In 2009, the protocols relating to “gender dysphoria” (the medical term for transgender identity, which is contentious within the trans community) were modified to include children, although hormone replacement therapy (HRS) was only approved for those aged 16 years and older. However, the real issue brought to light by the documentary is exactly how little is known about the medical procedures available to trans youth. Name and pronoun changes happen largely uncontested, and social adjustments are made as identities change. Overall, the kids’ families are supportive and interested in helping them to thrive. The medical aspect of transition is by far the most controversial aspect of Growing Up Trans. There are a number of medical resources available to normalize her life as a woman, but this is the threshold of what science is capable of making happen right now. Conversations about pregnancy and childbirth, which are commonplace among girls entering puberty, cause Ariel a great deal of emotional pain. Her friends candidly tell the camera that no one really thinks of Ariel as being transgender, and yet Ariel tearfully provides another perspective from which to view the supposed ideal of “passing”.
Ariel’s mother moved her to a new town after she transitioned so that she would be able to create a new social life in which she was only seen as a girl. Other trans kids, like Ariel, transitioned so early in their adolescence that they were already fully socialized into their gender identity, although this often creates an entirely new set of difficulties they must face.
#GROWING UP TRANS HOW TO#
This was particularly poignant in the case of Daniel, a young trans man whose friends said very specifically that they were showing him “the ropes of how to be a guy”. Because people who identify with the gender they were assigned at birth are socialized into the norms for that gender in a manner that is essentially invisible, it’s startling to see the concerted way in which transgender kids have to learn new ways of being in the world. However tired these tropes may be to those keyed into representations of transgender people in the media, they do show the reality of the amount of beauty labor that often goes into our gender presentations. The documentary also employs other transgender “transformation” tropes, such as shots of trans women applying make-up in a mirror and trans men lifting weights. The viewer is treated to a neck-down shot of the bikini-ed bodies of three teenage girls, which is questionable even without the implicit invited comparison between Ariel’s body and that of her cisgender friends. Growing Up Trans does stray into problematic territory once or twice, as in one scene where an underwater camera follows the body of a transgender girl named Ariel as she swims with her friends at the local pool. Friends and family who use the wrong pronouns, or just can’t bring themselves to accept their child’s identity, are humanized without being excused, and the specifics of each child’s physical transition and bodily experience are handled with tact while still being directly addressed.
The result is a balanced depiction of the difficulties that trans youth face in making themselves understood by those around them, as well as the barriers that those closest to them must overcome in order to do so. While the documentary largely provides the young men and women, whose ages range between nine and 19 years, the space to articulate their own feelings, thoughts, and needs, it also spends a good deal of time with the kids’ parents and peer groups. PBS’ Frontline documentary, Growing Up Trans, centers the stories of eight transgender youths as they attempt to navigate family, friends, gender, and the medical decisions that they each face as they approach puberty. While the work of transgender icons and activists such as Laverne Cox, Janet Mock, and Chelsea Manning have done an incalculable amount to bring the experiences and struggles of the trans community out from the shadows and into the mainstream, the experiences of transgender children are still largely undiscussed outside of the perennial alarmism around school bathrooms.
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