A Strong, Tender Doc on Gender-Affirming Care Bans

Just Kids, Gianna Toboni’s commanding documentary, follows a handful of trans children and their families as they navigate a United States increasingly hostile to trans rights and gender-affirming care. The film, which premiered at Tribeca, is an informative and emotionally potent take on a politically salient issue. 

Toboni spent an early part of her career as a producer for Vice, the documentary series that ran from 2013 until 2021, and elements of Just Kids bear a resemblance to the now sunsetted program. The director’s mostly fly-on-the-wall approach to filming these families (cinematography by Daniel Hollis, Love on the Spectrum) lends the doc a gritty realism and an unexpected propulsiveness.

But these aesthetic choices never sensationalize the realities of these participants, instead underscoring the harrowing stakes of their experiences. Crucially, Just Kids has a tender core: Its heart lies not in the trauma faced by trans kids trying to get gender-affirming care, but in their resilience and the love that persists in the face of state-sanctioned antagonism. 

Just Kids opens with an interview with the historian Susan Stryker, one of a handful of talking heads featured in the doc, who offers an overview of the issues facing transgender people in the United States. She talks about the recent waves of gender-affirming care bans and how much information exists about trans people. The issue has become a “low-hanging fruit” for people hoping to influence elections and drive public policy in a more conservative direction.

Conversations with Stryker are stitched alongside those with Kelli Parker, a writer and advocate, to build a sturdy narrative on which the rest of the film relies. They talk about how the advances of the last 20  years — from the election of Barack Obama to the legalization of gay marriage — riled up right-wing groups in the U.S., who declared themselves marginalized as a result of losing these so-called culture wars. They took action in the form of big spending, influencing public officials through elections and think tanks like the Heritage Foundation to take more conservative positions. “They want the government to reflect them and their ideas,” says Parker of this coalition, “and so they are passing these laws in an effort to inch this agenda forward.” 

The results of this aggressive mobilization has been felt in all sectors of American life, particularly when it comes to bodily autonomy. Restrictive policies on abortions go hand-in-hand with hostile policies against trans people. In both cases, the government encroachment is deemed necessary as a way to protect the children. Just Kids asks: Which ones? 

A central thesis of Toboni’s doc concerns how these policies decide which children deserve to exist. It’s a heartbreaking point that’s underscored by Rae, Alazaiah and Tristan, three trans teenagers trying to survive in conservative parts of the country (South Carolina and Texas). Toboni also interviews their family members, who are supportive of their right to be trans.

These parents and siblings are a surprising group, figures subverting expectations of who supports trans rights. Eric, a veteran and second-amendment enthusiast, has a love of country that extends to protecting the rights of his trans son, Rae. Just Kids is filled with scenes of Eric and his wife, Jessica, traveling to different state legislature hearings and testifying against proposed gender-affirming care bans. Zach and Raymond, Alazaiah’s brothers, took her in after the death of the 17-year-old’s mother so she didn’t end up homeless. Together, their testimonies form an inspiring portrait of strength.

Toboni complements interviews with these family members with footage of the trans children just living their lives — from Alazaiah excitedly posting to her followers on her TikTok feed and thrifting for new clothes (pink is a requirement) to Rae getting a haircut that makes him feel confident. 

But the stories also highlight the challenges these families and teens face in accessing state resources and medical care in parts of the country that criminalize their support. For these sections, Toboni talks to Andrea Jenkins, a member of the Minneapolis City Council, and Dr. Elizabeth Mack, the president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, to explore how trans kids face a disproportionate risk of homelessness as well as how many people fundamentally do not understand what constitutes gender-affirming care.

Mack’s interviews are particularly clarifying because she defines this particular care as any change that makes trans kids feel more like themselves. That explanation hopefully clarifies the fact that all of us affirm our gender every day, from our clothes and haircuts to pills we take to correct hormonal imbalances. 

In one disheartening scene, Tristan and her mother, Crystal, listen as their doctor tells them that recent laws have forced her to leave Texas and she can no longer provide medical care. Although she was able to write a year-long prescription for estrogen before departing, the abrupt termination leaves Tristan and her mother in a vulnerable situation. They must now consider whether or not to relocate. But the decision is marred by financial precarity: At the moment, Crystal doesn’t have enough money to move to a state with more amenable laws. Their story underscores how not everybody can just find a new place to live when facing dehumanizing legislation.

Just Kids falls in the category of recent docs like Preconceived and Zurawski v Texas, which premiered at Telluride, that survey how the right has effectively mobilized to dismantle the civil rights progress of the last 50 years. Like these other films, Toboni’s feature takes a straightforward approach to uncovering details that will be illuminating for many viewers. One only hopes that it gets in front of the audiences who need to hear its message the most.