The struggle of bringing the story of a trans dancer to the public
The past six years for Sophie, a trans amateur dancer from Yorkshire, have been extraordinary. She was given the opportunity to realise her dream of dancing publicly and travel to the United States. But, along with milestones and achievements, she’s also witnessed an era of optimism for trans rights vanish.
Her journey, with its ups and downs, has been captured on film by documentary maker Alison Rooper. She’s followed Sophie’s story for those past six years and wants the public to see her journey for themselves. For her, it’s an opportunity to hear and understand what a trans journey is really like.
Alison says the public doesn’t hear trans voices enough in the media and when they do, they are usually put on the defensive by anti-trans reporting. She says trans people are often portrayed as being either aggressive or activists and very few people understand what trans people go through. That’s what her film aims to change.
“We also don’t hear from them because they want to merge into the population – they want to just live in their new gender and be accepted,” she tells MDI.
The journey has been an eye-opener for Alison. “I’ve always been a human rights defender, but I can’t say I understood very much about trans rights until I got involved with this film and the story became murkier. I think I’ve learnt the extent to which the media can be a mouthpiece for right-wing interests when it decides to be.
“I think it has confirmed and deepened my understanding of the role the media can play in furthering propaganda when it suits them.”
Alison says it’s not been easy to make this film. She originally planned to make a film about three trans dancers – an idea she had after reading about Sophie’s story. She pitched the story to commissioners but had no takers.
Alison says she thought she would get a commission or decide to drop the story. “But after the pandemic when we’d come so far, we carried on filming a little bit when we could and at that point the climate, the context, around trans rights had sharpened a lot and darkened actually.”
Trans rights across much of the world are regressing or under threat. The UK has dropped six places in the annual Rainbow Map 2025 ranking of LGBTQ+ rights to 22 out of the 49 countries in the study. The report highlighted other negative trends across Europe, saying they signal a coordinated global backlash aimed at erasing LGBTQ+ rights.
In the UK, an April Supreme Court ruling determined that a person’s sex in the Equality Act 2010 refers only to “biological sex”. Sooner afterwards, the Equality and Human Rights Commission issued interim guidance on how organisations should interpret the ruling, saying that in places like hospitals, shops and restaurants, “trans women should not be permitted to use the women’s facilities”. Campaigners argue this risks forcing trans people to out themselves.
LGBTQ+ charities, concerned about a rise of transphobic rhetoric in the country, have written to the prime minister seeking an urgent meeting to prevent what they described as a “genuine crisis for the rights, dignity and inclusion of trans people in the UK”.
As the climate for trans rights changed, so too did Sophie’s story. Alison decided to continue filming through self-funding and relying on some help from people lending a hand.
“Basically, the context darkened and the story really became about how she was going to survive given this climate which she felt very uncomfortable about.”
Alison says Sophie faced online criticism and social media hate which started to impinge on her life.
Sophie’s partner also features in the film and Alison says it demonstrates the importance of having a supportive partner and family. “It’s about her voice and also her partner’s voice. I really feel without her partner, Sophie couldn’t have got through what she got through.”
Their journey includes a nine year wait for gender reassignment surgery which started when Sophie was in her 30s, the battle to marry, and trying to conceive a child.
Determined to release her film in the cinemas, Alison is now facing a new challenge, finding the funding to finish the film and she is crowdfunding to pay for the editing, post-production and an outreach campaign.
You can watch the trailer and find out more about the crowdfunder for the film here
