VICE News documentary — Families of Trans Kids Are Seeking Sanctuary

[FurryDandelionSeekingMissile]

I looked to see if there was a thread on this documentary, uploaded to YouTube about three days ago, but couldn't see one — has anyone else watched it? It's about parents of children who've transitioned (socially and, I think, perhaps medically in a couple of cases) in US states which have new laws banning some types of child transitioning practices, and discussing whether to move to states with different laws.

Something I found quite striking when I watched it was how frightened the children seemed to be, and how they articulated those fears in words that sounded like sentences they'd heard from the adults around them. As well as not being shielded from the possibility that their parents and therapists might be punished for helping them (and while I believe that some of the treatments given to these children are wrong, if I did think they were the right thing for a young child, I would try to avoid impressing upon the child that I felt I was taking a massive legal risk by giving them these treatments), some of them seemed to have been given the idea that people wanted kids like them dead, and not just by suicide.

While I understand that some of the motivations behind the state laws in parts of the US may not be the same as the motivations of UK feminists when we discuss child transition, I doubt that many of even the very staunchest of Christian nationalist republicans actually want these kids dead.

The dramatic fear in some of the families was explicitly linked in the documentary to family histories of persecution, including Jewish Holocaust survivors and undocumented migrant families. I get that it doesn't seem fair that one moment, you're happily taking your socially-transitioned kid to the affirming gender therapist and planning puberty blockers and hormones and surgery, because everyone's told you that's the best thing to do, and the next moment you're being told that what you're planning to do is pretty much considered child abuse now. Even worse if you've already started the physical treatments. But it came across to me like they were almost egging the kids on to feel like there was about to be a pogrom any minute now.

Perhaps that was just the editing, I dunno. I can understand that the universal mandated reporter laws would be frightening, with those family memories.

Seeing a kid crying because mum had decided overnight that the whole family had to flee the state with whatever they could carry, so the kid had had to leave their chickens behind which they'd promised would have a safe home with them, though… it makes me wonder how these families escalate to the point where causing this level of terror in the whole family seems reasonable.

The law isn't great, if you're a family in that situation who's already started down that path, but there must be alternatives to letting your kid think that mum and dad could be arrested any moment, and that lots of people want kids like them to die so the family has to flee.

They also mentioned the expense and the difficulty of affording the cost of living in the wealthier "sanctuary states" on top of the cost and upheaval of moving. I wonder how these kids will feel as adults, knowing that the reason they and their siblings were taken away from all their friends and extended family, and their family had to struggle for money, was essentially so that they could transition a few years earlier. Or how the siblings will feel about the years of living in terror and fleeing halfway across the country, in years to come.

I feel for these families; lots of them seemed like nice enough, decent people. If anyone else has watched this I'd be interested to hear other people's thoughts.

There are a lot of parallels here with documentaries on polygamist fundamentalist Mormon sects - where children and families (sisterwives) are on the run from the feds. The children and women (child brides) have been told all their lives that the outside world is dangerous (where they exile shunned young men). This fear has been inculcated at a very early age. It's a classic cult tactic.

I wonder how these kids will feel as adults, knowing that the reason they and their siblings were taken away from all their friends and extended family, and their family had to struggle for money, was essentially so that they could transition a few years earlier.
It also makes it even more impossible for them to "change their mind". How can an 11 year old turn round 2 years after the whole families done a flit on their behalf, and say "actually I do want to try living as a boy again."

Thanks Delph, that's an interesting comparator. A kind of siege mentality bonds people together, I guess, but also leads to group in-talk heightening the external threat.

Though to some extent the threat is real, I suppose, if people are really determined to continue to access treatments that are now against the law. I just don't know that it's great to transmit that fear to your nine-year-old at full strength.

That's a good point namity, though with this level of affirmation and encouragement, and with blockers and hormones, I doubt it would be happening much anyway.

Huge parts of this movement, especially where it concerns children are driven by false inculcation of terrible consequences. There’s the constant iteration that “transphobia” and “anti-trans hate crimes” are on the rise, the false suggestion that “being trans” puts you at huge risk of suicide or early death and the hyperbolic talk suggesting everyone wants to erase them. Even the repetitive suggestion that they will inevitably be “triggered” if someone accidentally “misgenders” them is a sure way of inducing fear of something harmless. It’s no surprise then if utter hysteria is induced by new laws, which unfortunately do sound like something of a misjudgment on the part of the lawmakers.

i haven’t seen the documentary, but OP’s description reminds me of the Shyamalan film ‘The Village’. Difference is that these days, you don’t need walls to separate people. If you can keep people within an internet bubble, then they separate themselves.

If you're interested in checking whether you agree with my description of it, waterwitch, the whole thing is only about twenty minutes long, and also the tone and types of discourse don't vary much throughout, so you could probably get a good idea of what I'm talking about from watching a minute or two here and there.

I'm not a parent so I'd be interested to hear from someone who has their own, say, teenage or older children, what their take is on the parents in the documentary and their management of their own and their children's fears about the world. I don't have any personal experience from the parent perspective of how much it's usual to shield pre-adolescent and young adolescent children from worrying politics etc., and how much you would share with them in a controlled way. I know they'll pick up a certain amount themselves, though.

Watched the first eight minutes of this. First, the family of Kai Shappley have been in the media before, and the mum strikes me as attention-seeking, using language that seems deliberately OTT. Second, all the families seem quite well-off which is apparently not unusual for families of trans-identified minors. The parents are also all white, interesting for a part of the US with a large ethnic minority population (though I think one parent is of Latin American ancestry, judging from the name). The parents are also, sorry to say this, all quite overweight, not indicative of a healthy lifestyle. Third, they all share the same narrative: my child was sad and when he/she was affirmed, everything changed. The display of flags, trans colours etc. is odd. The Lego figures of the 15 year old are odd, too - what’s that supposed to prove, is this the basis on which you decide to take cross-sex hormones? (Which I suspect this child is on, judging from the deep voice.)

The kids seem sweet and innocent, perhaps a bit naive/young for their age. I feel for them. Whether their parents’ decisions are right or wrong, medical transition, started so young, is a huge burden. I fundamentally doubt that it’s worth interfering with the healthy body of a child in this way to relieve mental anguish. Parenting is hard, and maintaining boundaries and helping children tolerate frustration and develop resilience is especially hard. I don’t know enough about these families to judge them but I look at these big houses, full of stuff, live-changing decisions being made on the basis of preferring one consumer good over another, and I just find it all a bit odd and soulless.

That's a good point about the ethnicity of the participants, though I suppose there's an element of who wants to be filmed and who's selected, on top of what families actually have transitioning children. I think the dad you mentioned is the one who later talks about his own experience of being a child from (I think) an undocumented immigrant family, knowing that if he got in any trouble at all it could draw unwelcome attention that could put his family in jeopardy, and drawing parallels with the child transition laws and how it could put a child in a similar position.

I didn't know that the family that had taken the most drastic action were already well-known activists — that makes much more sense, in terms of the potential benefits of such a dramatic response.

Similar story in this article: www.texastribune.org/2022/12/02/trans-kids-leave-texas/?fbclid=IwAR2G0K5p0qxbYlOQ3pdlcBWfG7SnfMNSTTkkteCcskn-ZDd-WiQmpFygpn8

I think you don't do children any favours by encouraging them to see themselves as victims, and by coaching them to believe that they are too special and fragile to be expected to cope with life's normal challenges.

These families are effectively putting the full weight of their adult life choices on the children, which is a huge burden to put on the child, and which also massively reinforces them down the trans path - there's no space for the child to change and develop their worldview if they are fully aware that their entire family have given up everything for the trans identity. There may well be situations where the only family option is to uproot everyone in order to meet one child's needs, but IMO that's a very extreme last resort, and my instinct would be to bend over backwards to disguise the reasons for such a move from the children - it's such a burden of responsibility and has huge potential to backfire and cause resentment further down the line.

Agree with the OP about the children's lines sounding very rehearsed, particularly for the youngest child, who was saying something like, 'I've been an activist since I was born...' - that's really not a normal utterance from a 8 or 9 year old which that child looks to be.

The recent thread on Susie Green segued into an interesting discussion about the importance of promoting resilience in children rather than a fragile-victim mentality. www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4689915-so-thats-why-susie-green-left You get that cotton-wool tendency in other areas as well (I've known people who were serial school-changers for eg. because they thought their child was so special that no school could really meet their very particular needs), but trans really takes this notion to the next level. It won't end well, I predict - in the end those children need to live in the same world as everybody else, and the outside world isn't going to be as supportive and accommodating as the little bubble they're being brought up in. Take away the veneer of specialness and need for constant accommodation, and you're going to be left with some very fragile young adults with very limited coping skills.

Interesting. I'll have a watch later after work, but it resonates with what I've seen elsewhere.
A few years ago, I remember seeing a YouTube video with a young trans child aged maybe eight or so, and the child was terrified, crying and shaking and asking why people hated them.
As others have said, no one hates these children. This is narrative that their parents are feeding them which is bad enough, but to then film it and put it on YouTube?
If I genuinely thought there were people out there who had it in for my eight year old, I'd be very careful about finding the line between protecting them so they didn't have to live in fear and ensuring they had the information they needed to stay safe.
Any parent who films their child in distress and makes that available for public consumption, especially while making claims around strangers being nasty about that child, doesn't have their child's best interests at heart.
That was the first thing I saw that stuck in my mind, but there's been a lot since.
I think they are incredibly caught up in the drama of it, but it's clear that on some level they know its not real, because if it was, they'd not be putting their child in that position. Very toxic people.

These families are effectively putting the full weight of their adult life choices on the children, which is a huge burden to put on the child, and which also massively reinforces them down the trans path - there's no space for the child to change and develop their worldview if they are fully aware that their entire family have given up everything for the trans identity. There may well be situations where the only family option is to uproot everyone in order to meet one child's needs, but IMO that's a very extreme last resort, and my instinct would be to bend over backwards to disguise the reasons for such a move from the children - it's such a burden of responsibility and has huge potential to backfire and cause resentment further down the line.

This was what I felt Larissa, but it's difficult as a non-parent to feel like I'm somehow sitting in judgement on someone else's parenting, when I really have no idea what it's like to be responsible for children's lives and development. But yes — it's so much to put on small shoulders.

I think they are incredibly caught up in the drama of it, but it's clear that on some level they know its not real, because if it was, they'd not be putting their child in that position.

ATuin I think you might be right that this is a part of it. Meanwhile the kids themselves have no way to really understand that they aren't, in fact, essentially in the same position as Anne Frank.

But when you look at the TQ+ groups in the UK, Mermaids among them, they are all led by those full of the hyperbole and drama, spinning this extremist narrative all the time. There is no responsibility whatsoever for the constant reiteration of multiply debunked 'suicide statistics' and lots of amping up and drama about 'you want us all not to exist' at the hint of the word no.

No love, we just want to protect you from decisions you may regret bitterly when you're an adult, and it is ethically wrong to cause you lifetime harms and quite possibly sterilise you and doom you to a life of illhealth through experimental treatments currently being prescribed by often highly irresponsible practitioners stuck in an extemist ideology and not able to consider anything with balance.

It's the opposite of a pogrom, it's massive (and very, very late) attempts to close the stable door on child protection. And a new aspect of child protection is going to be managing the narrative from the leadership of this political movement and their behaviours when things don't go as they wish. See Mermaids currently for an example, refusing to share the crucial report on their services and coming changes with their staff because they cannot offer a 'safe space' for their staff to be able to safely 'process' the information within it.

I don't want to rip into the people interviewed too much because its too personal. But the bit where the mum says "when I saw the relief from [child] that we were leaving" while said child sits crying beside her still upset from talking about the chickens.

I share the reticence to judge but at the same time … if you don’t want other people commenting on your life, do not participate in a documentary for a click-bait outfit such as VICE …?

I've long thought that if you reinforce your child in the belief that anyone who doesn't play along with your preferred version of reality isn't just not agreeing, but hates you and wants you dead - you're a major part of the problem.

This Vogue article on Kai Shappley fills in a few blanks in the Vice doc.

www.vogue.com/article/kai-shappley-trans-youth-activist-texas/

Kai has an agent and seems to be somewhat responsible for contributing to the family income. Age 11.

Also, Kai has a brand new children’s book out this Xmas!

Keep it next to your copy of I am Jazz!

The kids seem sweet and innocent, perhaps a bit naive/young for their age

I wonder how much of that is puberty blockers, and how much is from the over protective parents.

Thanks Daughter, looks very relevant and like you say fills in some of the gaps. I've only read a little bit, but I think this part is interesting:

“You know she doesn’t go by Kai at school, right? Here we call her Esther. She is an 11-year-old girl who runs on the playground and studies for tests. Kai is the public figure.”

According to another article Kai had a different, more explicitly male birth name, so this kid is, what, splitting off into multiple new identities with different names for different aspects of life? Seems unusual for an 11yo.

But anyway, I agree with other posters that perhaps commenting too much here on the individuals isn't helpful, I just felt a little… wary about how this particular child with a very public history of being involved in campaigning was presented as almost typical in the documentary.

Is kai the one whose mum went on the record as beating them because she thought he was gay?

Kimberley Shappley (Kai's mother) appears to come from the same place as Susie Green - homophobia and intolerance of non-conforming to extreme gender stereotypes: www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/parenting/a43702/transgender-child-kimberly-shappley/

A few quotes from the article below.

'I didn't support or condone those living the LGBTQ lifestyle'
'But all of my beliefs and convictions were brought into question when, at 18 months old, Kai began exhibiting very strong female characteristics'

'I wasn't ready to face the fact that my one-and-a-half-year-old child was a girl. That battle lasted for a couple years.'

'Family members were flat-out asking me if this kid was gay. It made me nervous, and I was constantly worried about what people would think of me, of us and of my parenting'

'There were time-outs, so many time-outs. There were spankings and yelling matches and endless prayers. I even contacted the daycare Kai attended and asked them to put away every single "girl" toy'.

Why these parents' motivations are not challenged is beyond me frankly. And the fear and alienation they instill in their children is appalling and disturbing.

Yes

One thing that struck me was Kai's younger brother.

Kai is now the special one - the photoshoot in the park beings this to the fore, poor Kaleb just a spare part looking on while Kai poses for the photos.

I wonder how much the behaviour that got attention (whether negative or positive) once Kai had a younger sibling to compete with has shaped this child's path. I worry about them, Kai's voice is very odd compared to the younger brother and I suspect a PP is right and that there is already some medical intervention in place.

Also, when Maya was asked how the colours for the bracelet were chosen 'It's just the trans colours, so....I was , like, okay, lets do that'
The whole thing reeks of indoctrination.

Kai’s been in quite a few documentaries.

This one was released this year (2022).

I have a child Kai’s age (last year of primary school) and this image seems well weird to me, does anyone else get the same weirdness from it?

Kai is being held like a 5/6 year old whilst posing like teen?

And perhaps a comment for the non-parents among us: parents judge one another all. the. time. About all aspects of a child’s behaviour, from looks to food intake, to school performance, to social graces. There is also a lot of solidarity and mutual understanding among parents but judgment comes with the territory. It can be upsetting on the receiving end but we all do it, if we’re honest. And maybe, it’s part of the general social fabric that holds human communities together?

However, once you have a ‘trans child’, others aren’t really allowed to openly judge you anymore. I don’t think that’s a good thing.

I’d be surprised if the clumsy propaganda here from VICE, presenting a child that has their own book coming out as ‘typical’, has actually been produced by a parent. It’s very easy to watch this against the grain.