Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Butterfly’ On Hulu, Where A Mom Supports Her Child’s Gender Identity Change Against All Odds

Gender identity in children is a very tricky issue for parents to navigate. While it seems that a kid who identifies as the opposite gender — or no gender — are sure of themselves, puberty brings about different feelings in many. For every Jazz Jennings who never wavered in her identity, there others who go back to their birth identity when puberty hits. The British miniseries Butterfly explores one boy’s desire to be a girl and how his parents react to that in very different ways. Read on for more…

BUTTERFLY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A preteen is looking in the mirror of their room, taking off makeup, nail polish, jewelry and hair barrettes, transforming themselves back into a boy.

The Gist: The preteen is Max Duffy (Callum Booth-Ford), who has been exploring their gender identity at home, wearing girl’s clothes and wearing makeup. His mother Vicky (Anna Friel) has been more or less raising Max and their sister Lily (Millie Gibson) by herself; she separated from the kids’ father Stephen (Emmett J. Scanlan) for a number of months. One of the big reasons why they’re separated is that Stephen is having a very difficult time accepting Max’s gender exploration, and it manifested itself in an incident where Stephen slapped Max because Max wouldn’t stop being “girly.”

As it is, Max still presents as a boy when Stephen takes the kids; Stephen thinks he’s a good soccer player. But Max only does this to please their dad, not because they’re wavering in their desire to live as a girl. At school, Max is so afraid to go into either bathroom that they come home with wet pants.

Max feels so trapped that they attempt suicide; as Vicky and Stephen talk to the hospital’s child psychologist, it’s clear that the gulf between their views on this is quite wide. While Stephen thinks that Max will be the large percentage of kids who return to their birth gender when puberty hits, Vicky thinks Max is pretty sure of his identity. But at Max’s age, they have to make a critical decision of whether to delay Max’s puberty in order to give Max more time to explore.

After Max’s suicide attempt, Vicky lets Max back in just so Max has both his parents under the same roof. But she’s also been missing her ex, even when he started introducing Max and Lily to his new girlfriend Gemma (Amy Huberman). So as they grow closer again, Max drops a bomb: He wants to be a girl in public, and wants to be called Maxine.

Our Take: We’re a bit torn about the three-part miniseries Butterfly, created by Tony Marchant. On the one hand, we’re enjoying Max’s steadfastness in becoming Maxine, despite the fact that they haven’t reached puberty yet. There are strong opinions on both sides of letting kids transition to the opposite gender, and the show is unafraid of giving Maxine room to figure it out despite everything going on around them (a scene where Max watches a Jazz Jennings video brings this topic home, as she’s been very public about her childhood transition).

The show feels a bit heavy-handed at times, at least in Episode 1. Stephen isn’t just struggling to accept his son as a girl, he flat out refuses to believe his son wants to live as the other gender. He handles things in such an alpha-male way, slapping his kid and then assigning blame for his behavior — “When he’s with me, he’s like any other boy” — that it feels like Marchant missed an opportunity. Stephen could have been more subtle in his denial, maybe being OK with Max dressing like a girl in the house but not in public. But his behavior is so over-the-top it makes us shake our head. Yes, there are plenty of parents of trans kids who act like Stephen, but there are plenty more who are more like Vicky, supportive but unsure.

One of the great things that the show acknowledges, though, is that the conventional wisdom on parenting trans kids has changed drastically in a short period of time. The hospital psychologist acknowledges that the advice the Duffy’s got when six years ago when Max was 5, to keep his exploration hidden and don’t encourage it, wouldn’t fly today.

Sex and Skin: Nothing.

Parting Shot: Maxine asks Stephen if he left because of his gender exploration, and Stephen says yes. Now that they’re going to be Maxine in public, they beg their dad not to leave again. “I really tried,” Maxine says.

Sleeper Star: Amy Huberman’s Gemma looks to be a more sympathetic figure than it looks like when we first meet her, and she’ll be back in the picture even after Stephen breaks up with her to move back in with his family. But we also want to cite Gibson here, because as Max’s older sister, she utters one hell of a poignant line that shows how protective of a big sister she is.

Most Pilot-y Line: In a flashback, Max tells Stephen that they hate their willy and wishes it fell off. Stephen, in full denial, says “It’s never going to fall off, Max; it’ll get bigger, you know, like daddy’s.” From desperation comes creepiness, doesn’t it?

Our Call: STREAM IT, because Butterfly explores an issue that parents all over the world are confronting. Even if it’s a bit dark and heavy-handed, it will be interesting to see Max turn fully into Maxine and how his family handles it.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.

Stream Butterfly on Hulu