On Discovering — Or, Rather, Stumbling Upon — The Conference Itself

JD: “About five or six years ago, I went hiking in this town in the Pacific Northwest. I went up to my balcony to just take a look at the parking lot. I had checked into a pretty large, crappy hotel in some really small logging town. And I went out to the parking lot and saw all of these women walking around with very big biceps, and they were somewhat struggling to walk in high heels, and their gait was a little bit different. I had just randomly come to this convention by accident, and had no intention of making a film about this community. I had just kind of stumbled upon it, and from there, I made a documentary film with my co-director Christopher LaMarca. And we followed a few people that we met there for a few years, but I wanted to come back and do a film just on this place. Because I was always so drawn to this place, and we don't really have the time in the film to really explore and unpack it.”

On Why The Esprit Conference Matters

JD: "[The conference] attracts about 150 transgender women that are all in their 50s, 60s, and 70s, most of them are not women full time, and so there are people who have incredibly strong and developed male identities. They've been living as men since birth, and they've always known this about themselves, they always knew that they were women, and they grew up in a time and place where that was not something that you ever told anyone. So, at 4 or 5 or 6 years old, they knew who they were, and they knew that was just not gonna be okay. And so they shoved it down — most of them for all of their lives. So when you've got these very fully formed male identities, and everyone knows you as men — you've got children, and relationships, and a spouse, and employment, and all of this based on your male identity — to kind of take that off is very difficult. So I was really drawn to the complexity that this presents. And the fact that I felt like I just never saw transgender stories about people that were older.”

On The Transgender Narrative The Media Neglects

JD: “A lot of transgender stories focus on the very young, and the very passable. I think that there's a fascination with the very young, because people — rightfully so — are interested and fascinated by the idea that this forming of identity happens at such an early age. And that's a very important thing for everyone to kind of know about. But I think that there's also this thing where when you have have younger trans people, even in their teens, 20s, they're just going to be more passable. When you've got 50 or 60 years of testosterone pulping through your veins, it changes your body. You're gonna have incredibly masculine features.