Butterfly - anyone watching

[ItsAllGoingToBeFine]

Opening sequence got pretty much all the stereotypes in...

Basically telling kids that if you want your mum and dad to get back together you have to slash your wrists

This is the bit that really concerns me.Depicting suicidal behaviour as an effective solution to anything in a show explicitly aimed at young people is wildly irresponsible.

So basically the point of this show is that dysfunctional families create kids who identify as trans*, but instead of working on the family dynamic the solution is to load the kids up with hormones and start making plans to have their genitalia cut off when they get older?

*Noticing that and trying to work on the family dynamics was one of the reason Ken Zucker got sacked.

Agreed with everyone else on the inappropriateness of showing an 11 year old slashing their wrists, and spying on mum and dad to check that they're shagging. A pervasive disregard for both safeguarding (don't encourage social contagion) and appropriate boundaries (don't sexualize children) seems to be a hallmark of trans activism.

The family had been told it was just a phase and to keep it in the house. No hormones, no surgery talks. This went on for 6 years. So it didn't work- so what next? Keep plugging away at a strategy that wasn't working?

Re stereotypes: step outside your front door and take a look around. Or just turn the telly on. It's disingenuous for people here of all places to criticise the show's obvious gender stereotyping. It's a comment on heteronormative environments! If the kid had two butch mummies and was dressed in a tutu to go to softplay at the age of 3- there'd be a whole different set of arguments

So it didn't work- so what next? Keep plugging away at a strategy that wasn't working?

Keep going. Allow more time. Ongoing therapy with experts. Try different therapists. Allow the child to become no longer enmeshed with a mother with concerning behaviour. I don’t the full answer of how to improve things but I know the answer is not “fly to Thailand and chop your child’s bollocks off”.

The family had been told it was just a phase and to keep it in the house. No hormones, no surgery talks. This went on for 6 years. So it didn't work- so what next? Keep plugging away at a strategy that wasn't working?

You obviously missed the point that Daddy couldn't bear the thought of a pink boy and denied the boy a gendernonconforming life in that time.

Talking of Dad and beyond: Research data suggest that homophobic bullying has an impact of a kid's gender identity. They internalize what others say and integrate it by saying 'well, I guess, I am really not a [boy/girl], must be the other gender, then...'

link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10964-017-0749-6

The family had been told it was just a phase and to keep it in the house. No hormones, no surgery talks. This went on for 6 years. So it didn't work- so what next? Keep plugging away at a strategy that wasn't working?

Nothing was being done to challenge the sexism, homphobia and dysfunctional family dynamics.

This is where the focus should have been.

It highlights the catastrophe and consequences of cuts to social care, CAMHs family support etc

It's also not a documentary, it's not trying to say all boys and all girls like x y and Z. It's about that ficitional family.

Yes, and this is precisely the reason this kind of shit us so dangerous. Pushes the ideology in a thinly veiled format of 'drama', and then, when it's appalling contents are critiqued and exposed, there's always the fail safe of "It's only a fictional family!"

You can't have it both ways. Either it's a stunning and realistic portrayal of the reality of trans identifying children's lives, or it's just fiction, no big deal.

Nothing was being done to challenge the sexism, homphobia and dysfunctional family dynamics

Yes, what they all said

Not much money to be made from investing in good quality family therapy or other psychological interventions though. Not compared to puberty blockers.

i can't bring myself to watch this and apologies that i have read some not all of this thread..... but can someone confirm that this drama has the dad being completely not accepting of a gender non conforming son? who then decides he is a girl?

if that is the case isn't it funny that the narrative is so similar to what a lot of gender critical people here suspect - that the increase in trans identifying kids goes hand in hand with an increase in homophobia and an entrenching of gender stereotypes?

where opinion divides is that gender critical people would say the stereotypes and homophobia are wrong and must be challenged, allowing the child to be just as he is. the narrative of the drama is that the homophobia and stereotypes are correct and the child's body is wrong.

or have i got the wrong end of the stick here?

Hasn't Susie Green recently retconned her family history to remove the fact that her homophobic husband was extremely displeased by their male child wanting to play with dolls etc? I guess that chance was too recent to make it into the script.

Nothing was being done to challenge the sexism, homphobia and dysfunctional family dynamics.

THIS!

It shows so clearly that the poor child is desperate for his Dads love....struggling to come to terms with parents separation, & most likely gay. That the correct path is puberty blockers is insane! I can’t see how this is good promotional material for mermaids at all.

The programme just highlights the lack of logical thinking. At no time did they ask the child what a girl is. What makes him think he is a girl.

There is no discussion with him, he doesn't go to therapy, there is no family therapy. There is just an abusive father, a terrible relationship with a grandmother and a lack of sexual boundaries.

They make it look like the child is a fantasist, using dressing up and role play to escape a confusing time in his life. It definitely looks like something he will grow out of.

Both dad and mum in this narrative seem to have a toxic model of what masculinity should be. Dad rejects son as insufficiently masculine according to this model, and mum wishes him to be a girl because she can't relate to a boy who according to the model will be inevitably misogynist. As a boy he is unacceptable to both parents.

Wtaf was that.

All they needed to do was leave him the hell alone . Boy or girl. Football or dance. Why can't any if them just do what they want as who they are.

All stereo types. No one listening to him or getting him help to deal with the separation.

How any one can watch and not see its all just bollocks I don't know...

I know a lot of people have expressed worry about the stereotypes in the program - I do wonder if much of this is a need to be identified by family and society as a girl and to be able to play with and associate with girls and a natural feeling that people are seeing you as you feel. It would seam natural that as a girl Maxine would want to associated at playschool and school with the girls and would therefore want to be doing the things the girls are generally doing. Is this a part of the motivation for any girl who just wants to be a "part of the gang"? I think this relates to adult trans people as well you know who you are inside but to get society to acknowledge that you do have to confirm to some of the stereotypes.

vickyjgo

From reading a lot of blogs/journals where transwomen talk about doing "girl" things it always struck me as a "chicken and an egg" situation.

Did they like/do "girl" things and absorb the culture that they therefore must be a girl/they feel like a girl.

Or

Did they feel like a girl (or not a boy) and thus do the "girl" things because stereotyping tells them this is what girls actually do.

The sequence where the little boy dressed up and was admiring himself in the mirror was very creepy and sexualised and reminscent of that adult acronym we're not supposed to type. No joy or free expression of childhood in that sequence at all. Just an adult fantasy. I thought it was vile.

Well, the poor little sod won't be having any kids, R0wantrees, and that's a fact.

The only non-homophobic character was the grandfather - and he was portrayed as a dinosaur fuddy-duddy. Shocking.

The way the sister went from he liked to dance to he's my sister was very wtf. Having watched the YouTube Lisa muggeridge clip. It's grooming in plain sight.

I'll have to ask dd if the girls are dancing at school somehow I never ever witnessed that at school

I agree Giles it looked much more like a primary school dance which, in my experience, boys of any age would be happily accepted in joining in and not ridiculed by either the boys or girls.

Any Times readers, it’s reviewed in TV section, pls leave a comment if you can.

I think this is an own goal for mermaids. Most normal parents would not think their child was trans from that heap of shite. More that he had been rushed down that road without exploring all the other issues in that child's life. #PeakTrans