Vimeo takes down 'Dead Name' documentary, forces film to launch new site
Vimeo has removed “Dead Name,” a documentary featuring “three parents whose lives have been shaken and forever altered because their children have declared (or have been given) a transgender identity,” from its platform.
On Monday, CP learned that Vimeo took down “Dead Name” less than two months after the documentary was published on the platform. The former video page now reads, “Gone, baby, gone. Sorry, this page is no longer available.”
"I was very distressed to find 'Dead Name' vaporized from Vimeo and without warning," filmmaker Taylor Reece of Broken Hearted films told The Christian Post on Monday. "The film had been up for 34 days. Sales and rentals were brisk. The response has been incredible from more than 16 countries around the world. But I wasn't 100 percent shocked because I am familiar with the force that the trans activists use to silence anyone who checks or questions their dogma."
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She added: "No doubt this is disheartening and caused a temporary disruption, but we circumvented this setback ... Ironically, every time the trans activists cancel someone, whether it is a journalist, a filmmaker, or a comedian, inadvertently they raise the profile of the piece of work at hand and ultimately give it more sunlight and play than it might have had in the first place."
The film is now available to watch at deadnamedocumentary.com where viewers can purchase the film for $14.99 or rent it for $9.99.
Vimeo subscribers who purchased the film have not been refunded by the company, nor have they received an email about its decision to take down the film from its site.
Released on Dec. 20, “Dead Name” is an hour-length documentary that weaves back and forth between the stories of three parents whose children struggled with gender confusion due to outside influences.
Reads the film description: “We learn how shocking it is for parents to hear that their children in their mid to late teens have seemingly out of nowhere decided to switch from female to male or from male to female. In another story, we follow one parent's nightmarish descent into the transgender world as her ex assigns a female gender to their very young son. In all these stories, we find parents struggling with disbelief, loneliness, helplessness, isolation and despair. Ultimately, each one's ultimate fear is the medicalized transition of their child — though in one story, the path to medicalization may have proven to be fatal.”
It adds: ‘Dead Name’ lets us in on the inner thoughts, the struggles, and the declarations to fight for children who feel lost to them. We have made 'Dead Name' to open the conversation, humanize the subject from the perspective of parents, and give them a voice.”
CP commentator Brandon Showalter, who is featured in the film, tweeted that even those who paid for the film no longer have access to it.
“What gives? Trans activists censor, that is what they do,” he tweeted.
“Just as this film was starting to gain some traction and moving people deeply because of its truly unique angle, POOF! Gone.”
CP reached out to Vimeo for comment and will update this piece once a response is received.
On its website, Vimeo said it does not allow “videos that are hateful, harass others, or include defamatory or discriminatory speech." It also claims to “forbid content that displays a demeaning attitude toward specific groups," including “videos that promote Sexual Orientation Change Efforts (SOCE).”
In a previous review of the film, Showalter wrote that “Dead Name” spotlights issues that have largely gone unexamined.
“As public scrutiny continues to grow about the long-term repercussions of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and the hastiness with which psychologically troubled young people are being prescribed such drugs, the potential medical harms are finally being debated more widely. But much less attention has been given to the splintering of families that gender medicalization has wrought, other than firsthand accounts from parents in spaces like the PITT substack and other online forums,” he wrote.
“Dead Name” punctures the prevailing narrative around this highly fraught topic and is a poignant call to consider the perspectives of families that know what it feels like to be on the inside of this struggle.”
This is not the first time a major platform has removed content that critiques the transgender movement.
In February 2021, Amazon removed scholar Ryan Anderson’s book, When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment, from its website. The book explores the meaning of human embodiment and public policy considerations related to transgender issues.
Amazon also removed the Kindle or Audible versions of the book from its website.
At the time, Anderson told CP that critics of his book had clearly not read it, as it earned praise from prominent medical experts and legal scholars.
"People who have actually read my book discovered that it was a thoughtful and accessible presentation of the state of the scientific, medical, philosophical and legal debates,” Anderson said. “Yes, it advances an argument from a certain viewpoint. No, it didn’t get any facts wrong, and it didn’t engage in any name-calling.”
