Open Letter To Bodyshock

I’m writing this having just finished watching Age 8 and Wanting a Sex Change, part of the Bodyshock series, on 4oD… and I am seething.

I am seething because throughout the show, which focused on four chidren and teenagers diagnosed with gender dysphoria, the narrator referred to the subjects by the wrong pronouns – that is, the pronoun of their birth gender, rather than chosen gender. The family of the children got it right, of course, and the narrator used the chosen names, but then later, often in the same sentence, followed it up with the wrong pronoun; at 33:25, for example:

“12 year old Bailey was born a girl, but since the age of 8, she’s lived her life as a boy.”

I’ve watched a fair number of the Bodyshock programs before and have always been impressed by how carefully and respectfully they present the medical conditions that each program is about; this time, however, I’m incensed, because these children are portrayed talking to their parents about incredibly serious subjects like gender reassignment surgery and hormone therapy, and how they’ve known for many years that they don’t belong in the body they were born into – and the narrator (or, more likely, script writer) has rubbished it all by using the wrong pronouns.

I know what you’re thinking – “they’re just kids, they’re too young to really be sure” – but that’s rubbish. These kids have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria; it doesn’t smell like they don’t know what they’re talking about to me.

I’m not trans myself. For many years, I didn’t feel a whole lot of connection going on with my biology, but I’m a lot more comfortable with my body now and I identify as female and cisgendered. Still, this angers me, because I know quite a few people who are trans/genderqueer/whatever-label-they-like and I’ve learnt a little about it from them, and I consider myself to be an ally; that said, unless I’m invited to, I don’t generally go fighting the fight for other people, fighting a fight that’s not my own.

This time, I’m standing up and saying actually, I’ve got a problem with this, because these kids and their families have agreed to let the film-makers into their lives so that they can document their stories, and the people making the program don’t appear to have any respect for the decisions they and their families have made and are making, and that, in my mind, is wrong.

I’ll be forwarding a copy of this post to Bodyshock at the end of May; not to demand anything of them, because this isn’t about me, but to tell them that people out there think that this kind of thing is not okay, in the hope it might not happen again, that in future, they’ll show a bit more respect for the people they’re making programs about.

If you’d like to sign this letter as well, please comment*, or drop me an email and I’ll add your name along with mine.

* if you’re seeing this syndicated somewhere other than tajasel.org, I’d appreciate it if you’d leave your comment on the original post to keep them all together.