‘Inside Out – The Documentary’

“Nothing about us without us.” It’s a slogan meant to impress on broad society that no decision making about a minority group should be made without the full participation of members of the minority group that will be impacted by any decisions made about it.

When it comes to telling the narratives of trans community members in media, how do trans people tell their stories without bias from producers that promote inaccurate and harmful stereotypes of trans community members?

I recently spoke to Vicki Dunakin and Aiden Key about a project they’re working on: Inside Out – The Documentary. It’s a documentary about transgender children that’s in preproduction. The Web site for the film (insideout-thedocumentary.com) describes it as a 90-minute documentary that “takes us deep inside the world of transgender and gender non-conforming children. Ranging in age from pre-school through high school, these children feel they were born with bodies that do not match their innate gender identity. Each yearns to live an authentic life – and live Inside Out.”

Continuing the description, the Web site states that the documentarians will follow “the lives of five such children and their families over the course of one year. The families are diverse, living in conservative farm towns, progressive cities and neighborhoods like yours. The hurdles they face are just as varied. We meet children who have transitioned to their new identity openly and others who are ‘living stealth’ – choosing to keep their birth gender private. We also meet gender fluid children who refuse to be confined by any gender box.”

As Dunakin described the documentary to me, the goal is tell the story from the children’s and their family’s perspective. They want trans and gender nonconforming (GNC) youth to talk about their issues and experiences as they’re living their living their lives instead of having experts sit before cameras describing those issues.

Vicki Dunakin has more than 30-years’ experience in network television, feature film and documentary productions. Her biography highlights that she was the producer-director of the documentary Hidden Worlds: Underground Rome that National Geographic International and the Discovery Channel broadcast worldwide. Her biography also credits hers as being the co-creator and executive producer of the series National Geographic’s Amazing Planet.

Experienced as Dunakin is as a documentarian, she is cisgender. My first reaction to this project as a trans woman was leeriness: “nothing about us without us” among my first thoughts. I wondered how many trans people will there be in decision making positions with the production and who’d be funding the project – what would be the funders’ agenda?

Here’s where Aiden Key’s role is shown to be important. Key is founder of the annual Gender Odyssey family of conferences, and Gender Odyssey Family is an annual conference for families experiencing the day-to-day realities of raising gender nonconforming and transgender children. Key is working closely with the production company to assemble a panel of advisors. According to the documentary’s Web site, the panel will be “a panel of leaders from the transgender and LGBTQ community. This Advisor Panel will come together at key points throughout the casting, pre-production, production and post-production phases of this film to provide their valued input and insights and inform decisions.” The full panel will be announced soon.

And, a number of LGBT and ally organizations have signed onto supporting the project, including the Ackerman Institute’s Gender and Family Project, Gender Diversity, the Greater Seattle Business Association, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, the Point Foundation, the Pride Foundation, Soulforce, Transkids Purple Rainbow Foundation, Trans Student Equality Resources, Trans Youth Equality Foundation and TransYouth Family Allies.

Dunakin and Key are seeking funding for the project in a novel way: they’re looking for 80,000 transgender, lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer and ally funders to donate $10.00 apiece toward the production – the price of about one theater movie ticket. They began a 28-day fundraising window Feb. 14. Key is the executive director of Gender Diversity, and the funds will be raised through that 501(c)(3) instead of through more traditional crowd funding sources such as Kickstarter or Indiegogo.

“Nothing about us without us” would be part of my agenda for donating $10 at insideout-thedocumentary.com for this documentary. The other part would be seeing trans and GNC youth and their families speak with their own voices to introduce the trans community to broader society.