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Overlooked & Underrated Docs & Features
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StraightLaced: A Documentary by Debra Chasnoff The idea behind StraightLaced is simple – high school students talking about gender identity and behavior. The impact is complex – equal parts heartbreak, infuriation, and inspiration. Our hearts are broken at hearing first-hand about the oppressive social forces damaging these students’ behaviors, spirits and lives; molding them – victimizers and well as victims – into something unnatural. Stories of gender-based student-on-student abuse, harassment, and violence abound – peaking at the tragic suicide of a male student who can no longer tolerate being a target, and yet cannot find a way to escape the line of fire. The silence and passivity of many of our high schools’ instructional and administrative staffs surreptitiously support what are, in effect, daily criminal acts.
The students of StraightLaced also inspire with stories and reports of tremendous insight into their own being as well as the social forces around them. One student, tearfully describing the suicide, tells of the hate-free memorial garden created by volunteers. A transgender student, expressing her experience in a consistently cheerful manner, describes how friends helped her find acceptance in and out of school. A lesbian student describes how hard she worked in school and how much she accomplished in preparation for letting her mother know who she is. After learning her daughter is lesbian, the mother doesn’t speak with her for a year. The daughter enters the world of drug and alcohol abuse, but, thankfully escapes -- finding new meaning in her life and a renewed acceptance at home and school.
I found myself having to pause my DVD player frequently as I watched StraightLaced. I needed to stop and think about and feel what I just experienced from these students. I cannot overstate how important this documentary is to helping our children and young adults escape violence and find their own ways in life. If I was King of the World I’d have every parent, teacher and 12-year-old in America see this documentary so that as many hearts and minds as possible would find more compassion and understanding, and take more initiative in protecting our young people, our future.