Innovation Strategies to Initiate Conversations about Child Gender Transition among Americans

By Taylor Reece, Op-ed contributor

In the 2017 movie “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” the character Mildred Hayes, played by the always-gripping Frances McDormand, is a driven mother seeking justice for her slain daughter.

Feeling ignored, and with no arrests after seven months, Mildred puts up three roadside signs to prod Ebbing’s police chief to find her daughter’s killer.

As the makers of “Dead Name,” a new documentary film about the gender ideology targeting our children, we’ve taken a page from Mildred by using four two-sided digital billboards in Pennsylvania and Ohio to promote our movie through year’s end.

Why? Because we want to be heard. We want to prod ordinary folks to do a double take when they see this bold question along the roadside: “Has This Happened to Your Child?” Next come the words “Dead Name” and the URL deadnamedocumentary.com.

We know a little bit about being silenced. “Dead Name” was first released late last year on the streaming platform Vimeo. Thirty-five days in, Vimeo dropped the documentary, caving to those who don’t want to foster a conversation about parents who are suffering because their children are caught up in the transgender movement.

“Dead Name” rebounded on a private viewing platform and the censorship helped to spread the word about the film, but this never should have happened.

Our film has been covered widely by conservative media via online publications and podcasts. Thoughtful journalists and hosts have examined the issue, using a compassionate lens to dissect an issue that is kidnapping a generation and destroying families.

But mainstream media is too hard-boiled to treat the subject with nuance or open-mindedness. They’re not allowed.

The transgender generation is a wonderful thing, a true expression of human rights, the legacy media outlets all seem to collectively believe. No need to delve deeper or ask critical questions or analyze what we’re doing medically to a generation. Nope, nothing to look at there.

So, we’ve had to get creative about how to be heard — and seen. In Pennsylvania, the electronic billboards promoting “Dead Name” are in Harrisburg as well as Castle Shannon, a borough near Pittsburgh. In Ohio, the billboards are in Lorain County, near Cleveland, and in the city of Findlay.

In Lorain, motorists passing the billboard are on their way to stores, restaurants, hotels, Mercy Health-Lorain Hospital, Lorain Community College, and the Cleveland Clinic’s Family Health Center. The billboard in Findlay is situated in a busy area near Flag City Station shopping mall and close to the University of Findlay, Blanchard Valley Hospital, Northwest Ohio Railroad Preservation, and the Children’s Museum of Findlay. We expect that will snap a few heads.

The billboard in Harrisburg is located less than 3 miles from the steps of the Pennsylvania State Capitol Complex, where the issue is already under discussion among legislators. The Castle Shannon billboard sits in the heart of Allegheny County, amid stores, restaurants, pubs, and other businesses.

We chose these locations because they are in the heartland of our great nation, a laboratory for public opinion. In the film “Dead Name,” Amy — one of three parents who tells their intimate and heartbreaking stories — says that if it’s not your child, you have no idea how it feels.

That may be true, but the transgender issue is spreading its tentacles. More of us are becoming aware that we’re grappling with something big, incomprehensible, and irreversible for our children.

If you’re driving by one of our billboards, you might at least wonder what has befallen the unnamed child to whom we allude in the message looming over the traffic.

It may not be your child, but it may be your niece or nephew or a friend’s child who has been absorbed into gender dysphoria confusion. And not because that child really believes he or she has been born in the wrong body, but because that child is suffering from body image issues or sexual trauma or other anxiety disorders that grip us when we’re going through the delicate stages of puberty and adolescence.

What we’re hoping is that drivers will motor pass these provocative signs and ask: “What the heck is that all about?” if they don’t already know.

If they find their way to our film, they will meet Amy, Helen, and Bill, parents who were blindsided when their children became caught up in the trans movement. The three have very different stories, but none of them saw it coming. And all three, for different reasons, continue to live with the fallout.

But even if they don’t watch “Dead Name,” we’re hoping the phrase “dead name” is enough for folks to wonder aloud to family and friends.

At the very least, we’re hoping people will ask questions, seek clarity, scratch their heads, wonder what it is they don’t know. We are living through a unique time, where children are overly influenced online.

Parents know they’ve lost agency over their children. Previous generations raised their kids knowing that being a parent included the authority to protect a child.

Somehow this societal structure, long relied upon, has spun out of control. A teacher or guidance counselor or therapist goes along with a child’s new name or gender, often without parental knowledge or consent.

So we’re asking, “Has this happened to your child?” We do so because we’re hoping parents will be better prepared for and more educated about this scourge that erases a child’s identity, leaving him or her with a “dead name” and relatives and other loved ones with broken hearts.

Originally published at The Daily Signal.

Taylor Reece is the director and co-producer of “Dead Name,” a documentary from Broken Hearted Films in which parents give voice to the devastating impact of the transgender movement on their children and families.