To anyone who follows the news, Coy Mathis is a familiar figure. In 2013, aged just six, she became an emblem in the fight for transgender rights in America. Her parents, Jeremy and Kathryn, have been omnipresent in the press, too, engaging in a highly publicised legal battle and civil rights case to fight for Coy’s right to use the girls’ bathroom at her Colorado elementary school after being denied access by her school district. It was one of the first cases in the US to specifically address transgender bathroom rights.
The outcome of their fight is well-known: the Colorado civil rights division eventually ruled in the Mathis family’s favour, making it an immediate landmark case.
That verdict was reached in June 2013; on 23 March of this year, North Carolina set back the clock by becoming the first US state to ban people from using government-owned restrooms and locker rooms that don’t match the gender written on their birth certificates. Suddenly, Coy’s story is now all the more pertinent. It makes Growing Up Coy, Eric Juhola’s new documentary tracking the personal toll the case took on Coy and her parents, urgent viewing.
The film begins six weeks before the Mathis clan (Jeremy and Kathryn are also parents to triplets and an autistic child) went public with their decision to go to court. Seated before the camera before taking part in an interview with Juhola, Kathryn cracks her neck, her husband bites his lip – both clearly nervous about the journey they’re set to embark on. By introducing them in this candid moment, Juhola deftly humanises the couple before they utter a word.
Not that he needs to work hard to get you on their side. As soon as their case begins to make headlines worldwide, Coy’s parents come under fire. Chiefly, they’re accused of child abuse for allowing their six-year-old to identify as female; a charge that jars with the tolerance and love they show their daughter.
Kathryn, tasked with doing the brunt of press to advocate her child’s rights, is pegged by some quarters as hungry for fame. Watching her see herself interviewed on TV, however, paints a very different picture: visibly uncomfortable in the spotlight, she can barely bring herself to look at the monitor.
Eventually, the constant scrutiny they find themselves under begins to wear down not only Coy, who grows more wary of the camera as the film goes along, but Jeremy and Kathryn’s temperament as parents. “I find myself getting crankier with them,” Kathryn laments near the finish line.
It’s these intimate moments that go a long way to making Growing Up Coy more than a simple advocacy film. Coy’s fight for equal rights is the focus of the documentary, but it’s the family’s willingness to allow Juhola into their turbulent lives that gives it the emotional heft needed to connect with even the most conservative of viewers.
- Growing Up Coy world premieres at the Human Rights Watch film festival in New York on 16 June. It premieres on the west coast in San Francisco during Frameline40 on 25 June, followed by a community tour.
