, or know where the women are going. This is still happening now. And we don't have, we still don't have a lot of rights, or at least we have rights that are on paper, which is so useless when it comes to implementation that you might as well not have a law at all. That's how it feels most of the time. Now, this is the India that I'm in, in 2024, when we're doing this interview. And this is just, this is still like we're talking about male violence against women. If you factor in the things that they do to children, to animals, this podcast will last for days. And because I care so deeply about animals, and I know what these men are capable of, what they have done to them, I find it impossible for me to pursue this topic in an Indian context because I think I will not survive the acid reflux if I go down this path. You know what I'm saying? I think I will, I think I will, if it is even possible, I think I will die of anger. You know, there's only so much channeling you can do and like look at it objectively and all of that. I mean, truth is after every film, I'm burnt out. I am burnt out beyond words can describe. When I finished, but what was she wearing as well? I was just like, okay, film is over, what now? Things are just such shit. What am I celebrating here? You know, that's how I feel. Even now, even after Behind the Looking Glass, a lot of my friends are like, are you feeling happy? Are you feeling excited the film's over? I feel nothing, zero. So that's why even though there are a lot of relevant things that I could have added in the Indian context in our current film, I just simply chose not to do it because it's like a lot of things to uncover and I don't think people really have the stomach for it right now.

Stephanie Winn: Wow. Well, with everything going on in India, I am so appreciative that you took the time to highlight these issues happening for women in other countries. India just sounds so much worse. So you talk about the financial barrier, the linguistic barrier. Do you think you'll ever make a film about women's rights in India? And if so, what would it take? What kind of support or resources would you need?

Vaishnavi Sundar: Before Dysphoric, I only made films about Indian women. It was only with Dysphoric that I started expanding to give a sense of what's going on globally with a little bit of reference to India. I always bring it home to India with every film that I make. Behind the Looking Glass is the only one I had to very consciously not include India as a footnote because I know that if I just say it, it might seem as if it's not that big a deal. And I didn't want people to think that. I would want to do justice to just how depraved Indian men are with a film on its own, right? Would I make a film like that? I mean, I, I don't want to, but I think I am stupidly crazy enough that I might end up doing it at some point because I'm just like that. I'm just, I'm just, I'm just a very, these things anger me. And a lot of my creative pursuits have, how do I say it? Blossomed at the tipping point of rage. At this point of being just a crescendo of an age, I'm just like, what do I do? What do I do? And if I retrospectively think about all those things, the one about workplace sexual harassment was a direct result of all the things that I was hearing around me. There was MeToo in India. Oh, MeToo happened after that. But there was all sorts of sexual abuse allegations that were going on about really powerful people. Nobody was partying and violating. And these women have had proofs. You know how they say, you don't have proof. You need to have proof. How can you say, accuse somebody who might be just a person behind his money or you just want some limelight or something like that. You know, all kinds of things that they say to women, except believe her, except say that I believe you. But all those things were happening. And I think I was just too angry. And I didn't know.

Vaishnavi Sundar: Murder is illegal, so I made films. I think I will always make films about India.

Vaishnavi Sundar: I will always. That's why I didn't leave. I won't leave. I hate this place. I mean, the place is beautiful. I hate the men. I hate what they do to women. But I will never leave. I can never leave. This is where the shit is going down. And it'll be… not right to just escape it. I will make a film on this at some point.

Stephanie Winn: Well, it sounds like you have in some ways mastered the art of using anger as a fuel.

Vaishnavi Sundar: If you'd like to say it that way in a very beautiful like a sentence formation, then I would just accept it gracefully. But I think I'm just, even the making of the film is a result of anger, right?

Vaishnavi Sundar: Sometimes I think that makes me very mentally sick, very mentally traumatized and things like that. But then any creative expression is a combination of a lot of different emotions, right? So I justify my rage as one of those stronger ones while all the other things that I have that I feel like compassion for children and animals, my love for safeguarding women's spaces and what I wouldn't do to make sure I fight for it. And all of those things are like tiny, tiny aspects of it. But I suppose that the age is like the most prominent emotion. So I allow myself that by justifying that there are other things, it's just not that prominent. So I accept your sentence, the beautiful sentence that you said, but I think it's all of those things. The age is just at the very visible part of my creative experience, creative expression, probably.

Stephanie Winn: Well, Vaishnavi, I think we'll wrap it up there. Thank you so much for coming in and sharing your wisdom with us and your creative process. And as much as you're ending on the subject of how much rage you go around your life with, I think there's a tremendous amount of compassion in your work.

Vaishnavi Sundar: I think so. I want to never lose that, you know. People keep asking me all the time, this is getting desensitized for you somehow, that you listen to all these things over and over again. No. I don't want it to ever feel desensitized. I don't want to ever feel like, oh yeah, that happens to women here a lot. I say this, but I can always feel this bubbling acid inside my body that I think I will never want to lose. And I'll have to find a different way in which I can keep that in check and turn it into something more productive. I have to, I think that's a lifelong thing that I will have to do, but I do have a lot of compassion. I think Without that, anger wouldn't come. It's because you have compassion, that's why you have so much anger, right? Because you see a wrong, and you identify a wrong, and you want to call it out. The first step is compassion, and it just materializes into anger, I think. I'm feeling really proud of my age in that sense.

Stephanie Winn: I think you're right about that. Thank you so much. So you're on YouTube. Your channel is called Lime Soda Films. Where else can people find you?

Vaishnavi Sundar: Oh, they can find me on X, they can find me on Instagram and Facebook. These are the, and Instagram stories if women are in it. These are the four social media accounts I have, but if you just search my name, I have all kinds of documents and resources that I have over the period of time, written about gender ideology in India and how it affects women and all of those things, just one Google search away. I'm very accessible on social media. I love. hearing from women and I love these random messages that women send me. I always try to reply. So yeah, I'm accessible. That's just one such way.

Stephanie Winn: Sounds good. Thank you so much. I hope you enjoyed this episode of You Must Be Some Kind of Therapist podcast. To check out my book recommendations, articles, wellness products, guest episodes on other podcasts, consulting services, and lots more, visit sometherapist.com. Or follow me on Twitter or Instagram at sometherapist. If you'd like to go deeper, join my community at somekindoftherapist.locals.com. Members can dialogue with other listeners, post questions for upcoming podcast guests to respond to, or ask questions for me to respond to in exclusive members-only Q&A live streams. To learn more about the gender crisis, watch our film, No Way Back, The Reality of Gender Affirming Care, at nowaybackfilm.com. Special thanks to Joey Pecoraro for our theme song, Half Awake. If you appreciate this podcast and want more people to find it, kindly take a moment to rate, review, like, comment, and share on your platforms of choice. Of course, just because I am some therapist doesn't mean I'm your therapist. This podcast is not a substitute for medical advice. If you need help, ask your doctor or browse your local therapists online. And whatever you do next, please take care of yourself. Eat well, sleep well, move your body, get outside, and tell someone you love them. You're worth it.