HBO documents trans exploitation of children

In one scene from the new HBO Max documentary Transhood, a 4-year-old boy wearing a pink dress sits on his mother’s lap as she reads a picture book about cross dressing. The mother later describes her son Phoenix as “gender expansive, nonbinary, gender nonconforming, gender awesome, under the trans umbrella, girl/boy, and rainbow boy … we don’t really have a good term.”

Transhood, released Nov. 12, follows four gender-dysphoric children and their parents over five years. It seeks to normalize transgenderism, but instead it raises serious questions about the formative role parents play in their children’s understanding of gender.

As scenes from Transhood have circulated on social media, critics have called for a boycott and equated the film’s troubling content to child abuse. One widely shared clip shows a unitarian universalist church recognizing an apprehensive Phoenix as a girl at his mother’s prodding. Another scene shows a mother visibly coaxing her son who no longer wishes to be paraded for identifying as a girl. The father appears distressed but stays silent.

“I can tell you it’s even worse and more exploitative and dangerous and sadistic than Cuties was,” said popular conservative blogger Matt Walsh. “It should provoke a stronger backlash from us.”

Netflix angered fans and lost subscribers when it released the French film Cuties in September. The movie depicts 11-year-old girls dressed provocatively and dancing in sexually suggestive ways. A Texas grand jury indicted the streaming service in October for lewd visual material depicting a child.

Transhood sexualizes children in a different but equally troubling way.

At age 7, Phoenix eventually decides he is a boy. His mother seeks to erase the period of time where she treated him as a girl, calling it “a huge mistake.” Still, when Phoenix tells his Dad he is definitely a boy, he responds: “If that changes down the line, we’ll call you a girl if that’s what you want. … It doesn’t matter to me.”

If Transhood teaches us anything, it is that children are the real victims of gender ideology. Instead of having adults in their life who affirm their God-given gender, the children receive confusing, distorted lies about their bodies and identity.

The Child advocacy group Them Before Us called the film horrific. “Children have rights,” the group tweeted. “They shouldn’t be props for political movements.”