How was ITV’s trans drama Butterfly ever made?

Billy Elliot eat your heart out. Of that film was made now, Jazmeen Glitter would be gallumphing around as the sugar plum fairy with everyone weeping into their hankies.

And in fact, for all its cutting-edge aspirations, there was a rigid sexism about the series. At the playground in Max/Maxine’s school, boys kick balls around and girls practise dance-routines. When Max joins in with the second group, the soundtrack swells triumphantly.

How can Suzie Green still think that toys and pastimes dictate sex?? Rigidly adhering to rank sexism as a reason for transition.

She constantly doubles down on it.

It's so fucked.

The posters for that show make my eyes roll so much. Old ones were just an effeminate lad looking a bit girls. Not its full on drag with fawning folks gazing at him as if he is the new messiah.

drag drag drag. Drag as far as the eye can see… culture is dead.

There seems to be a bit of a thing about sexualisation of 'trans girls' in a way that would be considered generally inappropriate for natal girls.

I hate the poster for the stage show Jamie for that reason (boy dressed up as sexy schoolgirl). It plays into the grim old sexist trope. Let kids be kids.

Found this in the comments on that Spectator article:

This was the hero, Graham Linehan at a Commons Select committee hearing on the topic in 2021, as reported in the Telegraph. His argument was cogent, but he was of course ignored:
"...And then, further on, trying my best to ignore the glazed-over eyes of my hosts: “If you believe that JK Rowling is transphobic, a woman who has devoted her work and much of her fortune to the vulnerable, the bullied, the forgotten and the abused, then you are under a spell.
“If you believe that men can fairly compete against women in their sports, then you are under a spell.
“If you believe that men will not go to the most extreme lengths to gain access to women and children, then you are under a spell.
“If you believe that children as young as three years old can agree to a procedure that puts them on a medical pathway for life, that arrests their natural puberty, and that has almost no scientific proof as to its efficacy as a treatment for dysphoria, then you are under a spell.”"

I never watched the original program, but I was always surprised at the amount of makeup worn by the main child Max/Maxine. You just wouldn't see that level of makeup on a girl that age without it being commented on. It felt like a really strange sexualisation.

Absolutely!

Much as I disagree with the entire practice of transitioning minors, I do hope that those who have already been through the medical and surgical pathway (eg Jazz Jennings) are able to have happy, long, and non regretful lives.

Anything else is too awful to contemplate.

@KellieJaysLapdog that's good to see, that they are happy in their skin (or it looks like it from these pics). The worst would be if they regretted it.

Has a beard, a girlfriend and works in a pub.

Looks happy enough on FB, so that’s good! Hopefully healthy 🤞

No evidence that paediatric transition was anymore aesthetically successful than an average adult transman transition tho.

@KellieJaysLapdog I would love to know how Leo from 'I am Leo' is doing.

I just looked up the kid who played the main role.

I often look up little transitioned kids from off the telly to try and find out what they are doing now (if they are healthy, thriving etc) and obvs Callum Booth-Ford wasn’t actually transitioned by his mum but I still had a moment of relief to find he seems to be doing well (and was playing a role in Peaky Blinders right up to the end of that series).

Funnily enough one of first sites I clicked on is a fan casting site (like Fantasy Football but for actors) and he is a very popular pick to play the young Remus Lupin in the Harry Potter reboot.

Which would be a lovely little poetic closing on a pretty awful chapter. Come on JK, make it a thing!

https://www.mycast.io/talent/callum-booth-ford

I recall GIDS wasn't happy with many aspects of the drama either.

At the time they released a statement countering the 48% suicide attempt stat, which I can't find now but is alluded to in a Times article from 2018

However, Gids released figures showing that among the roughly 5,000 young patients referred to the service between 2016 and last August, there were three suicides and four attempted suicides — less than 1%.

Gids says suicide among such patients is “extremely rare.” In a statement about the show, it told The Sunday Times: “Suicidality in young people attending the Gids is similar to that of young people referred to child and adolescent mental health services.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/teen-transgender-drama-butterfly-inflates-suicide-risk-9ng3z22mv

Maybe we should petition Tony Marchant to write the sequel and undo some of the damage he caused by writing the first one and subsequently promoting the concept of the Transgender Child on prime time ITV?

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/amp/entry/butterfly-writer-tony-marchant-interview_uk_5bc36c6be4b0bd9ed55b19f6/

I wonder if any TV company would be brave enough to do a detransioning follow up series,?

Another really good article this week - Teenage life is scary — even without gender clinics by Hadley Freeman.
Sorry for the paywall - but you can do a free trial.

I'd love to see Ms Bell Vs the NHS.

I couldn’t stomach watching this obvious Mermaids propaganda when it aired, I just read the MN threads about it.

A sequel would be good tho, especially if Anna Friel gets a prison sentence for taking her son to a foreign country for a birthday castration.
Maybe Dad/Nan could call social services and the police could arrest -Susie- Anna Friel at the airport?

If that had been about my sister (in the 70s):

mum I want my hair cut short!
ok
i don’t want that skirt! I want trousers!
ok
mum - I don’t like those glasses, can’t I have the camouflage pair like that boy?
ok
i want action man - I don’t like dollies!
ok

… few years later on…

mum… I like girls
ok (not surprised, what took you so long to tell us?)

I live in Essex. I'm going to investigate how I can complain about that comment.

It was made because people are so keen to be seen as open minded that they let their brains fall out.

Critical thinking skills have been outsourced to the internet.

It goes beyond 'bad guys' into people who advise the police telling them to treat women with GC views as terrorists. A friend lives in Essex:

‘I believe the College of Police is inherently corrupted by gender ideology'

'Recently, a man named Clare, Head of the Independent Advisory Group to Essex Police, said women with gender critical views should be treated as terrorists’

- Sarah Phillimore, Co-founder WeAreFairCop

https://twitter.com/GBNEWS/status/1769464221874434067

Note that it's women, not men, with GC views. As always bros before [insert preferred misogynistic term].

What a shame he couldn't be accepted as a boy that loves bright colours or 'girly things'. No wonder people in this situation have such mental health issues.

I would love to see a big drama following this up where the child is detransitioning. The good intentions of the mother could be examined in the cold light of day. The flashbacks to the experiences that led to internalised homophobia. That would be an incredible presentation. Maybe JKR can write one. I wouldn't want any of the big names and how it played out in UK to be featured though, purely focus on the moments that led to these horrendous decisions, the fathers who reject the notion of a son being gay, the bullying, the autism, the 'correcting' of play choices, clothes.

Well, there have been dramas about Rotherham, Savile, the Catholic church; so yes, there should be a drama. As well as at least one documentary, it can form part of the reparation package from MSM.

and I for one would like to suggest John Hamm for the mighty @Glinner xx

All the bollocks about banning conversion therapy. And all the while cheering on this rubbish and Susie Green openly transing possibly just gay kids. Susie Green admits her husband did not want a gay child. And still we are the bad guys. What the hell has happened to people?