Why Are Hollywood’s Biggest Stars Raising So Many Trans Kids?

This article is part of Upstream, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.

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It’s Pride Month, and rainbows gonna rainbow. But the pink, white, and blue transgender flag is flying higher than ever for Tinseltown’s gender-nonconforming youth.

It seems like literally every celebrity has a trans kid these days. From Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck to Naomi Watts and Liev Schreiber, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Charlize Theron, it isn’t hard to find a smiling A-list parent proudly standing by as their child rejects their own God-given body. But is it a symptom of our safe-space era? Or the first raindrops before a torrential storm?

“There has to be some reason why this enormous percentage of Hollywood kids are trans. How many celebrities have trans kids?” Joe Rogan said. “It’s not a thing that was going on just a few years ago.”

When Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony’s daughter Emme Muñiz came out as “Oskar Muñiz” last month, the subject resurfaced. “They have ADHD,” Lopez told Extra, speaking about her twins, Emme (“Oskar”) and Max, who got their father’s unconventional looks. “They’re loving, good-hearted people.” 

The pro-trans campaign among the elite is real and well-funded. Just the global sex reassignment surgery market alone is expected to reach nearly $8 billion by 2033. But while the situation remains fluid, the larger discussion is hardly open to alternative perspectives.

“I hope you know that you will find yourself,” trans “Baby Reindeer” actor Nava Mau told “trans kids” from the 2024 Emmys red carpet. “You will find your purpose and everything will be alright.”  

Over in politics, Democrat Texas state Rep. James Talarico told “A Superbloom Podcast,” “I love … the trans children who showed up yesterday at the state capitol to advocate for their humanity.” 

Softened by the agreeing coos of everyone on set, Marlon Wayans told “IMO with Michelle Obama” of his own child, Kai, “Their transition really taught me what unconditional love was.” Wayans says he came around to “full acceptance” of the trans thing within a week. 

It’s not completely out of bounds to pin a lot of this on the debauched rules of the game in a left-leaning bubble. Rife with stories of casting couches, toxic sets, and open secrets about king-making predators in the C-suite, the celebrity entertainment machine holds onto a blurry status quo. 

“These kids are not our accessories. They’re little human beings that need structure,” Sylvester Stallone’s wife Jennifer Flavin told Katie Miller. Having left California for Palm Beach, Florida, in 2024, Flavin detailed the challenge of raising the couple’s three (tomboy) daughters in the belly of the beast. “Growing up in a Hollywood home, there’s really no structure … you’ve got private planes, you’ve got all these giant homes with chefs and secretaries and assistants and housekeepers or nannies, and there’s just too much of everything.” 

If we’re just living in a trendy popularity contest, it’s almost impossible to nail down why this epidemic is surging among the jet-set. Energetic headlines praise well-known parents for publicly supporting their trans-identifying kids. As BuzzFeed claims, “It really is that easy to love your kids unconditionally!” 

Voices that challenge the narrative are quickly taken out with society’s trash. See Mario Lopez’s apology tour after mentioning in an interview that age three was too young to decide that a child is trans. “It’s sort of alarming,” he said. “And my gosh, I just think about the repercussions later on.” He subsequently pledged his LGBTQ allegiance, emphasis on the T. 

Virtue signaling feeds the fame monster, but it’s not the only reason so many celebrity kids call themselves trans. It’s also not even the most sinister.

To unpack the psychology behind the celebrity push to trans their kids, The Daily Wire spoke with licensed therapist Pamela Garfield-Jaeger, LCSW. Also the author of the children’s book “Froggy Girl” and “A Practical Response to Gender Distress: Tips and Tools for Families,” she didn’t need to work with these particular celebrity children to have thoughts. 

“Most people look at the social contagion aspect of it, and I think it’s deeper than that,” she says. “A lot of these kids are either adopted, or surrogates, or raised by someone other than their primary parents so there are some attachment issues there.”

Noting the potential fallout from any trauma, Garfield-Jaeger also points to the notorious depravity of Hollywood. “Exposure to pedophilia, or just the culture of being hyper-sexualized, can really lead them to want to reject their bodies,” she shares. “It’s in their zeitgeist.”

The struggle to establish themselves in the shadow of a world-famous parent can also serve as a trigger. “In regular families this happens a lot where the wallflower kid can come out as trans because they have not been noticed or aren’t getting the same kind of attention and praise as the star football player brother,” she says. 

It’s even worse when a parent scores higher on the self-obsession scale than the average mom and pop. “If you’ve been raised by a narcissist, that’s also another common factor for people who end up being trans,” Garfield-Jaeger notes. “Perhaps it’s a way for their parents to notice them, and wield some control or power in a circumstance where they don’t feel like they have any.”

Elon Musk described being “tricked into signing documents” that allowed his son, Xavier, to transition. The oldest of Musk’s 14 children, now known as model Vivian Wilson, told Teen Vogue, “I’m financially independent, which, cool, love that for me.” Claiming Musk was largely absent and cruel, Vivian assured a live audience, “Right now, they’re painting us all as violent mass shooters. I’m not gonna shoot anyone. I’m a model!” 

Hormone therapy has been billed as a mild intervention, but it has devastating repercussions when administered and tapered off. “Ever heard of roid rage?” Garfield-Jaeger posits. “That’s basically what it is.” 

Detransitioner Helena Kerschner described the terror that testosterone wreaked on her body. After repeatedly being admitted to mental hospitals, she wrote, “I began experiencing uncontrollable episodes of rage and paranoia, where I was a danger to myself and others. I lost control over my body.” 

Explaining how hormone treatment affects everything from sexual preference to the ability to maintain committed relationships, Garfield-Jaeger says, “You’re basically inducing an endocrine disorder into a healthy person when you do this. There are a lot of consequences. The kids are just being celebrated into turmoil.”

“The whole trans thing is really, in my opinion, crazy, because it’s a symptom of some kind of problem or pain, but yet our entire healthcare system praises it, reinforces it, and medicalizes it,” she says. “We’re not trying to address what’s really happening that’s bubbling under the surface. With trans, all of a sudden it means they have a magical gendered soul that otherwise they’ll kill themselves, and that’s not true.”

“Anybody with eyeballs can tell this is not natural. This isn’t just more people just coming forward after being accepted. If that were true, why aren’t the older celebrities coming out as trans?” she asks. 

For some famous faces of alt lifestyle trends, the tide may be shifting toward common sense. Riling up his fanbase, outspoken makeup mogul Jeffree Star shared on TikTok, “There’s science and there’s facts. You can pretend in your head you’re a cat. You can pretend in your head that you’re this, and you’re that. Good for you. You’re still only A or B.”

But Garfield-Jaeger notes that even doctors and therapists seeking to reverse course on the trans epidemic aren’t exactly sure how to do it yet. “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that all these Hollywood kids are trans. It’s not because they were born in the wrong bodies,” she says. “The darkness inside of them, the pain, is not being addressed, it’s being covered up. There’s something about them that’s lost.”