Time of Transition
First Day and being seen on screen
If you don’t think representation matters, you’re probably well represented.
~ Bernice King
Representation, then, is not - nor can it be - neutral; it is an act - indeed the founding act - of power in our culture.
Craig Owens
The idea of representation has long been a rallying cry for cultural diversity, equity and inclusion. Appeals for increased space for the marginalised, displaced and excluded can be increasingly heard across a range of fields, ranging from the classroom to the workplace, via the body politic and embodied lifeworld experiences. The rallying cries are a response to the feeling among many culturally diverse and excluded groups of people of being underrepresented or misrepresented within their own society. Such value-laden representations are part of the normative web in which all our beliefs, practices and identities are spun and interwoven.
These differential representations encompass attitudes towards race, colour, religion, sex, sexuality, gender identity, ethnicity, professions, age, body types, disability and social class. Calls for more diverse representation therefore herald resistance to the default cultural settings: white, male, heterosexual, cisgender, thin (or muscular) and middle-class.
Equally, seeing the world through the lens of a particular race, sex, sexuality, gender identity or class simultaneously reveals society’s fault lines: racist, sexist, ageist, homophobic, transphobic, cacomorphobic or classist. Given film and television’s complicity in defaulting to pervasive cultural norms or social scripts, creators are continually been called upon to re-evaluate their on screen representations and value orientations.
Although current calls to be (positively) seen on screen might appear to be trailblazing or progressive, they are in reality behind the curve. The rallying cries themselves represent a changing reality that is already happening behind the scenes - via shifting power dynamics, increased social mobility/visibility, the formation of new alliances, etc. - and proceed from the recognition that representation matters in societies continuing to undergo transitions and subject to culture wars.
The wide spread resistance to cultural diversity, equity and inclusion itself represents a perpetual power struggle, where (ironically) the powerful or well represented now feel that they are the one’s being marginalised and excluded from their own culture.
At the heart of these conflicts are moral concerns about which social groups should be seen or heard (represented). If the mainstream media holds up a mirror to society, the question - and recurring bone of contention - is: how does society want to see or reflect upon (evaluate) itself? The cultural struggle over representation is not just about ensuring visibility or free speech, but who gets to speak to (and for) whom.
Calls for representation, then, are merely an acknowledgement that marginalised identities should be legitimated and normalised on screen, or made to reflect competing standards and evaluations in a relatively safe (if increasingly contested) social space.
Social transitioning
Consider the example of First Day (2020-2022), a multi award winning Australian children’s television series screening around the world during the ongoing culture wars over gender diversity, transgender youth and conversion/suppression ‘therapies’. Consisting of two short seasons (4 episodes per season) of twenty-odd-minute episodes primarily directed at school-age children, First Day is deceptively slight or twee. Nonetheless, its heartfelt teenage drama is surprisingly layered, and deftly explores a range of complex themes and emotions. 1
While it would be a misrepresentation to speak of the LGBTQIA+ community as a single entity or united front cisgender lesbian writer/director Julie Kalceff is nonetheless a trans ally and committed to exploring alternate senses of being and belonging.2 First Day recognises that community is a locus of identity and empowerment, and advocates cultural diversity, equity and inclusion in its own representation of reality. First Day not only presents the world through the eyes of a transgender girl, but it is also populated with a culturally diverse cast whose characters will become central to her experience of being seen and treated as equal.
First Day is the story of Hannah Bradford (Evie Macdonald), a twelve-year-old girl going through three transitions simultaneously: psychological, social and physical. The young girl (like all children of her age) is about to enter a tumultuous and difficult-to-navigate adolescence. During this period of physical upheaval and emotional turmoil, Hannah will be transitioning from primary school to high school as she also undergoes the transition from her assigned-male birth gender. Hannah is therefore presenting as female for the first time in a new social setting: secondary school.
The transition to secondary school is, of course, an integral part of every child’s psychosocial development. As Erik H Erikson’s stages of development indicate, adolescence is a period of consolidation and accommodation that necessarily occurs by way of an identity crisis, or the attempt to reconcile social standards and expectations with personal needs and goals (Erik H Erikson, Identity: Youth and Crisis, pp. 91-135). And it is primarily within regulated social environments (like school and the family) that adolescents gradually form and consolidate their identities. Young people thereby come into their own by internalising social roles, norms and values that would ideally align with personal temperaments, abilities and traits.
Consequently, this crucial identity-formation stage is marked by a tension between relatively stable and fixed sources of normativity (prescribed rules and roles) and unfolding normative developments (psychological and physical changes) characterised by instability and confusion.
Not only is Hannah’s experience of being transgender therefore being represented on screen, but the issue of representation is also one of the show’s many themes. We quickly learn that the sex assigned to Hannah at birth never represented who she truly was: her male designation was a misrepresentation, and Hannah is finally in a position to present her inner sense of self to the outside world. Consequently, Hannah’s developing gender identity is taken as a given, since the show is more interested in her social transition.
Much as psychologist Damien W Riggs has described his approach to working with trans children, First Day similarly starts ‘from a very simple premise: transgender young people exist, they know who they are, and they deserve all of the support and care we can give them’. Hannah’s gender expression and peer selection therefore constitute First Day’s primary focus: that is, the way she presents herself as female at school (through chosen name, school uniform, long hair and make-up) and is accepted by her reference groups (parents, teachers and fellow students).
First Day strategically avoids the accusation that Hannah is deceiving her new female friends or has befriended the other boys and girls under false pretences. Happenstance ensures that her female peers select her for inclusion in the new friendship groups because their point of reference - that is, their standard of compassion for understanding and evaluating one another - reinforces each individual’s self-conception and/ or gender identity/affiliation. The children’s television series thereby becomes transgressive for a paradoxical reason: First Day sets out to normalise and legitimise gender diversity through the eyes of the very reference group (or normativity) that calls it into question.
First Day circumvents Hannah’s prior experience of gender dysphoria, or Hannah’s distress and confusion about the disparity between her gender identity and biological sex. Despite Hannah’s identity crisis (fears about fitting in and/or ‘passing’ as a girl), she will continue to experience herself as authentically gendered regardless. Hannah’s sense of self is directly tied to her social sensibilities, or ways of seeing the world that (paradoxically) have their basis in socialisation.
Hannah’s gender identity is therefore never in question: by the time we meet her, she is a young girl, and her gender attribution is no longer a source of anxiety or confusion. First Day also minimises any confusion or distress Hannah’s gender transition might have had (or be having) on her own family, which is presented as a model of unconditional love and support.3 Young viewers won’t find themselves too challenged by gender nonconforming behaviour, either. Nonetheless, Kalceff surreptitiously subverts traditional gender roles or expectations within Hannah’s family. While the nuclear family is viewed as the primary social unit, her mother appears to be the main breadwinner and her (apparent) stay-at-home father is typically seen doing all the cooking and ironing.
Although Hannah is seen playing violent videogames with her brother and enjoying combat sport - she is learning taekwondo - the writing emphasises her more conventionally feminine qualities such as sensitivity, thoughtfulness, beauty, gentleness and empathy. Nor will the series trouble its audience with the medical aspects of transition: Hannah’s hormone treatment (through puberty blockers) occurs off screen and between scenes, and the question of future reconstructive surgery remains outside the show’s purview.
While the authenticity of Hannah’s gender identity is a given, she is nonetheless beside herself. There is still the inconvenient fact of her physiology: she is not allowed to use the girls toilets, and is inadvertently pathologised and set apart when made to use the unisex facilities in the ‘sick bay’. The mean girl from primary school has also unexpectedly followed Hannah to the new secondary school, and threatens to expose her as trans and deadname her. As with many girls of her age, body image issues will also follow Hannah to school camp. She is self-conscious about how she will look in a bathing suit for her own reasons, however: as she anxiously asks her mother, ‘What if they can tell, if they find out?’ Hannah’s identity crisis therefore turns on the question of being ‘outed’ and ‘cast out’.
Countering hysteria
First Day, then, functions as a riposte to the moral panic that gender diversity is a social contagion spread at secondary school and on social media. While the series manages to ignore the alarmist and pathologising discourse purporting a ‘rapid onset of gender dysphoria’ (or so-called transtrending) among teenagers, viewers are advised to see First Day’s more sobering treatment as a deliberate antidote to widespread social hysteria. In 2018, for instance, Australia’s Prime Minister tweeted, ‘We do not need “gender whisperers” in our schools. Let kids be kids,’ and linked to a Daily Telegraph article claiming that children were falling under the bad influence of teachers misgendering ‘normal’ kids. The implication was clear: the LGBTQIA+ community was coming between parents and their children, and tampering with impressionable young people.
Macdonald, who is herself transgender, schooled the Prime Minister on national television in the aftermath, criticising Morrison’s response and requesting that he let trans children be:
My name is Evie Macdonald, ľm thirteen years old and I’m a transgender kid. And this is what I want to say to the Prime Minister: there are thousands of kids in Australia that are gender diverse, and we don’t deserve to be disrespected like that through tweets from our Prime Minister.
I know what it’s like to be on the receiving end of attitudes like this. I went to a Christian school, where I had to pretend to be a boy and spent weeks in conversion therapy. We get one childhood, and mine was stolen from me by attitudes like this.
Macdonald has since been able to pursue her studies in a secular Safe Schools environment - the very program Morrison was criticising for daring to reach out to marginalised and discriminated-against children. Unfortunately, Macdonald’s increased visibility - and bravery - merely intensified her experiences of harassment and bullying at the school intended to provide a safe space for her. It was revealed a year later that her school reports subsequently included near-daily student incident reports with various severity gradings. This alone indicates why the claim that secondary schools are some kind of breeding ground for transgender youth is a complete fabrication.
Recent psychological research cautions that transgender children’s place within the social fabric remains tenuous at best, and that they remain particularly vulnerable throughout this time. As Patlamazoglou et al’s scoping review indicates
Within transgender communities, transgender young people have been found to be most at risk of developing negative mental health outcomes when compared to other age groups. This has been associated with the higher prevalence of discrimination, victimisation, bullying, peer rejection and violence transgender young people experience. In comparison with their cisgender peers, transgender young people are significantly more likely to develop depression and anxiety and engage in suicidal behaviours (i.e., suicide ideation, suicide attempts) .
While the schooling environment often poses as a major source of distress, discrimination, victimisation and bullying for many young people, much research suggests the schooling environment is particularly distressing for transgender young people . In a nationwide study conducted in the USA, researchers found that transgender young people were more than twice as likely to feel unsafe at school when compared to their cisgender peers, which was associated with an increased prevalence of gender-based discrimination and bullying.
Similarly, researchers found that 82% of transgender students reported frequently hearing negative gender-based comments within the schooling environment, further demonstrating the high prevalence of discrimination and victimisation experienced by transgender young people in schools. These findings are especially concerning given that young people spend a significant amount of their time in the schooling environment, which renders it their primary source of social learning and interaction.
Nonetheless, The Australian newspaper upped the ante and introduced a ‘Gender’ section, seemingly for the sole purpose of relentlessly attacking and/or raising the alarm about transgender youth with transition framed as ‘castration’.
The social-contagion arguments made in these articles were, by this point, a long-familiar representation of perceived threats to heteronormativity. Homosexuality was once (and, in some quarters, remains) treated as socially contagious, with the supposed moral contamination of same-sex attraction discussed as if it were transmissible through social contact with homosexuals. Indeed, the right-wing opposition to the Australian Marriage Law Postal Survey included attempts to represent homosexuality and trans identity as psychologically equivalent pathogens.
In one ad, the Coalition for Marriage warned that if Australians allowed contagious acceptance of same-sex relationships to spread through the legalisation of marriage, homosexuality would mutate and lead to another supposed moral stain on society - children learning to be gay at school and boys wearing dresses in classrooms.
The Australian Psychological Society was so concerned by The Australian’s hysterical media coverage of these issues that it released a statement refuting social-contagion arguments while advocating for the support needs of gender-diverse people.
Empirical evidence consistently refutes claims that a child’s or adolescent’s gender can be ‘directed’ by peer group pressure or media influence, as a form of ‘social contagion’.
To say that there is a trans-identity crisis among young Australians because of social media pressure is not only alarmist, scientifically incorrect and confusing, but is potentially harmful to a young person’s mental health and wellbeing.
Claims that young people are transgender due to ‘social contagion’ serve to belittle young people by asking them to believe that their sense of self and their gender is nothing more than a by-product of what other people might think or say through the media.
Further, describing awareness of being transgender as a form of social contagion implies that such awareness can be ‘corrected’ through psychological, medical or spiritual ‘conversion therapies.
There is no evidence to suggest that such approaches work in terms of changing a person’s gender. What such debunked ‘therapies’ do produce, however, are high levels of shame, disrespect and distress. So debunked are these ‘therapies’ that they are increasingly being rejected by policy makers and legislators across Australia in favour of gender affirming responses to transgender people.
The (unstated) irony is that the rallying cries for more positive and supportive representations presuppose what psychologists call the intergroup contact hypothesis, or the ‘outbreak’ of communicable senses and sensibilities. This notion recognises that normalised behaviours and attitudes are social adaptations that are typically transmitted and represented through social contact and relations - beginning with the emergence of perceived cultural norms, and extending to social-justice movements subverting their presumed normative status.4
Or as Dawkins argued in a different context, all cultural transmissions are self-replicating units of meaning resulting from intergroup contact subject to imitations, alterations (re-evaluations) and/or selective pressures (changing relations and environments). In other words, all cultural norms, attitudes, behaviours and practices are social contagions (or socially contagious) in the first place.5 And as the intergroup contact hypothesis urges, it thereby remains possible to inoculate ourselves against continued exposure to social prejudice and negative attitudes.
The calls for LGBTQIA+ representation are therefore an attempt to minimise social distancing (misrepresentation, prejudice, marginalisation) by bringing previously misunderstood and devalued ‘outsiders’ into closer contact with ‘normal’ society via alternate media exposure and cultural transmissions.
Intergroup contact, bullying and acceptance
First Day announces the theme of intergroup contact from the outset and explores it in myriad ways. Indeed, the show’s very existence and transmission is indicative of the ‘communicable by contact’ strategy: a fortysomething cisgender lesbian writer/director has aligned herself with a young trans activist to spread the word about diversity, equity and inclusion to school-age children, teachers and parents alike. Communication is occurring between members of different social groups for the same goal: to inspire, educate and entertain. It is the contact established between characters and audience that is communicable, of course. First Day thereby sets out to spread empathy and understanding by acting as a mediator.
When Hannah and her mother, Amanda (Joanne Hunt), anxiously enter Hannah’s new secondary school, they are stepping into what is essentially a microcosm of society. Since we see Hillview High through a transgender character’s eyes, we are also made to feel Hannah’s heightened state - she is as anxious as she is excited about her social transition. Principal Nguyen (Anthony Brandon Wong) has invited them into his office to ‘offer her a place’ in society the following year, and reassures them that ‘we want Hillview to be an inclusive and safe school for everyone’.
Use of the female bathrooms, however, immediately proves to be a bone of contention. Principal Nguyen states that he has to ‘keep in mind the other parents if ... they find out a boy is using the girls toilets’. Hillview, then, simultaneously presents as an exclusive and potentially unsafe school for Hannah: it must be seen to represent the concerns and needs of ‘normal’ people, too.
Exclusion from the girls toilet cubicles is a matter of school principle: majority rule. Hannah is excluded from a public single-sex space - comprised of small, partitioned private areas - because her gender identity is viewed as a potential (perceived) threat to ‘real’ girls. In bringing about this outcome, Principal Nguyen stands in for many diverse members of the adult world here, ranging from a famous British cisgender female children’s writer to a relatively obscure Australian lesbian feminist philosopher.
Despite Hannah’s all-too-convincing protest - ‘I’m not a boy!’ - her entry into society remains conditional upon being excluded from a female-only space, and she must lie to save face (among other aspects of her wellbeing potentially at risk).
Thankfully, Hannah will go on to be accepted by a small group of other girls regardless. Another female student asks her for directions, and Olivia (Elena Liu) instinctively takes Hannah under her wing when it is apparent that she is also lost on her first day. Indeed, this inaugural contact will prove to be fateful for Hannah. During lunchtime, Hannah is seen wandering alone, and Olivia calls her over to meet her friends Natalie (Nandini Rajagopal) and Jasmine (Arwen Diamond) from primary school. Intergroup contact and social bonds are thus forged - Hannah is now one of the girls - but a question hangs over the new group of friends: will their feelings of connection and attachment persist if Hannah’s secret comes out?
Although Hannah has ‘passed’ her first test at school, she must still navigate three rites of passage: the school bully, the sleepover and the peer ‘review’ process. The first of these is Isabella (Isabel Burmester), the girl who knew Hannah as Thomas at primary school. The pair grew up together apparently on opposite sides of the gender divide, and, perhaps as a result, Isabella is clearly having trouble accepting the gender transition of the girl she calls ‘Tommy Boy’. She appears to have targeted Hannah because the new girl at school poses a threat to her own identity and place in society.
Through constant prodding and reminders - in short, bullying - Isabella expects to make Hannah ‘finally come to her senses’ and return to her prior name and gender status. In doing so, she is intent on impeding Hannah’s social transition, seemingly deriving considerable pleasure from the power she possesses to reveal the ‘truth’.
Perhaps what is most telling about Isabella is that the source of her transphobia appears to be incredulity and feelings of powerlessness. It is incomprehensible to her that the boy she knew from primary school is somehow turning into a girl right in front of her, and she refuses to believe her own eyes. First Day also strongly intimates that Isabella is the victim of physical abuse at home, and has picked an easy target so as to feel more powerful and in control at school. Kalceff is to be credited for showing such an unsympathetic character in a sympathetic light, and she even has Hannah reach out to her bully to offer emotional support.
Although Isabella rebuffs Hannah’s overtures of friendship, Kalceff uses the phenomenon of bullying to make two important points: bullies are enabled by ‘innocent’ bystanders who empower them to speak for others; and a bully’s source of power is our own fears and desires. The bully represents ‘normal’ society, and their targeting of perceived differences or weaknesses is symptomatic of intergroup relations and control. Suffice to say Hannah is only able to defeat her bully when she is able to let go of the hold Isabella has on her.
When Hannah is invited to a party at Jasmine’s house, the night culminates in a sleepover for all of her female classmates. Although Hannah is allowed to go to the party, her parents tell her that she cannot sleep in someone else’s home for the night and, like the boys, will have to come back to her own home afterwards. The sleepover is, of course, a part of many children’s transition into adulthood - through such experiences, young children can (briefly) experience independence from their families as they develop closer bonds with their same-sex friends. As First Day makes clear, however, Hannah is not ready to increase her dependency on unsuspecting female friends, and the concerns of her parents - who are worried about what might happen in an uncontrolled (and potentially unsafe) social environment - must take precedence.
Nonetheless, Hannah uses the (missed) opportunity to come out to her best friend instead. Although Olivia accepts her for who she is and promises to keep her secret, she is subsequently outed on social media. Hannah watches helplessly as her peers all receive alert notifications about the sudden ‘threat’ among them. She is suddenly being seen on screens, but not on her own terms: she has lost control of her own narrative, projected self-image and media framing. Has her best friend betrayed her confidence, or has the school bully turned everyone against her? Hannah couldn’t feel more overwhelmed or isolated by the fact that everyone is suddenly looking at her through a different cultural lens. Understandably, she responds by withdrawing from school, friends and activities in a counterproductive attempt to escape inescapable thoughts and feelings. Now that ‘everyone knows’ and she can no longer trust anyone, Hannah wants to ‘start again’ at a different school. Her mother reminds her, however, that avoiding everyone is only avoiding herself; she must lead by example and be seen to accept (and trust) who she really is - a trans girl. It should come as no surprise that Olivia comes to Hannah’s rescue, and convinces her to return to school.
Although First Day doesn’t shy away from the potential fallout of this disclosure - some of Hannah’s peers, including Jasmine, do end up rejecting her and retreating into the prejudices that they’ve inherited from their parents - Kalceff accentuates the positive. She recognises that many children are naturally curious and more open-minded than adults, and uses an intergroup contact ritual (the school camp) to open channels of communication between members of different social groups. First Day’s overriding messages are that self worth is contagious, and that transphobia can be contained if people can learn to accept one another’s differences through mutual support and understanding.
A version of the article originally appeared in the now defunct Metro magazine (issue 208) and has since transitioned to Through the Looking Glass.
We will primarily focus on the first season for obvious reasons - the second season is more concerned with what transpires beyond her first days (or transition from primary school to high school ). Season 2 goes on to explore a relatively normal teenage girl’s difficulties with her peer group during their second year at high school.
Kalceff previously wrote and directed the multi platform drama Starting from ... Now!, a ‘lesbian love quadrangle’ set in Sydney’s inner western suburbs that also resonated across the globe.
An interview with Macdonald on The Project indicates that her own family was initially resistant to the possibility that their presumed son might really be their daughter. Indeed, the assumption was that she was a gay boy because of her perceived feminine qualities; the family felt compelled to ‘teach this [camp] kid how to be a boy’ and ‘toughen this kid up’ through masculine gender expressions. https://twitter.com/theprojecttv/ status/1042348438979923969
The history of slavery and systemic racism more broadly provides a paradigmatic example of the hypothesis, particularly in terms of the way certain cultural norms and practices became increasingly socially (un)acceptable over time through the very intergroup contact and relations making them (un)acceptable in the first place. See Manfred Berg & Simon Wendt (eds), Racism in the Modern World: Historical Perspectives on Cultural Transfer and Adaptation, Berghahn Books, New York, 2014.
To be clear, Dawkin’s view of memes as self replicating cultural units of meaning presupposes the possibility of intragroup contact , or the dynamics that make it possible for individuals to identify as members of a given group. It is via intragroup dynamics that patterns of thought, feeling and/or behaviors are transmitted, replicated and normalised in the first place. Given the possibility of intragroup transmissions, intergroup contact and/or conflict may thereby occur. Consequently, Dawkin’s views on LGBT issues confirm the role of intergroup contact in challenging perceived social norms and/or identities via alternate ingroup cultural identities and value orientations.