Parents and MPs Furious at BBC’s Transgender Show Aimed at Six-Year-Olds

Children's show in U.K. features 11-year-old boy taking hormone blockers to prepare for sex-change surgery.

The BBC is receiving complaints from parents and Tory MPs angry about the sex-change theme in their online show Just a Girl. The show, hosted on the CBBC website, features a story line of an 11-year-old boy struggling to get female hormones, which will make surgery easier later, reported the Mirror. The show is geared toward children as young as six.

The fictional drama, which shows the boy taking sex-change drugs, has some MPs up in arms as well. Tory MP Peter Bone said the show is “completely inappropriate … it beggars belief that the BBC is making this program freely available to children as young as six. I entirely share the anger of parents who just want to let children be children.” Tory MP Julian Brazier agreed with Bone. “This program is very disappointing and inappropriate,” he said. “Children are very impressionable and this is going to confuse and worry them.”

Family campaigner and director of the Family Education Trust Norman Wells said, “It is irresponsible of the BBC to introduce impressionable children as young as six to the idea that they can choose to be something other than their biological sex,” reported the Daily Mail.

It is irresponsible of the BBC to introduce impressionable children as young as six to the idea that they can choose to be something other than their biological sex

Just a Girl is a video diary about a boy who wants to transition to a girl, so he takes hormone blockers. The show is dedicated to the topic, with the boy, who calls himself “Amy,” commenting that while his father wanted a boy, “Mum knew I was different. She realized early on that I was born in the wrong body … I wasn’t Ben, I was Amy.”

In another scene, the boy tells his friend who has similar desires that “Once they realized I was trans for real, [I] got them,” he said, referring to the hormone blockers. Ben also develops a crush on a boy in the show, but is hesitant to tell him that he’s a boy wanting to be a girl.

Dr. Dilys Daws, a child psychotherapist, said Just a Girl could confuse children. While children are naturally curious about what it’s like to be someone of the opposite sex, Dr. Daws said that BBC was “irresponsible” to present the “extreme” step of gender change to such small children when they are too young to handle such issues.

Parents took to the internet to complain about the program. One parent asked, “Am I being unreasonable to think this is an inappropriate topic for a young age group?” Another commented that the show was not “remotely suitable” for young children: “To start suggesting that children can be transgender when they’re far too young to actually have a gender is reckless and damaging.”

Wells said the issue is about protecting children. “The more we promote the idea that a boy can be born into a girl’s body and a girl can be born into a boy’s body, and that drugs and surgery can put things right, the more children will become utterly confused,” he said, adding that “[r]especting and preserving a child’s birth sex should be seen as a child protection issue.”

Not everyone felt as strongly as Wells and the parents. Others believed that the show could “contribute to a healthy and informed public discussion.” As for the BBC, their CBBC website just wants to “reflect true life, providing content that mirrors the lives of as many UK children as possible.”