hot docs: girl inside

this world premiere of maya gallus’ girl inside was presented with hell’s grannies at hot docs and was co-presented with the inside out film festival. the film follows twenty-six year-old madison’s male to female transition. this is a fairly typically structured documentary, mostly involving talking heads style interviews edited together with observational footage. a significant part of the film is madison (formerly matt) speaking directly to the camera in a diary style about her experiences with transition. she begins by explaining the incongruity between her biological sex and gender that she felt even as a young child, but how she did not ‘officially’ start transitioning until her early twenties. once given a summary of madison’s progress up to the present of the film, we are aligned with her as she visits several family members for the first time since transitioning, including both parents and her brother and sister. these visits all go relatively well; while still demonstrating a few complications within her family in regards to the transition. the other primary voice in the film is of vivian, madison’s grandmother. we learn that madison left her rural new brunswick home to live with vivian in toronto when she was seventeen without much reason given for the move. vivian functions as madison’s main support through this transition, offering her advice on how to perform as a woman. i found vivian’s perspectives interesting because while she is entirely accepting of madison’s decision, her notions of gender are rigid. she obviously understands that gender is fluid but recognizes the importance of societal cues and expectations for gender. for example, she instructs madison in several scenes on proper behaviour for a woman; like when madison dives into her swimming pool, vivian tells her that ‘isn’t how a girl would dive’. she also gives Madison tips on hairstyling and makeup which seems to be what madison wants; to pass as a woman and be as unremarkable as possible. we witness madison going through hormone treatments, minor surgery to remove her adam’s apple, and the struggles of saving enough money to have the final gender reassignment surgery over the course of the three years that the film spans. during this time, before she’s had the final surgery, madison decides to pursue dating using the internet. dating pre-transition was an issue that i had personally never considered as part of the process. madison chooses not to state online that she is transitioning, but instead decides that if she meets a man who she could potentially be serious with, that she will tell him in person before it does get serious. we don’t see her dates but learn about them through madison’s brief descriptions to vivian; we learn that some were uneventful and she does end up telling a couple men about her transition and while they are both accepting of it, they choose not to continue seeing her. about half way through the transition process, madison and her best friend cameron begin dating which creates an interesting dynamic. a generous amount of time is paid to this relationship in the film; cameron identifies as a straight male and sees madison entirely as female even after being friends with matt for many years. madison makes clear that if she had any doubt that cameron might be gay, their relationship would not work. cameron and madison date for a couple of years before madison can afford the surgery and when she reaches that point, he travels to montreal with her for the surgery. we see post-surgery that madison is obviously happy and that their relationship is doing better given that they can finally have a sexual relationship as well as an emotional one. at the q&a, madison confirmed that they are still together and happy. i found their relationship one of the most interesting parts of the film as they both obviously needed to be completely secure in their own sexualities for the dynamic to work for them. madison also discusses what she describes as her own internalized homophobia being a struggle when deciding to transition and all the way through the process. as a boy, when she had feelings towards another male, she explained that she would repress them because she had internalized the idea that being gay was wrong. so the idea of self-hatred arises and gets complicated in this situation because as madison explains, she never felt like she was attracted to a man as a man, but as a woman. this situation helps to make obvious how psychologically damaging heteronormativity can be; that there are more people willing to acknowledge their gender dysphoria but that there still must be countless others who refuse to come to terms with it. while the film presented an overall positive conclusion, madison made clear at the q&a that this was only her story of transition, and not the exemplary model of a transsexual story. i think it was important that she spoke about the trans organizations in toronto to explain that more work towards understanding needs to be accomplished and how she has met many other people not as lucky as her.