Changing the Game director: ‘Trans kid playing sports have to be activists – that’s not fair’

“Donald Trump was picking on kids for no reason other than it rallied his base. It worked,” says Michael Barnett, the director of Emmy Award-nominated documentary film Changing the Game, which follows the stories of three transgender high school athletes playing the sports they cherish.

When Barnett began making Changing the Game in 2018, Trump was roughly midway through his first presidential term.

By that point, his vigorously anti-LGBTQ+ policies were already having a damning effect: trans officers had been deemed unfit for service in the US military, and Obama-era protections for LGBTQ+ employees had been revoked. Yet he was hopeful about a turnaround. Until Trump, there wasn’t much reason to believe that the rights of LGBTQ+ Americans would go anywhere but forward. 

“When you make a human rights film, you assume things are going to move in the right direction,” Barnett says, on video call from Joshua Tree, Los Angeles. Instead, Barnett is speaking to PinkNews just days ahead of Trump’s inauguration, the murky future of the twice-impeached President’s second term stretching out before America. “We’re going in the wrong direction. It’s regressive. We’re removing rights.”

The mood is indescribably bleak. The acclaimed filmmaker has friends who lost everything during the fires across LA county, which burned for almost a month. And now, he’s back talking about trans youth being banned from competitive sports, for the sixth year in a row. The day before we speak, House Republicans voted to pass a bill which will prevent transgender student athletes from partaking in sports that align with their gender. Two Democrats voted in favour of the bill, too.

“If we can strip kids of rights, what else can we do? What are we capable of?” Barnett says, pausing with exasperation. “I just assumed thinking about our constitution that we’re all created equal and everyone has a right to life, liberty, happiness, and that’s not the case. It’s a lie.”

Changing The Game treads a fine line between showcasing the fight for trans students’ access to school sports, and painting a stirring picture of the simple pleasures of playing. Mack, a wrestler in Texas, Sarah, a skier in New Hampshire, and Andraya, a track runner in Connecticut, never wanted to become campaigners; they wanted to wrestle, to ski, and to run. “To be a trans kid playing sports in America right now, you have to be an activist. And that’s not fair,” Barnett says.

“Fairness” is the basis for much of the right-wing attacks on trans youth in sport, with members of the public in the documentary and beyond – often adults, and parents of other youths – complaining of trans athletes having biological advantages. That’s despite the argument crossing into the absurd in recent years, with games including darts and chess being pulled into the political firestorm. Some studies have even suggested trans athletes could actually be at a physical disadvantage.

For Barnett, the question of fairness remains, but is flipped on its head: Is it fair to expect trans youth to either be activists, or not play sports at all? Is it fair to prevent the tiny number of trans students from partaking in something so essential to their development? 

“You get discipline, mental health, physical health, community, friendship. Pick it. There’s nothing bad that comes out of sports,” Barnett says of the “extraordinary” tools that playing games can offer young people. “So why would you not want every single person to experience and gain those tools? We’re stripping kids from gaining access to these incredible things that are really beneficial in life… it just feels cruel.”

The sheer volume of controversy surrounding trans athletes in recent years would have the uninitiated believe there are multiple trans students in every high school sports team. Exact data is uncertain, but some estimates put the number as low as five to ten across the entirety of the US. Wrestler Mack remains a go-to spokesperson for trans high school sportspeople, and is still used as a case study to spread anti-trans disinformation, as there are so few other stories to warp. Mack turns 26 this year. 

Mack’s story does go some way in highlighting the absurdity of the bid to ban young trans athletes. As a trans man, he was forced to compete against girls during his time on his high school team in the late 2010s, winning a number of women’s titles in the process. “I do train as hard as a man. I fight as hard as a man. I am a man,” he says in Changing the Game’s trailer, sounding exhausted. “And I’m the state champ of female high school wrestling.”

Emotions run high throughout the documentary as it veers from Mack’s crushing honesty about experiencing suicidal ideation, to the heartwarming, impassioned support all three youths receive from their families. It’s no wonder Changing the Game has won a GLAAD Media Award and an Emmy Award nomination, among other film festival accolades. Barnett was clear with his intention; this was a film led by trans youth athletes, not about them.

“I’ve always sort of thought of the film as a tool, as a beacon to give the narrative back to these particular trans kids and their experience,” he explains, adding that his aim was to provide a counter to the media’s moral panic. “What I hope the film does is just show people that these are just kids and they just need love and support and that’s it, and safe space. I think that’s all you really need to know if you’re confused about the trans experience.”

The filmmaker “shudders to think about” the unknowable challenge of the weeks and months ahead under Trumpism round two. Alongside the trans sports ban, Trump has signed executive orders to recognise only “two sexes”, strip diversity, equity and inclusion policies from federal agencies, and once again instruct that trans military personnel are “unfit” to serve.

“It just feels like it’s such a slippery slope. I mean, what’s next, we halt the ability for gay marriage to exist legally, to be federally recognised? Where’s the line of rights since we’re now pulling rights that have existed,” Barnett questions, genuine fear curdling his voice. “It feels to me like the beginning of a very dark chapter in our democracy.”

And yet, the hope he held onto back in 2018 remains deep down, somewhere. “I have faith that we will find a way through this. I have to. What else can we do? Keep fighting, right?

“It’s always darkest before the dawn, but it just happens to be the people in the bullseye of this current target are kids. They’re just kids.”

Changing the Game is streaming now on Apple TV, Amazon Prime Video, Google Play Movies and TV, and YouTube Movies. 

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