The Garden Left Behind- Avery Hansen

The “Garden Left Behind” is a film that was presented at the Reelout Film Festival located in Kingston, Ontario. The “Garden Left Behind” highlights a 30 year old transgender woman living in New York City struggling with the ongoing issues revolving the violence around transgender women. The main character Tina had illegally immigrated from Mexico to the United States at the age of six with her grandmother. This film documents the hardships Tina faces to provide for both her grandmother and herself amongst trying to fully transition. Tina is usually shown as trying to get a job, trying to balance a relationship, and spends a lot of time with her friends. Tina’s friends whom are also members of the transgender community later on develop a support group against the violence transgender women face. Chris, another main character seems to take interest in Tina and develops an abnormal obsession with her which leads to violence. Tina faces the struggles of being an undocumented immigrant, the status in her transition, and the violence she is exposed to on a daily basis. These issues underlie intersectionality due to that all the factors that are presented in Tina’s life all overlap and lead to some sort of discrimination. 

One point of focus in this film is that Tina is an undocumented Mexican immigrant,  this just one of the many factors that impact Tina’s life. By not having documented status in the United States, Tina finds herself struggling to find a job that will allow her to work without a green card. Tina even goes to the extreme of obtaining a fake green card to work as a bartender to provide for her grandmother and to also afford to start taking hormones. Without having documented status in the United States this creates further oppression and limits Tina’s abilities for access to healthcare, jobs, and education. By Tina being a transgender women as well as being a women of color creates an abundance of social issues such as; racism in the street, the use of transgender slurs, and transphobia. Tina faces the embarrassment of getting hollered racial and transgender slurs by just doing her everyday activities in the streets of New York City. Tina experiences transmisogyny which is the crossing between misogyny and transphobia, which is the hatred against women who were not assigned female at birth. Tina faces multiple layers of discrimination which lead up to the current events in her life that she is experiencing.

Tina, as mentioned previously has not fully transitioned yet and is aiming to start taking hormones. Tina frequently visits her doctor by the name of Dr. Cleary to be approved to start intaking hormones. After many doctor visits Tina was diagnosed with gender dysmorphia which is the feeling of emotionally and physically feeling the opposite sex. By aiming to start taking hormones, Tina is caught up in a financial hardship due to the implications of being an undocumented immigrant as she can not get insurance to help cover the cost of hormones. Tina yet again, is facing another obstacle in the road for her transition as she begins to sell her car for money to afford the hormones. After doing so, Tina again visits Dr. Cleary and is now aware that she has Wilson’s Disease which informs her that she will not be able to intake hormones.  While being faced with this disability, Tina can no longer continue her transition and is portrayed as an “evil avenger” which is ‘the stereotype of disabled baddies seeking revenge for the bad deal they have been dealt in life” (Harnett 22). Tina begins to feel feelings of internal revenge and that it is her own body’s fault that she will not be able to transition. Tina begins to question her existence, if she cannot transition she will never be happy. By all these issues meeting in the middle at a crossroad Tina begins to show thoughts and feelings of self-harm to seek her own revenge. 

Violence is a main point of focus in this film regarding violence against other transgender women and violence against Tina in her day-to-day life. Towards the start of the film, Tina and her friends create a support group against the violence transgender women face called “#IAMROSIE”. Whilst gaining attention from the media, Tina begins to develop a secret admirer, Chris which evolves into a stalker-like relationship. Chris develops strong feelings of lust towards Tina, which he cannot resist and this bothers him that he is into a transgender women. By developing such strong apparent feelings for Tina, Chris can not longer take it and begins to assault Tina violently on the streets late at night due to that she is transgender, which results in her death.  The feelings of transphobia that Chris was experiencing overtook him to participate in such a vile act. This situation could be seen as reality enforcement which is “one treacherous form of identity invalidation; it turns “appearance/reality” incongruence into a perceived misalignment between the public gender presentation and the private sexed body” (Bettcher 14). When a person ‘passes’ as a women although they are transgender they are not usually bothered, but when someone is known as transgender to the public eye they may be viewed as a ‘deceiver’ and violence is more predominant towards known transgender people. If Tina was not so public about her transition a situation like this would probably play out differently.

By all the factors including status, race, being a transgender women, health, and experiencing violence all contribute to Tina’s downfall. By all these factors intersecting and meeting in the middle to create an abundance of unfortunate events which leads to further oppression in Tina’s life. While thinking about a regular citizen, Tina’s life is not the normative thought. Tina is faced with challenges that she wouldn’t face if she had just one of these aspects affecting her life instead of all, which is the idea of intersectionality. Intersectionality is a term coined by Kimberle Crenshaw and is usually defined as “[seeing] [the] distinctive systems of oppression as being part of one overarching structure of dominations as a system of interlocking race, class and gender oppression” (Kaufman).  All of these factors in Tina’s life have to operate simultaneously for the outcome she has now. After analyzing all the systems of oppression in Tina’s life that lead up to her current situation, it is clear that she experiences a very abnormal life in the lenses of others due to her social status and the issues affecting her to move throughout the world successfully.

Word Count: 1080

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