Collective article record

The Look, Interrupted: How Cinema Looks At Trans Women’s Bodies

Collective Archive Number CAN-0000-0393-3101 Permanent resolver

Source Summary

In the 2013 film Adult World, when cisgender protagonist Amy is cleaning the bathroom, she peers through a glory hole in the stall to see Rubia, a transgender woman, using the urinal. The sequence is constructed around Amy’s point-of-view: Adult World Whatever the filmmakers’ intentions, this is an excellent encapsulation of the cisgender gaze in cinema: a cisgender person viewing a transgender person without their consent, with little regard for their humanity. The reverse of the hole even bears a great resemblance to a large eye, one that allows for surreptitious, boundary-violating observation of an Other. Later in the film, Amy asks Rubia, “do you ever feel invisible?” Rubia replies matter-of-factly, “no, not really”, and it’s not a surprising answer. The paradox is that while trans women still a very invisible population (society ignores the needs and even the mere existence of trans people, although that is beginning to change,

The Source Summary reproduces the first 150 words of the source article unless a Collective editor has explicitly locked a replacement.

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Interpretive context

Why this article may matter

Community significance

“The Look, Interrupted: How Cinema Looks At Trans Women’s Bodies” may matter to community readers because it preserves a first-person or testimonial account connected to transgender identity and history, while also engaging media, rhetoric, and discourse. Such accounts can document how an issue was understood and experienced from within the period or community being discussed.

Historical significance

The article may have historical value because it explicitly interprets or preserves material concerning transgender identity and history. Published in 2015 by Transadvocate.com, it can be read both for the history it describes and as evidence of how media, rhetoric, and discourse was framed at that moment.

Policy significance

The article’s strongest policy connection is public accommodations and facilities. It links that institutional frame to transgender identity and history and media, rhetoric, and discourse, making it potentially useful for tracing how an argument moves from description or history into law, regulation, administration, or public practice.

Content analysis

Ranked themes and framings

Rank 1 is the dominant inferred theme or framing. Parent labels identify broader theme families; the relationship key beneath the diagram explains the line styles used for hierarchy, same-family relationships, overlap, and separate-but-related themes.

Themes

1
Transgender identity and historyTheme family: Identity, culture, and community
100%
2
Media, rhetoric, and discourseTheme family: Knowledge, history, and communication
50%
3
Healthcare and medicineTheme family: Institutions, law, and public life
18%
4
Violence, safety, and dehumanizationTheme family: Power, ideology, and social conflict
9%
5
Culture, identity, and representationTheme family: Identity, culture, and community
9%
6
Public policy and governanceTheme family: Institutions, law, and public life
7%

Academic framing

Policy framing

1
Public accommodations and facilities
100%

Editorial function

Source topics

Relationship key

Separate but related themes
Related theme in the same family

The diagram distinguishes hierarchy, same-family relationships, overlap, and separate-but-related themes inferred within this article. It does not assert that all themes are mutually exclusive.

These classifications are inferred from article text and source metadata and remain directly editable. Relationship labels express corpus-analysis judgments, not immutable facts.

Granular comparative context

How “Transgender identity and history” appears across the Collective corpus

This article appeared 2 year(s) after the theme’s highest annual presence in the registered corpus in 2013.

Relative presence by year

Peak year indexed to 100

5 2004

11 2005

4 2006

90 2007

64 2008

47 2009

14 2010

130 2011

112 2012

240 2013

126 2014

33 2015

28 2016

50 2017

41 2018

15 2019

2 2020

4 2021

2 2024

1 2025

Presence by member publication

Frequently co-occurring concepts

Academic framings in this topic

Policy framings in this topic

Values measure relative presence in the registered Collective corpus, not public search interest or public opinion.

Inbound-link and citation evidence

Documented circulation and reception

1 source-held reference records an early link or citation; the documented sources span 2 distinct domains. The dated evidence currently spans 2014–2016. These observations describe circulation and reuse; they do not assign cultural worth or evaluate the communities, arguments, or people discussed.

3distinct source records documented

2distinct referring domains

0best available scholarly cited-by count

0books or volumes documented

1references retained by the source publication

2014–2016observed years in dated evidence

Evidence by channel

Independent counts; bars are not additive

Source-held references1

Links inside the Collective2

Coverage of the evidence search

Shows what has actually been checked

Publisher-held referencesChecked · August 31, 2026

Scholarly indexesChecked · August 31, 2026

Book and volume searchNotchecked

Public-web searchNotconfigured

Collective corpus linksIndexed · August 31, 2026

Review scholarly results Review book results Review public-web results

Documented references over time

Dated source evidence currently stored by the Collective

1 2014

1 2015

1 2016

Collective linkCollective corpusDirectly verified

Submission Guidelines

Cristan Williams · collective-demo.transhouston.com · August 20, 2015

Specifically, the TransAdvocate focuses on watchdogging anti-transgender media tropes and misinformation that gains social currency. We’re willing to do what it takes to expose hate — especially when hate is being peddled as reason, faith, or journalism. We here at the TrasnAdvocate generally won’t pull our punches and we are…

Collective linkCollective corpusDirectly verified

E Jessica Groothuis

Cristan Williams · collective-demo.transhouston.com · April 3, 2014

The Look, Interrupted: How Cinema Looks At Trans Women’s Bodies

Reference retained by the source publicationSource-publication recordProvider-confirmed

jb

jb · feministvisionscts.wordpress.com · February 15, 2016

http://www.transadvocate.com/the-look-interrupted-how-cinema-looks-at-trans-womens-bodies_n_15301.htm

Counts describe documented circulation and reception in the sources currently available to the Collective. They are not a score of quality, merit, popularity, or social value, and provider totals can overlap.

Article authors

Author profiles and related researchers

groothuis

2 publications · 6 inbound sources/citations