HBO's 'Transhood' Normalizes Child Abuse

Seven-year-old Avery's story is one of the most painful to watch in the film because the control and manipulation by Avery's mother is so blatant. Avery is the boy who infamously appeared on the cover of National Geographic's 2016 "Gender Revolution" issue as a "transgender girl." As it turns out, Avery did not want to do that National Geographic photo. In fact, Avery does not want to do most of the very public, attention-getting things his mother (who also gets lots of attention) makes him do.

As the National Geographic photographer arrives, Avery cries out, "You put me in everything and I don't approve of it," and runs to hide in his room. Eventually his mother, Debi, gets him out and he does the shoot. According to Debi, her 7-year-old said, "Her job as a trans person was to help change the world for other kids." At age 7, a kid's "job" is to play and have fun with friends.

When Debi takes Avery to the doctor at age 8, she tells the doctor that she's been reading him "all the sex education books" and he is now afraid of puberty. "I just wanna stay a kid," Avery says. Debi never thinks she should take a break on the sex education books and let her child be a kid for a while.

Avery's father largely recedes into the background for most of the film. After nearly five years of trans publicity through important development stages of childhood, Avery so thoroughly resists being paraded in public any longer, that his mother finally relents and lets him just play with animals and enjoy activities at the local nature center instead. The end of the film tells the audience that Avery now only does "activist work" with his mother on rare occasions (though he apparently still believes he is a girl).

But Debi is not the only parent in this film who has an outsized role in pushing her child to do things he or she does not want to do. The mother of 13-year-old Jay, a girl who thinks she is a boy, tells the director flat-out, "My mother thinks I'm a child abuser." Jay dresses like a boy, cuts her hair short, and tells no one at school that she is a biological girl. Jay's mother says, "I'm gonna push him to come out and be who he's supposed to be."