Since the 2024 election, a lot of conversations have been taking place about the roles “red states” played in its unfortunate outcome. Often, people who live elsewhere are quick to blame those who live in these places for everything that’s wrong, and write them off as unworthy. But what about the queer people in those states? If we write off entire states, then we’re leaving our queer community behind. Their stories deserve to be told too.

Our Dad, Danielle, directed by S.E. King, tells the story of Danielle “DJ” Healey, a white trans woman living in Texas, as well as Healey’s wife Becky, daughter, and other close family and friends. Healey, a patent lawyer, officially transitioned in 2017, the first year of Trump’s first term. The story evolves over several years, showing Healey and those she loves clunkily easing into their new life — and living openly in spite of a state and a country that’s often against them.

I sat down to talk to Healey and King just days before the presidential election. Even though we knew that her story was important even without the context of impending doom, we had no idea how necessary the documentary would become.

Healey and King were neighbors in the town of Sugar Land, Texas. In fact, King admitted that they came out to Danielle and Becky as a lesbian before they even came out to their own parents. And years later, Healey would do something quite similar.

“Danielle initially came out to me,” King shared. “She asked me to keep it a secret, so I did. Then she announced it on Facebook very soon after that.”

In an attempt to normalize her life as a newly out trans woman, Healey started writing short comedic skits, turning them into videos starring herself, Becky, and their daughter Sarah. When she realized she needed a director for the project, King was the only person Healey could imagine filling the role. “I didn’t think twice,” King said.

As much as they may have wanted to be a family of comedians, the Healey family never quite found their footing with the format. But there was something about their story that King found worthy. The fake version of their story wasn’t going to work, but what about the real version? Shortly after the failed film shoot, King sat down with the family to start doing exploratory interviews for the documentary that eventually became Our Dad, Danielle. They all quickly realized that a documentary was the best way forward for the project, and over the next few years, they worked very closely to bring Danielle’s story to those who needed it most.

If you’re queer, there might not be much about Our Dad, Danielle that is revolutionary, but that’s exactly what makes it work. The documentary isn’t trying to make any large statements; it’s merely about the life of one trans woman in a place where many people in her state would rather see her dead than happy.

“I came out as a trans woman in Texas during the age of Trump. For me, there was no stealth coming out,” she said when I asked about her choice to tell her story in such a visible way. “I’m a big, ugly old broad and there’s no hiding it. Coming out may not have been a smart thing to do, but for me to stay alive, it was the only thing for me to do.”

“I wanted to be as honest as I could with her story understanding that, as a community, we have to recognize that we can live in bubbles at times in our cool hip cities like LA or San Francisco or New York or Portland,” King said of the necessity for some queer people to engage with Healey’s story as well.

It was King’s upbringing as a queer person in a red state that made them interested in telling Danielle’s story. They wanted to “take the hand” of the average viewer and give them a slice-of-life type of view of a trans person who could be a member of their community.

“I grew up in a very Christian conservative family where I really struggled to express myself honestly,” they shared. “But what I really wanted to focus on was the beauty that comes once you accept yourself, and once those people around you see you shine.”

King accomplished their mission. Healey’s openness and earnestness is paired with a twinge of matter-of-factness that makes you feel like she’s talking directly to you. In addition to Healey’s wife and daughter, many people in Healey’s life feature heavily in Our Dad, Danielle. Her brother and her sister-in-law both offer insight on the couple over the years. A law colleague and close friend of Healey’s, Cynthia, shares the ways she was there to offer support before she had officially come out as trans. In the latter half of the film, we are introduced to Sasha Simmon and Jeri Ann Young, two trans women to whom Healey has become close.

Young shares that she didn’t come out as a trans woman until she was 66-years-old, and shows the ways she shows up for her community. Simmon is an asylum seeker from Honduras whose life was literally threatened because she’s trans, causing her to flee. Through Ana Andrea Molina, the founder of Organizacion Latina de Trans en Texas, Simmon was connected to Healey for pro bono legal representation. Healey was able to get Simmon out of a men’s detention center, and bring her into the Healey home during the early days of the pandemic.

Healey’s story really transforms when she begins to use her career as a way to show up for her community. She shares that after her transition, she lost a lot of her patent and intellectual law clients, but began doing more pro bono work with asylum seekers, both LGBTQ+ people and others.

“In every one of my cases involving asylum, whether it’s for a gay person, a trans person, or even a cisgender person, every one of those cases involves someone fleeing from potentially being murdered or otherwise being harmed in a very terrible way,” she revealed. “They just come here because they got to get away from where they are. They got to get somewhere safe and the U.S. is perceived as safe.”

Seeing moments like this, where Healey uses her skills as a means to advocate for herself and others, is where she shines the most. During the years-long process of making Our Dad, Danielle, Healey “retroactively or retrospectively” began to confront the amount of privilege she had as a white, upper-class, educated person with a good career who presented as a cis man. She admits that her career and finances still allow her some privilege, but moving through the world as a woman is a wholly different experience.

“I’ve suffered the same kind of indignities other women have from unwanted sexual contact, to being patronized, being ignored, and being marginalized,” she shared. “I’m not necessarily shocked, but I was very surprised about the differences, even professional women suffer compared to professional men and the credibility hits that professional women suffer and how difficult it is for professional women.”

“To actually live full time as a woman has really woken me up to the fact that women are not, by any means, on a level playing field with men.”

There was something important that the cameras didn’t really capture — during their time with Healey and those close to her, King finally began to sit with their own gender and gender expression.

“I was interviewing Jeri, and Jeri was like, ‘oh, so you’re one of us.’ And I was like, wow,” King said. “I was starting to really. understand more and be honest about who I am and how I wanted to be perceived. I always felt almost like a little bit of shame around or didn’t have the confidence to ask for it.”

They added that one of their biggest lessons while making the film was simple: “We have to have empathy for everybody’s process and timeline with this. Because you just don’t know where someone’s coming from. I think that the biggest thing that we try to do is to really have grace and humanity.”

Our Dad, Danielle is now available to rent.

Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?

Join AF+!