Heartstopper season 3: feminists wanting single-sex spaces are transphobic

[HelenaRavenclaw]

And there we go again...perhaps it comes as no surprise since this show featured a male student with long hair and artistic skills being allowed to go to an all-girls school in the first place.

In the new Season 3, "she" does a radio interview where the interviewer asks her about her views on the trans debate and her thoughts on a feminist who spoke up for single-sex spaces and said gender-neutral toilets increased the risk of sexual harassment. The stock answers followed: there is no "debate", trans people are human, the feminist was "transphobic". Later, this trans-identified male is shown feeling depressed as "she" scrolls through news about NHS policies on single-sex services, etc.

These scenes were not even in the original Heartstopper comics. They were clearly added just for the show for "TERF-trashing" purposes. It should be noted that the trans-identifying male had the right to be upset that "she" was being asked about topics unrelated to her artwork (she was wrongly given the prior impression that this would be an art-related interview). But to use an upset teenager as a mouthpiece to denigrate feminists who stand up for girls' rights to single sex spaces, on a Netflix show with a huge following, is disgusting. I hope sensible parents who watch the show with their children will point out how misogynistic and dangerous such blanket "no debate" statements are.

It's especially sad as the main Nick/Charlie storyline is sweet and lovely to watch, but all this trans nonsense (plus a new side story of a lesbian girl declaring herself nonbinary with "they/them" pronouns) makes the show so ridiculous. It's scary to think of all the kids who will watch this and be indoctrinated by gender ideology, if they haven't already.

Haven’t seen this but the later series of Sex Education went down a similarly depressing route. I stopped watching.

I work in a library. There are two groups that borrow the "Heart stopper" books.

A few men in dresses in their 20s.

And, overwhelmingly, tween girls who want to be boys.

The show knows it's audience, which is very young girls who like the idea of a safe romance with a nice gay boy.

Later, this trans-identified male is shown feeling depressed as "she" scrolls through news about NHS policies on single-sex services, etc.

I'm really not sure why, the NHS is almost totally captured in terms of women's spaces.

Apologies meant to quote you @HelenaRavenclaw

It did. I carried on watching but although there were still some funny bits, it felt very box-ticky in general compared to the previous series, even though non-binary identity had already been introduced in previous series. There was a thread discussing it when series 4 came out:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/telly_addicts/4901731-sex-education-series-4

The significant difference here is the intended audience: Heartstoppers is for children.

I had watched a few of series 1 with my children, way before I knew about any of this. I too thought the gay romance story between Nick and Charlie was lovely. I was completely ignorant of anything trans-related at the time so the side story made sense to me and (as was intended by the script writers of course) and I was rooting for "her" to fit in at the girls' school.

Thanks for posting OP. It's good to be aware that it's there. My children each have their own Netflix profile, so there will be multiple opportunities for it to be marketed at them by the algorithm 😡

I haven’t bothered to watch it, having seen that it was a fav of misogynists and simpering, brainless ‘trans allies’ on Twitter/X. Anything that appeals to them is of no interest to me.

You’re quite right that it’s nasty to slip in that feminists are transphobes trope though. In the real world, teens are sniggering at boys who think liking ‘girl things’ makes them a girl, and vice versa. It’s so regressive - and finally teens are realising.

Urgh, this is so depressing, teen girls seem to love Heartstopper.

Youngsters are being groomed by this ideology from all directions.

It's like wanting to raise gay teens up in the right path from the start. It's important to train young people early that nice girls don't want privacy or dignity and will submissively validate males with their bodies without thinking deeply about it or wanting equality or not to be used to meet a male's needs, and that those who sin shall be damned.

My son loves Heartstopper and I watched s1 with him. It is very cute but almost too twee I think.

When it comes to Elle, the trans character, I kept pointing out how amusing it was that almost every time was on screen she is sitting or lying down - clearly she is very tall!
Also they conveniently brush over sports day when she hides out in the art room rather than competing. I've not seen the other seasons but it seems very rose-tinted glasses rather than realistic!

..finally teens are realising.

Some teens. Unfortunately there are many who aren't.

My autistic daughter remains at risk of conflating her autism-related puberty distress with the idea that she might be in the wrong body.

On an encouraging note (obviously it's not encouraging at all that she was injured), when she got hit in the face a couple of weeks ago by a ball that was hit by a boy during volleyball in PE, breaking her glasses and giving her a black eye, she felt sufficiently angry at contact sports being mixed-sex in her year group that she wrote an email to one of the PE teachers to ask why it couldn't be sex-segregated. She read her email out to me after she had sent it and it was very well worded, talking eloquently and thoughtfully about the safety aspect. Personally, the only thing I would have written differently was using the word sex instead of gender, but I didn't say this as I need to follow her lead on the subject of gender identity (to avoid the risk of pushing her away), so I just complimented her on the good job that she had done. Hopefully she will be piecing it together for herself as more discussions surface about all of this in its wider context.

As it happens, her sister brought the subject of mixed-sex sports up in the car today on the way home in similar annoyance re PE. Although I had told my autistic daughter about Payton McNabb's volleyball injury when we discussed this subject previously, I hadn't mentioned that the injury was caused by a transgirl. I had said that it was a "similar mixed-sex incident" that had resulted in a serious injury. The ball that hit my daughter was "spiked" too but it hit the net, so by the time it hit my daughter's face some of the force had already been stopped by the pulling of the net. When she first told me about it, I had misunderstood, thinking it was the boy's hand in the net but she clarified today that it was the ball. Rather handily her younger sister (who is one of those who are realising) said that PE had only been changed to mixed sex because of "all the children who identify as something different" who were complaining about it being separated by sex. So I brought the Payton McNabb example back up again.... and this time said that person who injured Payton was a transgirl, playing on a girls' team against girls.

My younger daughter then said she would start a school protest... and my elder one said she'd join in! They discussed some kind of mutiny plan!! Obviously I told them I couldn't support them creating anarchy but instead I offered to write a letter to school..... they said yes please.... Watch this space 👀 (for anyone who's aware of my conversations with the school over the last year, I'm very disappointed at their inaction beyond the changes that they made to the PHSE materials, so this will add an interesting twist to things... 😬).

Your daughters are great @BonfireLady!

Not always, I assure you 😬😂

Being a mum to two teenage girls is quite the wild ride. I knew it would be but... wow 😬😂

Edited to add: thank you ❤️ They definitely can be and I should accept the compliment 😁

I think they’ve got a great role model in you @BonfireLady (from what I’ve seen from your posts).

I should have clarified I meant some @BonfireLady Apologies. I do think the number who are in thrall to it is reducing though.

All mainstream gay-themed Netflix series are an excuse to insert TRAism.

Cosy gay love stories are primarily beloved by young girls and as such act as a Trojan horse for the dodgier parts of the rainbow to promote their 'be kind and let men rule over you' message.

OP, I am sooooooooooooooo sorry for my derail. I'm still processing the entire conversation (right here in this thread it would appear 🤦‍♀️) by pottering around and tidying.... then scurrying off to type on MN -the children are engrossed in various technology-related activities at the moment.

The other interesting bit to share (so, so sorry, OP 🤦‍♀️) is that we ended up, courtesy of my younger daughter, on the subject of changing rooms. We had a discussion about the sorority in the US and the court case associated with it and my eldest (autistic daughter) said it was wrong that the transgirl was getting access to the accommodation because nobody would ever know if they were real or faking it. I said she had a point.

Anyway, back to the thread.... unfortunately this latest series of Heartstoppers is just yet another influence to mitigate. FFS. I'll be keeping an eye on whether they are watching it or not and will decide what to do if they do. Options will be a) ban it b) watch it with them or c) observe from a distance and find moments to ask about it to see what they make of it. I'm glad that they have a close relationship and that my younger daughter has her eyes wide open, plus the nous to see the risk it all poses to her older sister.

Thank you @Waitingfordoggo **
and no probs @BreatheAndFocus

** I'm terrible at accidental thread hijacking though. I will stop now. I need to process it all properly anyway. Back to Heartstoppers....

The author/screenwriter is a she/her/they/them and considers herself 'asexual' and 'aromantic' so sounds right up her nonsensical alley.

@BonfireLady No apology needed, it is good to see some real-world examples of young female students pushing back instead of blindly bowing down to men's demands.

I made this post because I was shocked when I watched the new season yesterday and wanted to alert others, especially parents of young children, to the sly insertion of TRA dogma in an otherwise nice show. So I am glad this thread is getting responses and highlighting the importance of protecting children from the bane of gender ideology!

@BonfireLady i think I am about 2 years behind you in this journey, and I really appreciate all your insights. If this is a derail, then I will happily follow you to another thread!

Ah… This is what my nearly 18 year old and her (blue haired but not in that way I don’t think) friend were watching last night. I caught the asexual aromatic bit and asked them why not fancying a shag was a special sexuality ‘thing’, with a dose of chuntering “these kids are bloody weird- is this nonsense considered normal?”

Oh, I'm glad I read this. My daughter asked me to watch it with her, as it came up as a suggestion on Netflix, then said, "Hmm, it might not be your sort of thing..." (She's 11).

She asked for the graphic novels for last Christmas and has had a couple from the school library.

They are a total fantasy in terms of what they are presenting as a gay male romance, even for youngsters. Which is I suppose what you'd expect from something written by a woman with no sex drive.

But I am kind of weirded out by the fact that these romances are being marketed so strongly to young girls. Why is there this desire to present a same sex male romance to them like this? It's one thing when grown women read fantasy romance, because they know it's not real. But it's weird this stuff is being given to 11 year old girls.

As with so many things we're dealing with that are Rule 34-adjacent these day (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule34), this type of fiction originated in Japan, is very popular there and has migrated worldwide via the internet. I first came across it 20-odd years ago in fan discussion boards for Anime and Manga:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boys%27love

'Boys' love(Japanese:ボーイズ ラブ, Hepburn:bōizu rabu), also known by its abbreviation BL(ビーエル,bīeru), is a genre of fictional media originating in Japan that depicts homoerotic relationships between male characters. It is typically created by women for a female audience, distinguishing it from homoerotic media created by and for gay men, though BL does also attract a male audience and can be produced by male creators. BL spans a wide range of media, including manga, anime, drama CDs, novels, video games, television series, films, and fan works.

The genre originated in the 1970s as a subgenre of shōjo manga, or comics for girls. Several terms were used for the new genre, including shōnen-ai(少年愛, lit. "boy love"), tanbi(耽美, lit. "aesthete" or "aesthetic"), and June(ジュネ,[dʑɯne]). The termyaoi(YOW-ee; Japanese:やおい[jaꜜo.i]) emerged as a name for the genre in the late 1970s and early 1980s in the context of dōjinshi(self-published works) culture as a portmanteau of yama nashi, ochi nashi, imi nashi ("no climax, no point, no meaning"), where it was used in a self-deprecating manner to refer to amateur fan works that focused on sex to the exclusion of plot and character development, and that often parodied mainstream manga and anime by depicting male characters from popular series in sexual scenarios. "Boys' love" was later adopted by Japanese publications in the 1990s as an umbrella term for male-male romance media marketed to women.

Concepts and themes associated with BL include androgynous men known as bishōnen; diminished female characters; narratives that emphasize homosociality and de-emphasize socio-cultural homophobia; and depictions of rape. A defining characteristic of BL is the practice of pairing characters in relationships according to the roles of seme, the sexual top or active pursuer, and uke, the sexual bottom or passive pursued. BL has a robust global presence, having spread since the 1990s through international licensing and distribution, as well as through unlicensed circulation of works by BL fans online. BL works, culture, and fandom have been studied and discussed by scholars and journalists worldwide.'

Oh no! My teenage GD loves the Heartstopper stuff and has eagerly been waiting for the new series, she'll have seen this crap by now. Unfortunately my own lovely DD ( her mum) is of the 'be kind' ilk and thinks I'm some sort of ancient, man hating dinosaur.