By all means let ur kids dress up however they want, fuck the homophobes who say that letting ur five year old son where a dress is the "gay agenda" or "degeneracy" or whatever, I think it's really healthy to let kids choose how they wanna express themselves
BUT HOLY FUCK! CAN YOU NOT FILM THEM AND PUT EM ONLINE???
It's not a fucking heartwarming moment omg its super voyeuristic to put your fucking five year old in the position of being exposed to homophobic judgements online it's fucking disgusting why am I seeing videos of someone filming their very young children experimenting with gender expression? Why are you people sharing that? It's using your kid for clout while also exposing them to extremely harsh criticism from bigots, it really is not charming at all.
I really hope this Tik Tok user and OP and anyone sharing this video really sincerely reflect on the privacy of children and how fucking dangerous of a position this is to put a kid in. Letting their face go viral and get shared around every single social media site as a stand in for your progressivism when they're not anywhere near old enough to consent to that exposure or that position. This isn't "letting children express themselves", it's exploiting a child for clicks dressed up in progressive language.
For the record when my lil brother was a toddler he wanted to be a fairy for Halloween and my mom let him. You know where we have photos of that? In our fucking family photo album. Not online for everyone in the world to see and judge but in a book in our house. You wanna talk about letting kids express themselves go ahead, talk about it, talk abt ur experiences as an lgbt positive parent; but do not put their names and faces online. It's fucking weird man.
So this post has gotten rather popular without anyone seeing some really relevant follow up details.
The tiktok account posting this, "the mcleod fam" is not a random family posting a feel good video that happened to go viral. It is a single woman who has made an internet career for herself by adopting disabled and neurodivergent children and posting about them on tiktok, instagram, and YouTube.
She does this for ad revenue, using her children, and specifically her children's gender identities, to advertise products and gain clicks. Her posts show the intimate details of her children's lives, discussing in great detail their medical issues, psychiatry process and exploration of identity. It's blatantly exploitative, deeply invasive, and really disturbing to look into.
I am adding this onto this post because I don't want anyone to think this Tiktok user is just a parent who did not know any better. I personally believe that using your children's private lives to gain money and attention is abusive.
Here is one of the pictures on her Instagram that shows how she uses her children's identities to sell products.
I strongly encourage you to block her on insta and tiktok and continue the conversation about how children are exploited on the internet. Do not give ppl like this a platform, stop sharing images of children online. They deserve their privacy and a chance to grow up outside the scrutiny of millions of people.
