I swear I am going to try to keep this as short as possible. Blame /u/BEB for encouraging this post!

Anyway, I just finished watching this documentary, trailer below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RgKtccy4PQ&ab_channel=HBO

It follows four Kansas youths for five years.

The first is Avery, an MTF child who's mother has stars in her eyes and wants to make him the next Jazz Jennings. Avery seems real sick of her shit, to be honest. He's the one with the long pink hair, but he also gets rainbow hair later on. His calendar is full of events. He's writing an I Am Jazz rip-off children's book, he's on the cover of National Geographic, he's making speeches in Washington. Multiple times, he expresses that he does not want to be doing any of this, but his mother keeps pressuring him.

There is one scene where the mother is extremely excited because Avery's life is at risk and she just spoke to not one but TWO FBI agents!!! Apparently if Avery attends this rally, evil TERFs will swoop down from the sky, snatch him up and feed him to their young (I might be exaggerating a bit) and she asks him if he still wants to go and you can see from the look on her face that she wants Avery to be brave and say "Yes! Of course I'm still going! My people need me!" but Avery's like, "Fuck no! I'm staying home! I don't wanna die!" And the mother just dies on the inside because she knows she's being filmed and she can't pressure him on-camera. SUCH DISAPPOINT!

The next kid is Leena, a 15 year old MTF with long ginger hair and a skinny model body. He wants to be a Victoria's Secret model and goes on some modeling stuff. He dates a boy and it's twu wuw... Except the boy turns out to be gay. Ooops. I don't have much to say about Leena. I just feel bad for him. At the end of the documentary, he was scheduling his vagina surgery.

The next kid is Jay an FTM girl with a fuckboy haircut. Her mom is (I guess bisexual?) and marries a woman during filming. Jay also likes girls and had a girlfriend who had no idea she was trans. Kids at her school shared photos from her old yearbook of her as a girl, and the girlfriend called her asking for an explanation. Jay's mother took the phone, and I just want you to remember being a 13 year old child, and remember how weird and awkward and scary it felt when someone else's mom was trying to talk to you and convince you of something that made you feel uncomfortable and confused. Jay's mother basically made this girl feel like Jay is just a boy in the wrong body and if you are a good person you will be nice to him and make sure the other students don't bully him. Not in those exact words, but that was the message.

Of course the girlfriend did not want to be the girlfriend after that, and cue the mom trash-talking a 13 year old child on television! She was mad at the girl for 'keeping it a secret' from her own parents, when she allowed her own daughter to keep it secret from everyone. She blames the girlfriends mom for a lot of stuff. It was just so sad. She didn't care about how the little girl might be feeling at all.

There was another scene where Jay was taking her puberty blocker shots for the first time, and holy shit those needles are BIG. The poor kid was in so much pain! It really broke my heart. The Jay segment was filled with a lot of money talk. These shots, pills, and procedures cost a lot of money, and the insurance company was giving them a hard time. And the doctor said something like:

"Insurance companies normally cover things that are medically necessary."

...

And then the mother started crying.

I was just like DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYMMMMMNNNNNNNNNNNNN! The doctor did not mean it like that, but damn. You said it, sis.

Anyway, onto my favorite child: Phoenix an MTF aged 4. I'm going to cut/paste a part of my comment to BEB:

The entire time I was watching his portions, I was so angry because it was so obvious his parents were pushing this shit on him. His entire bedroom was like a giant rainbow threw up on it. All his outfits were princess dresses and floral muumuus and rainbows. They went to the K-mart and the mother immediately steered him towards the costume section and piled feather boas all over him.

When he said "I'm a boy" she said "You're a rainbow boy!" and then encouraged him to call himself a girl-boy. At church, she announced him as a girl even though he was feeling shy and not wanting the attention.

Things deteriorated, the parents got divorced, and now we see him at age 7, he's a boy again. And he is SURE he is a boy, and the mother has somehow had a 'come to Jesus moment' and is so embarrassed of her past behavior. She sort of tries to blame the ex-husband for it, but the old footage of him when he was being interviewed when Phoenix was age 4, the mom was the super-enthusiastic one, and the father was full on dissociating in front of the camera with dead eyes. (I get the vibe that the father might be a closeted pornsick autogynophile who was living through his son?) Obviously these are just a few edited clips over a whole lifetime, so who knows what the real story is, but I'm so happy to report that Phoenix is fine now, and his parents have cut that shit out and they're all trying to heal and go back to normal.

The end.