How was ITV’s trans drama Butterfly ever made?
by Robin Ashenden, Spectator:
In the wake of the Cass Report’s damning verdict on the reckless ‘social transitioning’ of children and the prescribing of puberty blockers to minors, it’s perhaps an apt time to recall a mini-series that appeared on ITV a few years ago cheerleading for both.
Butterfly was broadcast in October 2018 just as Theresa May’s national consultation about proposed changes to the 2004 Gender Recognition Act was nearing its end, and dealt with the issue of trans children. Written by Tony Marchant and directed by Anthony Byrne, its lead consultant was Susie Green, the then-head of transgender youth support charity Mermaids, who took her son to Thailand for sex reassignment surgery on his sixteenth birthday.
Butterfly, over three episodes, told a harrowing story for our time. Vicky and Stephen Duffy’s 11-year-old son Max believes he’s in the wrong body. At home he sometimes wears girl’s clothing but at school plays the part of a normal boy (though is bullied for being visibly different from the other kids). As Max’s adolescence approaches, the situation is getting worse – he’s begun cutting himself and attacking his penis with broken glass: ‘I don’t want it… It’s disgusting. I want to get rid of it.’ Max’s mother Vicky, brilliantly played by Anna Friel, is highly sympathetic: ‘I want to have a happy daughter, not a dead son.’ But his father is sceptical, hopeful it’s a phase Max (soon to be Maxine) will grow out of: ‘If only I was there for him and a proper role model… Kids, they change their minds all the time.’
Read here (£)
Related Posts
Tags
Share This
