Arts & Entertainment
Trans Pride slated for Saturday
Famous surgeon Marci Bowers to speak
Dr. Marci Bowers says gender reassignment surgery isn’t as traumatic as many fear. Complications, she says, are extremely rare, patients are in the hospital an average of only three nights and most are off pain medication within 48 hours. (Photo courtesy of Bowers)
Dr. Marci Bowers is a rarity — she’s one of only two doctors who specializes in gender reassignment surgery who’s also transgender herself. The other (Dr. Christine McGinn) is a protégé of Bowers.
Bowers, who transitioned in the mid-1990s, is the only gynecologist who does gender reassignment surgery. She’ll be at Trans Pride Saturday (10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Metropolitan Community Church of Washington) to give the keynote address and took nearly an hour on the phone last week from her practice in San Mateo, Calif., to talk about her life, her work, the practicalities of trans surgical procedures and where trans issues are going. Bowers’ comments have been edited for length and clarity.
Blade: How does a surgeon trained in one area move to another? What kind of training is involved?
Bowers: Well sometimes people think when you’re a gynecologist all you do is look at female vulvas all day but it’s quite a surgical specialty. There’s extensive surgery experience required before learning the gender reassignment stuff. And after I’d been doing surgery in practice for 13 years or so, once you have a basic framework about handling tissue ane bleeding, learning a new skill isn’t as hard as it might seem.
Blade: So if someone does, say, gall bladder surgeries and wants to start doing heart transplants, what’s the process like to move to a whole other part of the body?
Bowers: Traditionally you have to do a fellowship of some kind to do that. You have to go back, reapply as if you’re just out of medical school, do a residency all over again in the new field and go from there. They might give you a little credit on a few things, but you pretty much have to start back at the beginning. It was different for me because there’s no residency or fellowship for doing gender reassignment surgeries and I had a lot of experience surgically so doing an entire residency for me would have been ridiculous and superfluous. It’s really a mentoring process and I learned from Dr. (Stanley) Biber.
Blade: Does it give you added credibility to be doing these surgeries but also be transgender yourself?
Bowers: Well, I think that’s really for the consumer to decide that, but I think so. It’s sort of like the hair club for men. Not only am I president, I’m also a customer. Someone who understands what it’s like to be bald. Or like if you’re selling sports cars but you drive a minivan. I know what the consumer is looking for but I think being a gynecologist is the most important. Because it’s a very visual surgery and very artistically based. If someone has a gall bladder out and there are no complications, nobody cares what it looked like but this surgery has such an artistic component, the surgeon’s interpretation is so critical.
Blade: Many trans people say the non-trans world is too obsessed with who’s had what done surgically. Do you agree?
Bowers: That’s a crucial point and one that I keep bring up proactively because obviously people still don’t understand the difference between gender and genitalia. Gender, we know, gets established at a very early age, like by age 4, 5 or 6 and it doesn’t really change very much. This is what transgender people have been saying for years, “This is how I felt since I was 5 years old.” So the question about surgery is really the dumbest question. … I was a woman since I transitioned. Nobody tells you whether you’re male or female. And it isn’t about the surgery, it’s what society says when they meet you at the grocery store or the food counter.
Blade: Trans acceptance seems to be making progress but still seems significantly behind gay and lesbian lib. Do you agree with that? Do you think it will continue to improve?
Bowers: Well, yes, I do think we are behind where the lesbian and gay community is in terms of acceptance. Some of that is just the sheer numbers, some of it is it’s still a little bit of a minority sort of thing and somehow it does sort of push people’s buttons in a different way. That’s too bad because if the gay and lesbian community saw the trans community as more supportive, we could make much more progress but sometimes the discrimination we get within the gay and lesbian community is worse than it is with the straight community. It’s like they just don’t get it and it’s very hurtful. There are common threads that run through all kinds of discrimination. We’re fighting the same forces that want to simplify the world and turn back the clock so everything is black and white and keep dragging at the heels of progress.
Blade: What kinds of procedures do you do? All “bottom” stuff or more?
Bowers: Kind of bottom plus. I do a procedure on the females, Chondrolaryngoplasty, which is a shaving of the thyroid cartilage. For some women, it’s a telltale sign in the throat and it was first done by Dr. Biber in the 1970s. It’s also a very delicate procedure that’s not taught anywhere, no ear, nose or throat doctors do it. It’s a very specialized thing.
Blade: And you do both male-to-female and female-to-male gender reassignment procedures?
Bowers: Yes.
Blade: Which are more common? How many do you average in a year?
Bowers: I do about 120 male-to-female surgeries a year. It’s about four-to-one female to male versus male to female.
Blade: Are most people able to orgasm after surgery?
Bowers: It’s different. For female to male, there’s really no impact. With a Metoidioplasty, guys can use it for penetration so that’s the good part there. If anything, it’s enhanced. Plus the fact that they’re testosterone-driven men, the libido tends to accelerate with transition. With male to female, it’s very complicated and about 30 percent of biologically born women aren’t able to orgasm at all anyway. Our patients for the most part are able to. It’s a very high percentile. About 90 percent but the thing you have to realize is that going from male to female for one thing, just hormonally, you tend to go to a lower level of interest just based on reduced testosterone levels. When you’re a woman, you wonder why we leave men in charge of so much. It’s so dominated by sexual thoughts. Sometimes I think, “Wow, what was I thinking about all those years? There’s so much more to do.” I say that sort of tongue in check. And the feelings are a big different. Maybe like going from the oboe to the banjo.
Trans Pride to feature health focus
Trans Pride, now in its fifth year, will be held Saturday at Metropolitan Community Church of Washington (474 Ridge Street, N.W.) from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and is designed to be an event where attendees stay for all or most of the day.
“Very early on, the community voted for it to be a health-based focus,” says Danielle King, who’s co-charing this year’s event with Holly Goldmann. “That’s why Dr. Bowers was invited. We felt like she could offer some insight that would be really attractive to our audience.”
A $10 donation is suggested but not required. King hopes attendees will plan to spend their whole day at the church.
“We want them to come and enjoy the whole day,” she says. “There’ll be workshop and panel discussions on trans health throughout the day.”
She expects about 200 people, more than in past years when the event has been held at the Capital Pride host hotel.
Trans Pride is under the Capital Pride events umbrella.
Friday, April 3
Center Aging Monthly Luncheon With Yoga will be at 12 p.m. at the DC Center for the LGBT Community. Email Mac at [email protected] if you require ASL interpreter assistance, have any dietary restrictions, or questions about this event.
Go Gay DC will host “First Friday LGBTQ+ Community Social” at 7 p.m. at Silver Diner Ballston. This is a chance to relax, make new friends, and enjoy happy hour specials at this classic retro venue. Attendance is free and more details are available on Eventbrite.
Saturday, April 4
Go Gay DC will host “LGBTQ+ Community Brunch” at 11 a.m. at Freddie’s Beach Bar & Restaurant. This fun weekly event brings the DMV area LGBTQ+ community, including allies, together for delicious food and conversation. Attendance is free and more details are available on Eventbrite.
Nellies Sports Bar will host “Nellies DC Drag Brunch” at 12 p.m. Come get served like a queen, by a queen at the top rated Drag Brunch in DC! Join Sapphire Blue, Deja Diamond and their team of amazing drag performers, for the most fun you’ll have all weekend. Tickets start at $58.51 and are available on Eventbrite.
Monday, April 6
Center Aging: Monday Coffee Klatch will be at 10 a.m. on Zoom. This is a social hour for older LGBTQ+ adults. Guests are encouraged to bring a beverage of choice. For more information, contact Adam ([email protected]).
Go Gay DC will host “LGBTQ+ Community Happy Hour Meetup” at 5:30 p.m. at Freddie’s Beach Bar and restaurant. This event is ideal for making new friends. It’s free to attend. The group will gather inside at the purple booth to the left. Attendance is free and more details are available on Eventbrite.
Tuesday, April 7
Universal Pride Meeting will be at 7 p.m. on Zoom. This group seeks to support, educate, empower, and create change for people with disabilities. For more details, email [email protected].
Wednesday, April 8
Job Club will be at 6 p.m. on Zoom upon request. This is a weekly job support program to help job entrants and seekers, including the long-term unemployed, improve self-confidence, motivation, resilience and productivity for effective job searches and networking — allowing participants to move away from being merely “applicants” toward being “candidates.” For more information, email [email protected] or visit www.thedccenter.org/careers.
Thursday, April 9
The DC Center’s Fresh Produce Program will be held all day at the DC Center for the LGBT Community. To be more fair with who is receiving boxes, the program is moving to a lottery system. People will be informed on Wednesday at 5:00 pm if they are picked to receive a produce box. No proof of residency or income is required. For more information, email [email protected] or call 202-682-2245.
Virtual Yoga Class will be at 7 p.m. on Zoom. This free weekly class is a combination of yoga, breathwork and meditation that allows LGBTQ+ community members to continue their healing journey with somatic and mindfulness practices. For more details, visit the DC Center’s website.
a&e features
Award-winning D.C. chef reaching new culinary heights
Anthony Jones of Marcus DC competing on ‘Top Chef’
In Anthony Jones’s kitchen, all sorts of flags fly, including his own. Executive chef at award-winning restaurant Marcus DC, Jones has reached culinary heights (James Beard Award semifinalist for Emerging Chef, anyone?), yet he’s just getting started.
Briefly stepping away from his award-winning station, Jones took a moment under a different set of lights. Recently, he temporarily gave up his post at the restaurant for a starring small-screen slot on the latest season of “Top Chef,” which debuted in March. (The show airs weekly on Bravo and Peacock).
Before his strategic slice-and-dice competition, however, Jones, who identifies as gay, draws from his deep DMV roots. In the years before “Top Chef” and the top chef spot at Marcus, he was born and raised in Sunderland, Md., in southern Maryland, near the Chesapeake.
Early memories were steeped in afternoons on boats with his dad bonding over fishing, and wandering the garden of his great-grandparents spread with fresh vegetables and a few hogs. “It was Southern, old-school ethics and upbringing,” he said. “Family and food went hand in hand.” Weekends meant grabbing bushels of crabs, dad and grandma would cook and crack them. Family members would host fish fries for extra cash. In this seafood-heavy youth, Jones managed time to sneak in episodes of the “OG” Japanese “Iron Chef” show, which helped inspire him to pursue a career in the kitchen.
Jones moved to D.C. after graduating from college, ending up at lauded Restaurant Eve, and met famed chef Marcus Samuelson, who brought him to Miami to be part of the opening team for Red Rooster Overtown. After three years, Jones moved back to D.C., where he ran Dirty Habit, reinventing and reimagining the menu, integrating West African flavors and ingredients.
Samuelson, however, wouldn’t let a talent like Jones stay away for too long. Pulling Jones back into his orbit, Samuelson elevated Jones to help him open his namesake restaurant Marcus DC, which has been named a top-five restaurant by the Washington Post. Since then, Jones has been nominated as a semifinalist for the RAMMYs Rising Culinary Star in 2026 and won the Eater DC’s Rising Chef award in 2025.
Samuelson’s Marcus is a tour de force interpreting the Black Diaspora on the plate, from the American South to West Africa, along with his signature “Swedopian” touches. Yet it’s Jones who has deeply informed the plate, elevating his own story to date. Marcus DC is primarily a seafood restaurant, which serves Jones well.
“Where I’m from is seafood heavy, and as I’ve progressed in my career, I’ve moved away from meat.” Veggies and fish are hero dishes. His own dish, Mel’s Crab Rice, was not only lauded by the Washington Post, but is framed by his youth carrying home the crustaceans from Mel’s crab truck. It’s a bowl of Carolina rice, layered with pickled okra, uni béarnaise, and crab. Jones also points to a dish on the opening menu, rockfish and brassica, paying respect to a landmark D.C. institution, Ben’s Chili Bowl. Jones reverse engineered a favorite bowl of chili that’s seafood instead of meat forward, leveraging octopus and rockfish along with different riffs of cauliflower: showing his intellectual, creative, and cultural sides.
While “Top Chef” is showing Jones’s spotlight side, he also lets his identity show at work. “In the kitchen, I make sure we’re inclusive. We don’t tolerate discrimination. Everyone that’s here should feel confident to express themselves. There are so many different flags in the kitchen.”
Jones says that he didn’t fully express his gay identity until fairly recently. He felt reluctant coming out to certain family members, “you’re scared to tell them about being different,” he says, and while that anxiety ate at him, “I’m lucky and fortunate to have unconditional love and that weight off my shoulders.”
Today, “I’m me all the time, Monday to Sunday. I’m honest with people, and my staff is honest with me.”
“Being a chef is hard,” he says, “and being a chef of color is even more difficult.”
Yet his LGBTQ identity is a juggling act, he says. “I need to keep that balance, because once someone finds out something about you, their opinion can change, whether you want it or not.”
Being on a whole season of TV cooking competition, however, might mean millions more might have an opinion of him (Jones has appeared on TV already, on an episode of “Chopped”). To prepare, he says, “I’ve just kept a level head. It’s just an honor to be on top chef with amazing people happy to be there.”
Plus, this season is set in the Carolinas, and Jones attended Johnson & Wales University in Charlotte, N.C. “It’s a full story of my life, now a monumental moment for me.”
Jones also recently was nominated for a James Beard Foundation Award. “JBF has been a north star, a dream for so long. I always had this goal on my wall.”
Being at the top spot at Marcus DC, making waves through his accolades, and cooking on Bravo means that Jones is highly visible. “I think that if someone has a similar background to me, and can see our story, trajectory, and success, they can have more ability to be themselves. This is my goal.”
Back at Marcus, Jones has plenty up his chef’s white’s sleeves. A new spring menu is in the works. He’ll be launching a new tasting menu “dining experience,” he says, and has plans to work on more events and collaborations with chefs and friends to bring in new talent and share the culinary wealth.
Movies
Trans-driven ‘Serpent’s Skin’ delivers campy sapphic horror
Embracing classic tropes with a candid exploration of queer experience
It’s probably no surprise that the last decade or so has seen a “renaissance” in horror cinema. Long underestimated and dismissed by critics and ignored by all the awards bodies as genre films, horror movies were deemed for generations as unworthy of serious consideration; relegated into the realm of “fandom,” where generations of young movie fanatics were left to find deeper significance on their own, they have inspired countless future film artists whose creative vision would be shaped by their influence. Add to that the increasing state of existential anxiety that has us living like frogs in a slow-boiling pot, and it seems as if the evolution of horror into what might be our culture’s most resonant form of pop art expression was more or less inevitable all along.
Queer audiences, of course, have always understood that horror provides an ideal vehicle to express the “coded” themes that spring from existence as a stigmatized outsider, and while the rise of the genre as an art form has been fueled by filmmakers from every community, the transgressive influence of queerness – particularly when armed with “camp,” its most surefire means of subversion – has played an undeniable role in building a world where movies like “Sinners” and “Weapons” can finally be lauded at the Oscars for their artistic qualities as well as celebrated for their success at providing paying audiences with a healthy jolt of adrenaline.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the boldest and most biting entries are coming from trans filmmakers like Jane Schoenbrun (“I Saw the TV Glow”) – and like Australian director Alice Maio Mackay, whose new film “The Serpent’s Skin” opened in New York last weekend and expands to Los Angeles this week.
Described in a review from RogerEbert.com as “a kind of ‘Scanners’ for the dolls,” it’s a movie that embraces classic horror tropes within a sensibility that blends candid exploration of trans experience with an obvious love for camp. It centers on twenty-something trans girl Anna (Alexandra McVicker), who escapes the toxic environment of both her dysfunctional household and her conservative hometown by running away to the “Big City” and moving in with her big sister (Charlotte Chimes). On her first night in town, she connects with Danny (Jordan Dulieu), a neighbor (the only “hottie” in the building, according to her sister) who plays guitar in a band and ticks off all her “edgy” boxes, and has a one-night stand.
The very next day, she starts a new job at a record store, where she connects – through an intense and unexpected incident – with local tattoo artist Gen (Avalon Faust), a young woman she has seen in psychic visions, and who has been likewise drawn to her. The reason? They are both “witches,” born with abilities that give them a potentially deadly power over ordinary humans, and bound together in an ancient supernatural legacy.
It goes without saying that they fall in love; together, they teach and learn from each other as they try to master the mysterious magical gifts they both possess; but when Danny coincidentally books Gen for a tattoo inspired by his earlier “fling” with Anna, an ancient evil is unleashed, leading to a string of horrific incidents and forcing them to confront the dark influences within their own traumatic histories which may have conjured this malevolent spirit in the first place, before it wreaks its soul-stealing havoc upon the entire community.
Confronting the theme of imposed trans “guilt” head on, “Serpent’s Skin” emanates from a softer, gentler place than most horror films, focusing less on scares than on the sense of responsibility which seems naturally to arise just from being “different.”. Both McVicker and Faust bring a palpable feeling of weight to their roles, as if their characters are carrying not only their own fate upon their shoulders, but that of the world at large; blessed (or cursed) with a layer of awareness that both elevates and isolates them, their characters evoke a haunting sense of responsibility, which permeates their relationship and supersedes their personal desires. At the same time, they bring a mix of respect and eroticism to the sapphic romance at the center of the film, evoking a connection to the transgressive and iconic “lesbian noir” genre but replacing its sense of amoral cynicism with an imperative toward empathy and social responsibility.
All of this helps to make the film’s heroines relatable, and raises the stakes by investing us not just in the defeat of supernatural evil, but the triumph of love. Yet we can’t help but feel that there’s something lost – a certain edge, perhaps – that might have turned up the heat and given the horror a more palpable bite. Though there are moments of genuine fright, most of the “scary” stuff is campy enough to keep us from taking things too seriously – despite the best efforts of the charismatic Dulieu, who literally sinks his teeth into his portrayal of the possessed version of Danny.
More genuinely disturbing are the movie’s scenes of self-harm, which both underscore and indict the trope of trans “victimhood” while reminding us of the very real fear at the center of many trans lives, especially when lived under the oppression of a mindset that deplores their very existence.
Still, though Mackay’s film may touch on themes of queer and trans existence and build its premise on a kind of magical bond that makes us all “sisters under the skin,” it is mostly constructed as a stylish tribute to the classic thrillers of an earlier age, evoking the psychological edge of directors like Hitchcock and DePalma while embracing the lurid “shock value” of the B-movie horror that shaped the vision of a modern generation of filmmakers who grew up watching it – and even if it never quite delivers the kind of scares that linger in our minds as we try to go to sleep at night, it makes up for the shortfall with a smart, sensitive, and savvy script and a rare depiction of trans/lesbian love that wins us over with chemistry, emotional intelligence, and enviable solidarity.
What makes “The Serpent’s Skin” feel particularly remarkable is that it comes from a 21-year-old filmmaker. Mackey, who built the foundation of her career behind the camera with a series of low-budget horror shorts in her teens, has already made an impact with movies ranging from the vampire horror comedy “So Vam” (released when she was 16) to the horror musical “Satanic Panic” and the queer holiday shockfest “Carnage for Christmas”. With her latest effort, she deploys a confidence and a style that encompasses both the deep psychological nuance of the horror genre and its guilty-pleasure thrills, rendered in an aesthetic that is grounded in intimate queer and trans authenticity and yet remains daring enough to take detours into the surreal and psychedelic without apology.
It’s the kind of movie that feels like a breakthrough, especially in an era when it feels especially urgent for trans stories to be told.
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