A four year-old -- don't let that number escape your mind -- a four year-old boy (you see, I'm already being insensitive) is brought out in front of a congregation by his mother to affirm his gender. He doesn't want to do it. He's clearly shy. He's clearly a bit scared. He's clearly reluctant. Eventually, his mom declares for him that he's really a girl.
This is something that I feel that the people who made Transhood were trying to get me to celebrate as being "progressive" and "inclusive."
My heart aches for Phoenix, the young boy who five years after this event, decided that he's really gender fluid after his mother had been raising him as a girl for the first nine years of his life.
Full disclosure -- I had the movie Sleeping Beauty memorized when I was Phoenix's age. I didn't want to dress up as the prince. I dressed up as Merryweather. I think it was in part because I always liked the color blue. But, it's also because FOUR YEAR-OLDS DON'T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT SEX OR GENDER! I grew up to be a cis-gender, heterosexual male. I'm happy with my gender and my sexuality.
When I look at Phoenix, I see a boy who is likely similar to who I was at four; only, he's subjected to child abuse.
My parents did it right. I wanted to play as Merryweather; so, my mom made me the costume and let me play. I was never ridiculed. I was never told that I needed to dress up as the prince. They let me be a damn kid without making assumptions and foisting labels on me before I turned five.
This mother, by every measure, would have taken four year-old me and immediately jumped at the opportunity to affirm that I was really girl and she would have fucked up my life.
We should be loving and tolerant, of course; but, in several cases in this horrifying documentary, these kids are being paraded around when they clearly don't want to be and being coerced into making life altering decisions before they're mentally capable of consenting.