This episode will focus on a documentary about a french, male, child called Sasha. Sasha identifies as a girl and the film covers Sasha’s story and that of her mother, Karine, who is portrayed as ”fiercely protective”. The documentary was called Petit Filles and was aired on the BBC.

The film begins with Karine explaining to Sasha’s father that he is not just a boy who thinks he is a girl. He is a girl.

She proceeds to explain that Sasha hates his ”peepee” and has known since he was two or three that he is not a boy. She is not, yet, using female pronouns for Sasha.

This is a familiar script so of course she also believes a girl can be born in a boys body.

There follows an interesting exchange while the father asks if Karine had unconsciously wished for a girl when she was pregnant. She gives a rather candid response. She explains she consciously wished for a girl. This will crop up later when Sasha is taken to a child psychiatrist, at the Gender Clinic. I anticipated this might warrant some exploring but it was not.

Karine talks about how Sasha was heartbroken they were not a girl and ”cried tears of real pain”. She then casts doubt on the birth registration process and how the recording of Sasha’s male sex has robbed Sasha of a future. {Trans activists such as Martine Rothblatt argue that we should not record sex, anywhere. In the U.K. a tax payer funded research project actually explores the “Future of Legal Sex” to explore abolishing it, in law. Alex Sharpe, trans-identifying male, was part of the project team}.

Soon we are in the psychiatrists office and Karine is being reassured that this is not her fault. A parent can’t will a child to be of one sex or the other, though, of course, she doesn’t say sex but ”gender”.

Karine does most of the talking while it is explained that nobody knows why some children feel like this it is ”just the way it is”. Sasha is asked if anything upsets them and shakes his head until his mum brings up that ”time in the bathroom”. They don’t manage to coax much more out of Sasha and his mum speculates about the reason for Sasha’s silence.

The thought did occur to me! Could it be that Sasha knows his role he is, consciously or otherwise, fulfilling his mother’s needs? This deserved some sensitive exploration, not just for Sasha but with Karine. We all project our desires onto our children not all of them healthy.

I won’t enumerate every time someone in the film repeated the propaganda about kids being born in the wrong body but it was frequent. It seemed like a deliberate incantation designed to hypnotise the audience.

I was also struck by his sister’s appearance 👆above. This was a perfectly acceptable presentation, for a girl, but it did make me wonder if Karine had hoped for a more overtly ”girly” daughter and was projecting that desire onto Sasha? Or perhaps they were going through a tumultous period in their relationship, as is often the way with teenage girls and their mums. I saw no curiosity about the dynamics, potentially, at play in this documentary.

Next we see an exchange about medical steps for Sasha. One would hope there had been some off screen exploration not included but looking at Sasha’s appearance this discussion seems to have happened quite quickly. The therapist discusses putting Sasha on puberty blockers. At least she does admit there are some gaps in the knowledge base around puberty blockers but it is quite shocking to see someone as young as this making decisions that could render them sterile.

There were two interesting asides about Sasha’s relationship with other girls. Here the therapist asks Sasha how the other girls relate to him.

The more interesting question is how does Sasha relate to other girls. We see him playing with a bespectabled friend at his house. They are playing princesses. For some reason Sasha decides its a beauty competition and there follows this exchange with his little friend. He seems to be unpleasantly competitive with his friend.

Obviously he is just a child but I wonder if this reflects an insecurity about the role he is being asked to play?

Now we are back to his mum recounting an episode where Sasha was ejected from his ballet class. Apparently the teacher was not happy to have him in the class with other little girls.

Karine recounts this tale to the psychiatrist as an ugly, humiliating episode and explains the teacher is Russian.

The response from the therapist sounds like vengeful activist speak rather than a measured response from a clinician. Bearing in mind Sasha is in the room, at this point.

Before I leave this I read an interview with the documentary maker. Its clear he admires Karine battling on behalf of their child and facing opposition from all quarters. He admires how the family have rallied round to provide a protective bubble for Sasha. He even notes a tender moment where the other son tells his mum he understands why Sasha has to be the focus of her attention. A good therapist would explore whether Sasha’s situation is filling an unmet need for his mum. A need to be admired as a champion for her son and a good mum. This quote might provide some insight into one aspect of her motivation:

I will leave the final word to the documentary maker who opens up about what compelled him to cover this issue. It turned out he had covered a famous, French, transsexual called Bambi. Bambi had told him he knew he was a girl aged three. He decided he wanted to cover trans children. It also had some personal significance based on his own childhood, as we learn.

Becoming school marble champion seems like a healthy way to affirm your worth; as a boy who has a variant way of expressing your masculinity. Going on medication that sterilises you and becoming a life long medical patient seems like a mal-adaptive coping mechanism and not one that should be rushed into. How many ”feminine” boys are simply gay?

The jury is still out on what happens to these children who are socially /medically transitioned by a Tiger Mummy.

This is the third in a series on transgender kids. I will add to this but will also look at the promotion of transgender teens. Especially interesting are the older trans-identified males, who promote child transition, and seem to be driven by a type of retrospective wish fulfilment.