BBC’s Controversial Documentary on the Gender-Dysphoria
by Jesse Singal, Science of Us:
A lot of people don’t realize that there is a genuine scientific debate over how to best help out children with gender dysphoria, or those who feel discomfort — sometimes extremely intense discomfort — with the body they were born into, and who insist they really are, or should be, a member of the other sex. That’s partly because most mainstream journalistic treatments of the subject tell stories that, while inspiring and important, are somewhat straightforward: The child knows from a very young age they were born in the wrong body, the parents (perhaps after a brief period of reflection or resistance) agree, and the kid transitions, blossoming into their true self as a result.
This definitely happens. But a lot of cases of childhood gender dysphoria are far more complicated, and that’s where the debate comes in. Last night the BBC aired an hour-long documentary called Transgender Kids: Who Knows Best? Produced by the filmmaker John Conroy, it is one of the best journalistic accounts yet to fully dive into this subject and all of its messy nuance. The film zeroes in on the controversy surrounding the late-2015 firing of Kenneth Zucker, a leading childhood gender-dysphoria researcher and clinician, and the shutdown of his gender-identity clinic — but it’s really about the broader controversy that has raged over this subject, mostly a bit beyond the attention of mainstream audiences.
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