#stay on board

[queerstuffonscreen]

Stay on Board: The Leo Baker Story (2022)

72 min.

Country: USA

Genre: Documentary, Sport, Biography

Language: English

Celebrated skateboarder Leo Baker shares the details of their rise to fame and the clash between their career and self-discovery as a trans person.

Watch on Netflix

[deardiaryproject]

[writingasa-transgender-rat]

I watched Stay On Board: The Leo Baker Story (Dir. Nicola Marsh and Giovanni Reda) last night. I honestly recommend you watch it yourself, especially if you don’t like the idea of transgender documentaries. This documentary follows Leo Baker starting in 2019, during the time when qualifiers for the Olympic American women’s skateboarding team, through to the pandemic and the founding of glue skateboards. These events are only on the surface, behind the scenes we get a glimpse of Leo’s journey of accepting what he has to give up in order to live as his authentic self. I respect how this film handles dysphoria, the camera doesn’t need to linger on Leo’s body for us to see that he is transgender. We see it in his expression when his deadname is called out during events, how he stands for photographers, the back and fourth of whether the skateboarding world will accept him as a queer figure. We don’t need to see Leo’s body to understand his dysphoria.

I’ve seen so little representation of transgender people in popular media that I teared up while watching this. Leo is like me, we are so very different, our lives are in many ways incomparable, but he is Like Me. There are so few public figures that I can say that about that the crumbs of relatability felt life changing to me. This is the feeling I’ve been chasing through my research, through my art and through my writing. I want people who see my stuff to feel Seen. To inspire more work that includes us, to one day watch a film where I don’t need to assume a character is transgender. I’d know it without seeing them go through immense physical pain and violence. 

Humanist stories are important, yes. I want everyone to see trans people as people. Individuals who are worthy of respect, who are skilled, inspiring, funny and flawed. At this point in my life, these stories are no longer really for me, they are for people who are questioning and people who need convincing of our humanity. Sometimes though, I want a humanist story. I need reminding that my pain is real because I see the pain of Leo Baker and I cannot deny its validity. Dysphoria hurts, it tugs at muscles inside you that do not really psychically exist. It is a pain of the soul and to treat it is to embrace an incredibly uncertain future. At the end of Stay On Board he skates through the streets of New York, shirtless, wearing his top-surgery scars as a testament to his journey. This was an expression of much needed transgender joy.

Maybe the true gender euphoria is the friends we made along the way?

[dreamgirlglowup]

₊˚⊹♡ my body and mind are at peace ♡⊹₊˚

~

Subscribe to my yt channel:

🎀 dream girl glow up 🎀

[lemongogo]

i just like his long hair ok 🧎

[rottin6]

this is how jegulus antis see them and lily

[asbestos-11]

neuvillette dragon form concepts. idk just wanted to draw him cunty in every form

[bacchuschucklefuck]

okay unironically I love so much that porter is like this world SUCKS its BAD here and it HURTS you why do you care abt it!!! and literally every single bad kid is like ngl we just hate ur ass it does not matter what ur philosophy is

[malacandrax]

My first proper attempt at gouache plein air! I'm lucky to be able to get out to such beautiful places, this is a spot along a public footpath in Huttons Ambo (I did have to use my board as a nettle shield to get there, though.)

[hijinxinprogress]

12 year old tim realizing robin’s not coming back to gotham and deciding that it’s Batman’s fault so he has to ruin the little bit of sanity and peace of mind Bruce has managed (read: struggled) to keep in his grasp:

[hellishgayliath]

Made the decision of having one of Pico's lil opossum siblings get mutated from the oozesquitoes just like he did ( this fam just can't resist a lil bug snack I swear xD). Todd would absolutely adore her

Her favourite of the turtle fam would be Mikey much to Pico's dismay(he's not gonna stop her from playing with him tho), she thinks he's really fun and playful and have in common of being the younger baby siblings. She even gets a smiley patch from him :3

She's not able to speak regularly yet so Pico'd have to translate what she's saying to others, which would make for some funny moments cuz kids have no filter when it comes to some of the stuff they say

Cuties <3

[muffinlance]

Next Dark Night in Ba Sing Se part! Is! Fully outlined!

...And so is the majority of series in lesser detail because oops my hand slipped.

[gecklio]

self indulgent speedingbullet stimboard...

x / x / x / x / x / x / x / x / x

[dreamgirlglowup]

yoga

pink pilates princess

matcha

it girl

self love

🎀 🤍ྀིྀི 🩰 🍵

Check out my yt channel:

💖 dream girl glow up 💖

[martyrbat]

[ID: Bruce Wayne and Minhkhoa Khan breaking up in the rain. Bruce is in normal civilian clothes while Khoa has a white cloak on and a mask that hides his eyes. Khoa persuades, “We'll start in a small city in Southeast Asia, and systematically dismantle its criminal underworld. Out all the corrupt politicians. And then we'll go to the next, and the next. We'll build a high-tech base of operations that moves with us. We'll live well off the coffers of the gangs we dismantle. We'll expand from there. In time, maybe we could even tackle a city like Gotham. Not like boys, but like men at the peak of our skills.” Bruce simply tells him, “No.” Minhkhoa points an accusatory finger at him as his angry response has been edited to be a post by @/egirlbutternubs that reads, “But babe you love being gaslit.” END ID]

[pepperf]

Pop quiz, hotshots! Which would you rather have:

A relationship that, when it goes wrong, you can tell the other person that you need a break to reassess your relationship, and they will discuss this calmly, let you go, and then go away and think about what you said, agree that they were in the wrong, and start working on ways to fix their own behaviour;

OR

A relationship that, when you want to leave, they tell you that you don't really want to go, that you're happier with them, that you should isolate yourself from your family and friends so you can stay with them - and when you disagree and tell them the relationship is just a matter of necessity, they start in on your other relationship (which they have apparently decided is the reason you're going back, despite you making no mention of it), telling you that it's broken, that you shouldn't go back to him - and when you tell them to butt out of your personal business, they tell you they're entitled to have an opinion because you've been stranded alone together for a long time...

Is that or is that not what happened? Because I remember Lila making herself pretty clear on these points, but apparently a bunch of people think we should disregard a woman's expressed opinion about her own life, and go with what she's being told. Because Five knows best, amirite? Gosh he's so smart and clever! And he deserves this - he deserves Lila, no matter what Lila herself says. He's owed it by the universe, because he had a bad life.

Lila did have another relationship like that, where she was told what to do, kept in the dark, told that the other person knew what was best for her...and it wasn't Diego.