A review by Kaitlyn Sonoda
Changing the Game, directed by Michael Barnett, is an incredible documentary-style film that outlines some of the struggles that trans athletes face not only on the field, but in their daily personal lives, too. It follows the lives of three high school athletes: Sarah, a skier fighting for trans rights in her state, Andraya, a track athlete finding her way as an African American trans woman, and Mack, a wrestler fighting for his right to fight on the men’s team rather than the women’s. This movie is invaluable in understanding what everyday life is like you are trans, and here is why.
Throughout the film, the three characters face heart-breaking discrimination and we are able to see how it affects them and their lives. When Andraya is racing at a track meet, people in the bleachers yell that she is a man, that she has a mental illness, that she is making a mockery of girls’ sports, and that she is ruining what girls have worked so hard to get for years. These comments suggest that Andraya’s not a woman, and that she has no right to be doing what she loves. These comments were hurled from middle-aged, white, presumably cisgender people – this raises some serious questions and concerns about the power dynamics in place today. It also leads us to wonder what these interactions would have been like if Andraya were white and trans, or African American and cis.
Mack is shown browsing through Facebook posts about his wrestling accomplishments, but nearly all of the comments say things such as, “she shouldn’t be allowed to compete”, and even “it should kill itself”, which dehumanize him entirely. Mack even finds pages that are dedicated to tearing down him and his accomplishments. These occurrences are startling, but unfortunately, as Mack expresses, they are not rare for trans people. In “The Whites of Their Eyes: Racist Ideologies and the Media”, Stuart Hall examines the perpetuations of racism in media, and he says, “institutions like media produce, reproduce, and transform ideologies” (Hall, 19). Though he was speaking about race, we see this same production and reproduction with Mack’s case, because of the parallels seen in the oppression of both racialized and trans people. People are producing the ideology that only cis people should play sports by creating hateful Facebook pages, and it is being reproduced by the people commenting on positive pages about Mack who are deliberately trying to tear him down. These interactions reveal a detrimental relationship between cis and trans people and the ways that trans people are oppressed and discriminated against.
The film also touches on institutionalized discrimination and shows how trans people are disadvantaged right out of the gates. Sarah explains how the policy for all state sports used to be that gender reassignment surgery had to take place before someone could compete in that gender category. Sarah talks about how it should be the person’s choice to reassign or not, and that it should not be the state’s business at all. Sarah also faces workplace discrimination in her job as a ski instructor, where she works knowing that if her employers find out she is trans, she will be fired simply for being who she is. This kind of discrimination leads her to advocate for the passing of Bill HB1319, which would give trans people basic rights under the law and would prevent things such as nonsensical job loss. When we see Sarah talking about this bill in court, she has people that testify against her, saying that they would be scared for their children having to “share a bathroom with predators”. In “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference”, Audre Lorde speaks on how we handle differences, and she says that the first thing we do is “ignore it, and if that is not possible, copy it if we think it is dominant, or destroy it if we think it is subordinate” (Lorde 115). The comments that Sarah receives directly reflect Lorde’s ideas. The concerns these people have were not brought up publicly until this court hearing, which shows that they first decided to ignore the difference. When, however, the issue is brought to court, the difference becomes too significant to ignore, and so the privileged group (cis people) creates a subordinate group out of what they perceive to be “different” (trans people), and this is where we see the “destroy it” portion of Lorde’s claim.
The reasons that Changing the Game is invaluable for understanding trans issues do not stop here though. This film also manages to keep the tone light at times though, showing Andraya having gossipy hangouts with her friends, and talking about her funny dating life. They show Mack and his girlfriend, Preslee, and Mack talks about never liking horses, but he does now because Preslee loves them. We also see Sarah making YouTube videos where does makeup tutorials and vlogs her school life. These interactions work to challenge the cissexist gender binary which tells us that cis people are the only ‘normal ones’, by showing the teens having typical teen experiences.
At first, I was disappointed that the film ended the way it did, because I wanted a happier ending. I will refrain from spoiling the plot, but the ending of the film felt slightly abrupt to me, and it felt like the stories were not finished yet. This was something I disliked at first, but after thinking about it more, I came to appreciate the message that this abrupt stop sent.
The journey for those three kids is never over, and their stories do not end there – they will still face discrimination, and they will continue to fight for every single victory, big or small. This abrupt ending symbolized the unending journey of fighting to be you, and that there is not a true happy ending for these kids – at least not yet. The slightly unsettled feeling I was left with gave me motivation to do more to help, and I hope that it had this same effect on the others who have watched as well, because this is the feeling that we need to instill in people so that big scale change can happen.
For more information on how you can help support trans rights:
https://www.thetrevorproject.org/
For more information on Reelout Film Festival:
References
Lorde, Audre. 1984. “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference.” Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Crossing Press, 1984. pp. 115.
Hall, Stuart. “The Whites of Their Eyes: Racist Ideologies and the Media.” Gender Race and Class in Media: A Text Reader. Ed. Dines, Gail and Jean M. Humez. California: Sage Publications, 1995. pp.19.
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I really appreciate that you acknowledge that you did not like the ending at first, but the more you sat with it, you understood it. I think that is really powerful and says a lot about the film. It’s interesting and intriguing that it made you continue to think about it even after it had finished. Great review, I want to watch this film now!
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