TRANS

Trailer.

Available Summary:

"TRANS is an extraordinary documentary feature about men and women, and all the variations in between. It is about the transgender community, perhaps the most misunderstood and mistreated minority in America and around the world. Inspired by the incredible story of Dr. Christine McGinn and her work as a transgender surgeon, TRANS provides an up-close and very personal vision into the lives, loves, and challenges of a remarkable cast of characters of all ages and from all walks of life." -Apple TV.

Jack's Summary:

I have a lot of complicated feelings about certain interviews and scenes in this film. Warnings aplenty. There are some great interviews with Masen Davis and Jamison Green, two trans male pioneers, and I liked excerpts of a speech that Zander Keig gave as part of his phalloplasty educational talk. I wish we knew more about Yavante Thomas-Guess, another trans man who is interviewed as well. You can view the trailer above but, as a sign of what the rest of the documentary offers, you should prepare yourself for transphobia, misgendering, and upsetting visuals. There are also discussions of self harm, genital mutilation, sexual violence, murder, torture, suicide, and firearm-related deaths.

Overall, this is quite an outdated documentary, although parts of it are quite valuable and touching. The most anger-inducing scenes, for me personally, were interviews with the family of a trans woman who killed herself after enduring their intolerance. Far from holding themselves accountable, some of the interviewees seem to shamelessly enjoy the limelight, and see nothing wrong with misgendering her after death. Other family members seem genuinely regretful.

WARNING: Unsafe chest binding.

One of the documentary subjects, a young trans man named Cris, double-binds in order to flatten his chest as much as possible. This is potentially very dangerous. In order to approach chest binding with a harm minimisation approach (noting that binding will not be safe for everyone regardless), only one binder should be worn; it should have shoulder straps, a looser back, and a stiffer front, so that your chest is flattened in a way which alleviates pressure on your ribcage as much as possible. Double-binding increases the pressure around your entire ribcage and eliminates any benefit from how they are designed.

The fact that Cris is shown binding this way is not necessarily the issue; profiling how documentary subjects live day-to-day has value, and acknowledging that many of us are driven to unsafe binding due to dysphoria is important. The issue is that no warning or caveat is offered, explaining to viewers that they should not follow Cris's example. That is irresponsible filmmaking.