When wrestler Mack Beggs stepped onto the mat to compete during his days as a high schooler in Texas, he not only faced the opponent in front of him, but often a raft of adversaries in the stands. They booed him and hurled invectives.
“I do think people hate me,” Mack says in the Emmy-nominated documentary Changing the Game. The reason? “There was a huge uproar and controversy with me being trans.”
Beggs found himself twisted into knots — not by another wrestler, but by a state imposing restrictions and regulations on the activities of trans athletes. Beggs wanted to compete against boys, but Texas refused and would only allow him to wrestle girls. When he did wrestle girls, crowds rained down abuse.
Beggs said he tried to tune that out and keep focused on the match.
“I was just like, why are you being malicious? I’m not going to feed into your negativity,...
“I do think people hate me,” Mack says in the Emmy-nominated documentary Changing the Game. The reason? “There was a huge uproar and controversy with me being trans.”
Beggs found himself twisted into knots — not by another wrestler, but by a state imposing restrictions and regulations on the activities of trans athletes. Beggs wanted to compete against boys, but Texas refused and would only allow him to wrestle girls. When he did wrestle girls, crowds rained down abuse.
Beggs said he tried to tune that out and keep focused on the match.
“I was just like, why are you being malicious? I’m not going to feed into your negativity,...
- 8/12/2022
- by Matthew Carey
- Deadline Film + TV
More than 40 years ago, Renée Richards successfully fought for the right to play women’s tennis after undergoing gender confirmation surgery. Richards goes unmentioned in “Changing the Game” — a fast-moving, vivid, and touching account of three teenaged transgender athletes and their struggles to play competitive sports in high school — but her example should be taken into consideration when thinking through this issue.
Richards had her surgery only when she was over 40 years old, and it cannot be stressed enough how difficult it was for her to get to that point in 1975. By contrast, the three modern-day transgender teenagers in “Changing the Game” have already started taking hormones, and so the challenges they are facing are very different from the ones that Richards faced; still, one constant on this issue is the outright prejudice of the right wing.
It was Tucker Carlson’s father Richard Carlson who first outed Richards as transgender,...
Richards had her surgery only when she was over 40 years old, and it cannot be stressed enough how difficult it was for her to get to that point in 1975. By contrast, the three modern-day transgender teenagers in “Changing the Game” have already started taking hormones, and so the challenges they are facing are very different from the ones that Richards faced; still, one constant on this issue is the outright prejudice of the right wing.
It was Tucker Carlson’s father Richard Carlson who first outed Richards as transgender,...
- 6/1/2021
- by Dan Callahan
- The Wrap
Perhaps you will recall last year’s headlines about Mack Beggs, a then-18-year-old high school athlete from around Dallas. In case you need to refresh your memory: Mack is a practically undefeated transgender wrestler who won the girls’ title in the state of Texas even though he wanted to contest in the boys division as per the gender he identifies with. He is the first subject we meet in “Changing the Game,” Michael Barnett’s compassionate documentary that follows three teenage transgender athletes as they brave numerous societal biases to practice their chosen field of sports with the respect they deserve.
Unadventurous in its design — Barnett goes for a conventional mélange of clips and talking heads to structure the story — “Changing the Game” admittedly benefits from a traditional approach that slowly familiarizes the audience both with the subjects and the layers of an ongoing discriminatory debate around fairness. Most...
Unadventurous in its design — Barnett goes for a conventional mélange of clips and talking heads to structure the story — “Changing the Game” admittedly benefits from a traditional approach that slowly familiarizes the audience both with the subjects and the layers of an ongoing discriminatory debate around fairness. Most...
- 8/1/2019
- by Tomris Laffly
- Variety Film + TV
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