Conservatives Rage Over Transmasc Person Buying Pads in ‘Baymax!’
Disney has been shaky on its support for the LGBTQ community, both in its funding of politicians who passed Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law and their practices of routinely cutting queer storylines and characters to appear as minimally as possible. However, what little Disney does do for the queer community is still too much for many conservatives to handle.
There has been pushback after each of Disney’s attempts to include queer representation, most recently with American movie theaters fast-forwarding through a kiss between two women in Pixar’s Lightyear.
This time Disney has managed to spark controversy via a roughly 15-second clip of a transmasculine person in the period product aisle in the new Big Hero Six spinoff, Baymax!.
Conservative activist Chris Rufo sparked the discourse by tweeting a leaked clip from the show, in which Baymax asks for help finding period products, and a group of people, including masculine-presenting person with a trans flag shirt, offer suggestions.
In a tweet, Rufo suggests the show, “promotes the transgender flag and the idea that men can have periods to children as young as two years old,” and that “It’s all part of Disney’s plan to re-engineer the discourse around kids and sexuality.” Rufo then linked to his own article about Disney’s “not at all secret gay agenda.”
Unsurprisingly, this stirred up conservative outrage with Bryan Slaton of the Texas State Legislature, who tweeted, “This is so sick and weird. We have to protect kids from the sick adults who want to sexualize them and let them be kids.”
Others criticize the show’s decision to even have an episode about periods at all and that it could make children as old as 15 uncomfortable.
Ignoring the blatant transphobia going on here for a second, this outrage is ridiculous. Children as young as 8 or 9 can get their period, and we’re doing no one any favors by continuing the cultural shame and taboo. It’s actually good to change the conversation around periods and menstrual health, and while it may make some people uncomfortable, that’s part of the growth process of realizing that periods are normal.
As for the claim that this is going to “re-engineer discourse around kids and sexuality,” it’s not. The vast majority of kids watching the show won’t know or care anything about the implications of the man standing in the grocery store, offering a recommendation to Baymax (who they actually care about). There is no nefarious ploy to manipulate children into becoming gay or trans; it’s simply representing the world and the kinds of people who live in it.
Photo courtesy of Chris Rufo on Twitter and Disney+
