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Reviews
Growing Up Coy (2016)
Inspiring, but also a little depressing
I am happy that this documentary covered Coy's story and helped shed more light on the issues surrounding transgender people's rights. Unfortunately, as many of the comments from the school and social or traditional media sites showed, so many people--even those whose jobs require them to be educated on the subject--are astonishingly uninformed on child development and human sexuality and gender. Oddly enough, many people seem to be confused about how public bathrooms work, as well.
In the film, a news commentator and many people criticizing Coy's parents online suggest "six-year-olds don't know anything about their sex or sexuality." However, childhood development research has shown that "sexuality" exists throughout our lives in one way or another, and to think that kids are unaware of their own bodies or how others treat them based on perceived sex/gender is naive. Additionally, there are established cases of childhood gender dysphoria, and many trans adults claim they knew their gender identity from a very young age.
Worse yet, commenters in the documentary and even online today claim that allowing Coy to be a girl is "sexualizing" her, even though gender, sex, sexualization, and sexual orientation are not the same thing. The repeated confusing of Coy's trans*gender* with her sex, sexual orientation, and sexuality shows the scope of the often vitriolic ignorance and misinformation Coy and her family face before and especially during their publicly visible legal battle.
But, perhaps the most frustrating part covered is the school's and others' argument that, were Coy to be allowed in the girls' bathroom, other little girls might see her genitalia. Unless this school has a policy of requiring girls use the toilet with stall doors open (which would be strange, but a separate issue), I am not sure how any student would see another's genitals...
While the documentary doesn't much address the scientific aspects of gender dysphoria or child psychology or gender vs. sex, I think it still has merit. Information on all of these topics--development, psychology, and gender (and maybe even on how public restrooms have stalls with doors)--is readily available to anyone with the Internet. Since the facts are accessible, maybe more widespread awareness could encourage people to educate themselves and to be more empathetic with kids and adults like Coy.
This documentary, with the mostly sympathetic--but also flawed--people involved in the story might help inspire more self-education and tolerance of transgender people. It's sad that, for now, other kids like Coy, as well as transgender teens and adults, will still face so much hostility (as shown in the film) and even violence in schools, communities, and workplaces. Perhaps more frightening, though, is what the documentary mentions at the end--not all of this nastiness comes from internet trolls or bullies in schools; some more recent cases come from our own state governments, passing laws that hurt transgender people, including children like Coy, simply because they are different from what's most familiar to some people.
InnSaei (2016)
I had higher expectations for it...
I wanted to like this documentary. It made some insightful, scientifically supported points--it's good to stop and smell the roses, to be more empathetic and present in the moment, and kids and adults alike can benefit from more time playing outside and a little less in front of a screen. Unfortunately, that wisdom wasn't enough to make up for all the flaws.
Some of the...spiritualism?...was corny and over-the-top, and many of the ideas represented were based on hype, ignorance bordering on delusion, and popular myth rather than fact--a risk of over-reliance on intuition that one interviewee points out in the beginning of the film.
Some of the less accurate content in the film includes:
-the assertion that modern cultures are just too darn logical! (though anyone paying attention to political trends might think the exact opposite--that perhaps emotion is often reigning with little oversight)
-that nature just wants to nurture life (ignoring the abundance of necessary and unnecessary violent, painful death in nature--seriously, watch a nature documentary or hang around out in nature for a while some time)
-somewhat outlandish depictions, some bordering on "noble savage" romanticism, of ancient Polynesian culture with some facts mixed in
-the implication that modern Western culture, so lacking in intuition and full of violent media, has led to more gender-based violence (despite the fact some traditional cultures that value intuition are also known to oppress women and that gender-based violence and violence in general, while still an issue, has been decreasing for the last several decades during the development of our logic-focused, violent-media-laden culture).
The documentary has some good ideas worth considering, and perhaps more of a focus on the science or facts related to those ideas, rather than on half-true popular myths and mysticism, would have emphasized those merits. But, in attempting to promote the value of intuition, the film ends up embodying many of the issues with intuitive reasoning absent critical thought; it does a disservice to those trying to demonstrate or understand the tangible, far-reaching benefits of empathy and awareness.