Probably the first ever transgender film: Glen or Glenda? (I Led Two Lives), made in 1954 soon after Christine Jorgensen's story became the world media's first representation of a person who had "changed sex". Wood, a cross dresser himself, was inspired by her story and called for tolerance with his sympathetic, if quirky portrayal of intersexuals, transsexuals and transvestites. this brilliantly bad move by Ed Wood defines postmodern transgender aesthetic sensibilities. Seriously. Boldly innovative in its use of found footage, the film requires voice-over narration to render intelligible its jarring visual discontinuities, making it a theory-head's wet dream that mocks the distinction between high art and garbage. The film's impassioned deference of sexual diversity makes it fun for all kinds of viewers.

If it were not for the Pop Art movement of film-makers like Warhol reclaiming the banal and compromised, this film would probably be in a dustbin somewhere. Instead, we have been forced to watch a film that's fascination lies in its borderline status; it is a truly dreadful film, one of the worst ever made, treading the borders between bathos and pathos, between gothic and camp. At face value, a serious documentary, it allegorically or rather disconnectedly references the terror of gender transgression using a gothic horror leitmotiv, including the famous cameo by vampire icon, Bela Lugosi. One argument for this would be an attempt to make the abject heroic or at least inspire some sympathy, but instead the film's star/director, Ed Wood Jr rather makes his subject matter laughable - which is at least an accommodation of sorts. Unfortunately, Wood was himself a transvestite infamous for his angora sweater fetish, and so, unable to garner enough distance from his narrative line to achieve irony and some self-respect, this clearly is just an unintentionally funny piece with grandiose pretensions; at one point a perfectly serious narrator ascribes baldness to men wearing tight hats - ludicrous, but at the same time a commentary on the naivete of TV/TS autobiography, which is what this film turns out to be. The irony is that, whilst men wet behind the ears at being women are sometimes laughable in an appallingly gawky, trapped-in-the-headlights kind of way, this film is a true test of TG people who really want to pass muster. For to be truly empowered we need to desensitise ourselves to the abject, and if mtfs can watch Glen or Glenda without cringing, and instead laugh at themselves, then yes, we've arrived. A masochistic must see.