The Youth & Gender Media Project, founded by award-winning filmmaker and media activist Jonathan Skurnik, was created to support educators, families and youth who want to create inclusive communities by providing them with videos and curricula about gender expansive youth. Their films open minds and hearts, and invite viewers to examine and challenge their ideas about young people and their relationships to gender. Their ultimate vision is to create a world where all people are free to express themselves fully and are celebrated for who they really are.

I’m Just Anneke tells the story of a gender-fluid twelve-year-old girl who’s taking hormone blockers to delay puberty while she decides if she wants to be male, female, or somewhere in-between when she grows up.

To view the film study guide please click HERE

Creating Gender Inclusive Schools provides a behind-the-scenes look at a public elementary school that trains their entire school community—students, teachers, parents and staff—about gender, inclusion, stereotyping, and bullying.

To view the film study guide please click HERE

Becoming Johanna tells the story of a sixteen–year–old transgender Latina living in Los Angeles, who is taken into foster care when her religious, immigrant mother refuses to accept her transition to a young woman.

To view the film study guide please click HERE

In The Family Journey: Raising Gender Nonconforming Children, family members invite you into their transformation from denial to acceptance, and eventually celebration of their courageous children.

To view the film study guide please click HERE

Jonathan Skurnik

Producer & Director

Filmmaker and educator Jonathan Skurnik was a gender expansive child who loved to play with both dollhouses and Hot Wheels, wear pants and dresses. Like any child, he wanted it all! Then he started to get teased and bullied and gave up "girly" things. In the early 2000s Jonathan read about children who were gender creative and transgender and were living in communities that supported them. These children and their families were doing what he hadn’t been able to do as a child. So Jonathan created the Youth and Gender Media Project, a series of short films about these modern day heroes, which are screened in schools throughout the country to make the world safe for all flavors of gender identity and expression.

Dr. Patrick Rock

Director of Education

An experienced educator, Dr. Patrick Rock is dedicated to raising awareness of transgender and gender-expansive youth in formal as well as informal educational contexts. In addition to his work at the Youth and Gender Media Project, Patrick has trained crisis counselors for LGBT youth at the Trevor Project, taught Developmental, Social and Educational Psychology courses at UCLA and The American Jewish University and published papers in major Developmental Psychology journals. Patrick draws on his years teaching students of a wide range of ages and backgrounds to create lessons that both engage and inform, presenting films, discussions, and activities that contain critical information on the experiences and needs of gender-diverse youth. In 2014, Patrick was honored at Barrack Hebrew Academy for contributions to LGBT Jewish youth with the dedication of the school’s first gender neutral bathroom in his name. Patrick graduated from Swarthmore College with Highest Honors in 2009 and earned his doctorate in Social Psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles, in 2016.

Steve Horner

Composer

Steve Horner writes and produces exceptional music in a diverse array of forms and genres. As a film composer he created the scores for two multi award winning Feature Documentaries, "The Eyes Of Thailand" featuring narration by Ashley Judd and "My Run" narrated by Billy Bob Thornton. Most recently he created scores for “Becoming Johanna” and Creating Gender Inclusive Schools (The Youth And Gender Media Project). His music can be heard internationally in Film Trailers for Paramount Pictures, Relativity Media and Netflix.

Bennett Singer

Co-Producer

Bennett Singer has been making social-issue documentaries for more than 20 years. His directing credits include Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin (co-directed with Nancy Kates), which premiered at Sundance, was broadcast nationally on PBS and Logo, won 25 awards, and has been screened at more than 500 community and campus venues around the globe; and Electoral Dysfunction, an award-winning PBS documentary on voting rights that “lives up to its title, exploring problems of nationwide accessibility and fairness” (New York Times). Singer won a duPont-Columbia Award for his work as an associate producer on the landmark PBS series Eyes on the Prize II and served for eight years as Executive Editor of TIME Magazine’s education program, where he developed curriculum materials to accompany HBO’s The Laramie Project, Band of Brothers, and John Adams. He is the author or editor of five books, including LGBTQ Stats: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer People by the Numbers (The New Press, 2017). With his husband, filmmaker David Deschamps, he is currently developing a multi-part television series on the history of same-sex desire, from ancient times to the present and in cultures around the globe.

Sam Berliner

Associate Producer

Sam Berliner holds an MFA in Cinema from San Francisco State University and a BA in Film and Theatre from Smith College, and is the Festival Director of Translations: The Seattle Transgender Film Festival. As a genderqueer/trans/ queer filmmaker, his three recent films provide a positive voice for trans, genderqueer, androgynous and gender-fluid folks, documenting our history, serving as a call to action to be recognized and respected by society, and urging our culture to evolve. His award-winning films have screened at over 100 film festivals around the world and are distributed by CFMDC and Frameline Voices. www.datingsucksmovie.comwww.genderbusters.com.