Little Girl: French docudrama shows gender dysphoria in a small child, as very real
There has been some political controversy over transgender students, especially much younger ones, and public school policies – angry parents and right-wing state legislatures – so the 2020 French film “Little Girl” (“Petite fille”) by Sebastien Lifshitz , seems very significant.
The docudrama (in French with subtitles) presents a child, Sasha, her parents, and school teachers and principals and various medical specialists as her path forward in life develops.
Sasha’s mother says that Sasha started expressing the idea that she believed she is a girl before her third birthday, not liking one particular body part and aware she could never carry babies. I am a little surprised that three year-olds would be aware of that. But a comprehensive program of consultation followed. Gradually, therapists and her parents facilitated her passage into the world and school as a “normal” girl with biological identity hidden from sight, even in restrooms. I don’t know what would happen when she is old enough for gym class and locker rooms. (Before seventh grade, as a non-competitive cis boy, I dreaded that.)
Nevertheless (see Vox and Cedars Sinai links on my News Commentary post Feb. 14 [now covered in the new blog on this site in 2022]) pediatric science today suggest that one in 200-300 grade school children have true gender dysphoria (more commonly male to female). Generally, the public tends to believe that treatment should not happen until young adulthood (age of consent), and some states have tried to pass laws as such, as well as ban presentation of materials on this topics to grade school children. But the science itself could support making transgender people a suspect class for Equal Protection under US constitutional law.
Later in the film, indeed, the conversation turns to the disquieting topic of starting puberty blockers.
In July 2021 Molly Sprayregen reported ‘Amazon Employees Quit After Company Refuses to Stop Selling Anti-Trans Book: The book claims that a 'transgender craze' is 'seducing' girls into transitioning, on a site called Them’. However previously Amazon had canceled a book by Ryan Anderson (USA Today op-ed, paywall) under a policy which would not allow books to be sold that presented LGBTQ persons as mentally ill. But medical (pharmaceutical or surgical treatment) apparently is legitimate under Amazon’s policy and does not reflect 'mental illness'.
I have reviewed Why Gender Matters, by Leonard Sax, June 25, 2018 on this site. That is still sold and advertisable on Amazon.
In my own Do Ask Do Tell book series (and now related screenplay drafts), I present own expulsion from William and Mary in 1961 for telling the Dean of Men (under provocation) that I viewed myself as a “latent homosexual”. Despite appearances, I am a cis male. The policy of WM and many colleges at the time (during the “Lavender Scare”) was to deny that homosexuality even exists and instead classify it as “mental illness” automatically, to fend off the disruption such Ideas might cause, so they thought. That line of thinking would influence the early days of the debate on gays in the military after Bill Clinton proposed lifting the ban in 1993, resulting in the notorious “don’t ask don’t tell” policy for 17 years.
Many, especially on the social and political right, however, may see gender dysphoria, especially male-to-female, as a form of avoidance of the risk-taking and fungibility that used to be demanded of males, except those at the top of a patriarchy.
The music was interesting. The slow movement of a Dvorak trio appears, as does a lot of Debussy “The Girl with the Flaxen Hair”, which seems to be played on an out-of-tune piano in the closing credits. In my own piano days, I played the Arabesque.
Picture: Toulouse, France, which I visited in 2001; Wikipedia embed, click for attribution. I visited a space museum there.
Name: Little Girl
Director, writer: Sebastien Lipshitz
Released: 2020/7
Format:.: 2.39:1 French with subtitles
When and how viewed: Amazon Prime, 2022/2/16 $3.99
Length: 82
Rating: NA
Companies: Music Box Films
Stars: ***__