Fox News’s Tucker Carlson said that there was a “nationwide epidemic” of children being forced by their parents to transition, which he called “child abuse.”
Carlson played a clip from the HBO documentary Transhood – which he called “so disturbing” – about a four-year-old girl named Phoenix. In the clip, Phoenix and her mother tell her church that she’s a girl.
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“Now if you’re a parent – if you have actually raised children – you know what you’re seeing is ventriloquism,” Carlson said, although he didn’t explain why Phoenix’s mother would be putting those words in her daughter’s mouth.
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“Four-year-olds don’t make decisions like that, they can’t,” he added, implying that being transgender is a choice.
“Across the country, many small children are being given puberty blockers and irreversibly damaging their bodies,” he said.
He didn’t present any evidence that Phoenix is using puberty blockers years before she’ll hit puberty. Moreover, puberty blockers are reversible – someone just stops taking them and then undergoes puberty as their sex assigned at birth.
“It’s grotesque. If you say that out loud, you’re punished: Target will ban your book, you’ll have trouble getting a job.”
“This isn’t just one parent abusing a child on TV. This is a nationwide – we’re gonna use the word – epidemic and everyone is too embarrassed to mention it.”
He then complained that people can’t even ask what “the process” is to being recognized as one’s gender identity. “You’re not even allowed to know what they’re talking about,” he claimed, as if Google doesn’t exist.