Soldier’s Girl has for a long time been one of the cornerstone “must-see” transgender movies and not without reason. The film is the true story of a romance between a rookie soldier, Barry Winchell and a then pre-op transexual, Calpernia Addams.

Just after Barry Winchell joins the Army, he gets taken out for drinks by his squad mates, and his squad leader suggests they go to a club called Visions. Calpernia works there and the two soon start to find the chemistry between each other is intense. Despite her initial reservations, Calpernia lets Barry into her life and Barry starts spending more and more of his free time with her… much to the annoyance of his squad leader. Eventually, their love is torn apart by tragic circumstances in a truly heart wrenching finale as Barry’s fellow soldiers make a drunken mistake that Calpernia will never forget. The man who finally made her feel like a real woman is taken away from her forever.

Soldier’s Girl is a deeply moving story despite it's modesty. Part of this because of it’s tragedy and that’s intensified by the fact that this is the story of a real transexual who’s still living in the USA today. And another part of it is the believability of the characters. Too often, transexual people are misunderstood because others find it hard to see how much discomfort there is when there is a conflict between a person’s internal and external gender. In many films this create transgender characters who come across as incredibly shallow, solely concerned with whether they pass and obsessing over minor details of their presentation.

Soldier’s Girl marches way past such superficialities of the transexual condition. Calpernia’s least passable feature is her deep voice, yet she looks fabulous as a woman and doesn’t appear to make much effort to train her vocals. We learn about the struggles Calpernia faced in being rejected by her family and society, of the emotional toughness she had to develop to move beyond the verbal slurs of drunken jarheads at the club she performed at. It touches on the struggles she faced finding a partner who would love her for her rather than use her as a new sexual experience or as a stepping stone towards coming out as gay. And despite her attractive appearance, you still can’t help but feel for Calpernia’s burning inner conflict as she lives life between genders – part female, part male – and the self consciousness that brings. This is a truly 3D character, a real being as opposed to a Hollywood characterisation that’s been written by an outsider who doesn’t truly understand “being there”. Remarkably, Calpernia is played in the film by Lee Pace, and his outstanding performance doubtless proves that we should have more men or transgender people playing transwomen in film.

Calpernia Addams and Barry Winchell in the film Soldier's Girl

Equally Barry Winchell gets a very well rounded showing. He suffered from a learning disability that made it hard for him to memorise information from books but at the same time has an heartfelt, honest innocence of character that’s hugely endearing. Admirers, as the men who go for transgendered women are known, often get stereotyped as insincere men looking for sexual adventures who’ll court transexuals as long as they don’t need to show any commitment or real respect in return for kinky escapades. This very much isn’t the case with Barry Winchell, as is true of many men these days who hitherto thought they were straight men until they met a transexual. I don’t think he ever saw Calpernia as a man, despite her pre-op body. I think he just saw her as this beautiful being and feel in love with that. He’d only ever been in heterosexual relationships before but perhaps straight would be the wrong word to describe him. I mean that not because he’s having relations with a transexual, but because heterosexual describes an attraction, whereas straight is more political. Perhaps pansexual would be most apt – someone who either transcends or in spite of gender can feel an attraction to a person, primarily because of their personality.

Interestingly – and if you’ve watched the movie, you’ll know exactly what I’m on about – in the real life trial of Justin Fisher for his part in the proceedings, a lot emerged that was only just touched upon in the movie. That he was the one who initiated the guys going to watch transexual performers, despite the fact he called them freaks was covered. However it emerged during his court case that he actually had a lot of feelings for Barry Winchell, more than would be considered “male bonding”, as appropriate for soldiers in a squad. You see in the movie how he does help Barry Winchell pass his tests despite his learning disability but what doesn’t come over is that he had a crush on this guy and actually felt jealous towards Calpernia having all his time and affection. Yet at the same time he was unable to reconcile his homosexuality, repressing his feelings and putting out a hyper-masculine front to project a straightest of the straight image. The hatred he put out towards transexuals was really just the venting of his own inner conflict between his beliefs and his sexuality.

The real life Private First Class Barry Winchell (born 31 August 1977 – murdered 6 July 1999)

More so than many other films coming out of the transgender community, Soldier’s Girl poignantly touches on the issues that face transexuals and that face their lovers. Yet I don’t want trivialise Calpernia’s life by saying this is just about issues – this is about a true love between two people that get wrenched apart horrifically. I watched it with two male friends and, OK, I started crying first because I feel for the inner conflict and discomfort that Calpernia feels as a transexual, and by the end we were all at it! I fully understand why Calpernia states she doesn’t want to answer any questions or even talk about her relationship anymore; it would be too painful to keep drudging it up. Calpernia also went on to have full SRS, blaming the horrific outcome in part to her lack of vaginoplasty at the time, and to create a range of tools for transexuals to live convincingly as women sold under the apt name, Deep Stealth.

Perhaps the final and unanswered question in Soldier’s Girl is whether deep stealth – the process of transitioning so as to live undetected as ever having been male – is the answer to the transexual’s problems or whether the onus lies with society to stop victimising people who fall outside the narrow confines of “straight male or female” definitions? Was it Justin Fisher’s repressed homosexuality that made this tragedy real? Or is it the fact that transexuals are often easy targets, especially when they have traits that clearly mark them as mixed gendered? Why should transexuals have to potentially spent thousands on surgery and cosmetics just to avoid discrimination?

Whatever the root cause is, the film Soldier’s Girl makes huge strides in helping people understand the plight of transexual people. In doing so it remains a lasting testament to Barry Winchell and Calpernia Addams’ braveness. Watch it and you’ll realise why it’s one of the most talked about movies in the transgender genre.