One of the most important aspects of working towards both acceptance and equal nights for the transgender community is sheer visibility. As Vlada Knowlton’s excellent new documentary points out so much of the hatred and fear is based on ignorance of people who have yet to encounter or have an exchange with trans adult or child. So often it is the extreme Far Right who take advantage of what is essentially a lack of knowledge by using their vast resources to outright lie about the facts. This stirs up a vitriolic atmosphere of hysteria resulting in a significant part of the population mistakenly opposed to any trans people being treated with respect and dignity.
The struggle the trans community mirrors the one waged for decades against the LGBT community, but since the passing of the law for Same Sex Marriage, the hatemongers have eased up on us and now have trans rights in their sights.
Knowlton’s film is more emotional than others as one of the trans children she features is her own 5 year old daughter. Hence the part of parents coming to terms with the realisation that they have a trans child is much more personal asshe shares her experience of dealing with her initial ignorance and learning how to be supportive.
The one most uplifting fact that was that every single parent shared was once they accepted their child’s claim to their rightful gender, the once withdrawn kids who as young a 5 had serious suicidal thoughts, suddenly became so alive and happy. If anyone should ever question the whole concept that a child is too young to really know about such matters, they should make a point of at least watching this very moving part of the film.
The title of the film describes the year 2016 when a sudden wave of the so-called bathroom bills were introduced across the nation, prompting the HRC to declare this was the most dangerous year ever for the transgender community. In Knowlton’s home state of Washington, there were actually six such bills introduced into the State Senate. So Knowlton and her husband became part of a network of parents of transgender kids who banded together to do whatever they could to stop these Bills being passed.
As the small group of parents gathered momentum and support, they were facing the well funded might of an obnoxious ‘family’ group who fortunately, despite all the nasty rhetoric and fancy lawyers, failed to even get their extreme amendment on the Ballot paper for voters to have their say, Instead it was left to the State Senate to decide, and thanks to some rare bi-partisanship three Republicans switched side to make sure the Bill was defeated,
Any sort of objections to transgenders are always crudely based around genitalia as if this is the only part of their whole beings that matter. And like homosexuals there is such an eagerness to align them to sexual predators and paedophiles even though no one ever has a single scrap of evidence to back up their ludicrous claims.
Knowlton’s doc may have been about the Bathroom Bill struggle, but its underlying focus was on the remarkable families who showed how happy they really are when everyone is allowed to be their true selves. It was all about visibility, and that is more than half the battle.
