"STRAIGHTLACED: HOW GENDER GOT US ALL TIED UP"
Director: Debra Chasnoff
Trevor's Rating: 5 / 5 Stars

I have a confession: I broke down crying in the middle of this screening. This wonderful new feature documentary from Academy Award winning director Debra Chasnoff (from It's Elementary fame) features a variety of youth's perspectives on the impact of gender roles on men, women, and everyone in between.

Radical / separatist feminists have for far too long refused to incorporate an analysis of men's lives into their analysis and politics. Men, they would say, are studied in every other department on campus. Why give their lives any more attention than it already has? I believe that their brand of feminism ultimately ended up becoming the butt of jokes because of this refusal -- because men were made out to be the enemy, and because a feminist analysis gave men few tools to understand how their own gender impeded their ability to live life fully. Old school feminism made it seem like it was always easy to be a man and always difficult to be a woman. This was never true.

Straightlaced presents a new kind of analysis of gender that drops the insistence that it is women who only matter when we talk about gender. In this fabulous piece, we hear from all kinds of young people with a variety of gender presentations -- and a variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds (which, as we all know, work with gender to produce variations on similar themes). It takes young people's voices and experiences seriously, which is certainly where it draws its strength. It avoids jargon. It's matter of fact. And it's incredibly powerful.

As I mentioned at the start, I had a mini-breakdown halfway through the film when they tell the story of a flamboyant young boy who committed suicide. His friends and neighbors were interviewed while planting a memorial garden, and they had colorfully painted picnic tables with messages of tolerance and acceptance. When they panned to a table painted "Hate Free Zone" with a heart around it, the waterworks started coming. I couldn't hold back. The pain of growing up as a sissy boy in an intolerant culture flooded me with emotion. In different circumstances, would that have been my story?

The tears didn't stop there. Hearing so many young people speak openly and frankly about the way that gender restricts their actions, emotions, friendships, and sexualities kept my cheeks damp for most of the film. I can't recommend this film more -- particularly for educators who can use this film as a resource in the classroom. Once released on DVD, Groundspark (the film's producers) will I believe make available a set of classroom resources -- which would be a wonderful asset to educators.

This is 21st century feminism, folks. In fact, we need a new word for this kind of analysis. Feminism doesn't cut it. (Gender studies, perhaps, though it's a bit bland I think.) But whatever the terminology, this is the direction we need to moving in collectively as folks invested in reworking and expanding cultural constructions of gender and sexuality.

Here's the trailer: