Parents outraged by trans film for kids at Museum of Natural History: ‘Should be off-limits’

The Museum of Natural History shocked even liberal Upper West Side parents last week by showcasing an animated film featuring a drag-performing fox and a trans kid with an identity crisis – alongside an exhibit “about sea animals.” 

The eight-minute stop-motion animation short titled “Dragfox” – featuring a “charismatic” fox in drag voiced by Sir Ian McKellen — played last weekend on a loop inside the august Milstein Hall in the shadow of the famed 94-foot long blue whale.

In one scene 11-year-old Sam twirls around with his sister’s pink dress, eventually wearing it. The flamboyant fox, “Ginger Snap,” snatches it and breaks into a drag musical number as the duo embark on a “magical journey” in the attic. 

“What on Earth is this doing playing in the Natural History Museum? No connection whatsoever to space, the ocean, anything,” blasted one stunned museum-member mom in an online parents group.

“There’s a time and place for drag queens but the AMNH isn’t it,” added the mom about the museum, which received at least $17 million in government funding in 2024, according to its financial disclosures.

The mom was galled that the subject matter “was intentionally placed in front of us, in cartoon format, with no posted forewarning, in an exhibit about sea animals.” 

The “family friendly” series, part of the annual Margaret Mead Film Festival, was innocuously called “Our Friends, The Animals” and described a collection of five “imaginative” shorts that explore “the deep and often mysterious connections between humans and animals” told through “myth, magic and quiet moments of discovery.”

De-transitioner Oli London rejected the film’s sentiment that transitioning magically brings happiness.

“Children should not be exposed to gender ideology in any format,” said London, who’s 35 and detransitioned two years after beginning the grueling process. 

He railed against the animated film aimed at “targeting” youngsters by including a character with a “cute, friendly-looking fox . . . encouraging them to become confused with their gender identity and become trans. Children should be off-limits from radical gender ideology.”

Parents accused the museum of straying from its mission to “discover, interpret, and disseminate —through scientific research and education — knowledge about human cultures, the natural world, and the universe.”

Instead of understanding science, they’re “ignoring” it by “presenting something that’s ideological as scientific fact,” said Natalya Murakhaver, an UWS mom-of-two and documentary filmmaker, who blasted the screening as “predatory behavior for young, impressionable children.

“I think we have activists running the museum who are trying to portray their idea of reality as fact, when it’s actually ideological,” she added. 

But “Dragfox” director, Lisa Ott, exulted during a 2024 BAFTA award acceptance speech that the short “celebrates drag queens and trans joy.” The singular goal of the film was to “have one little queer kid or trans child out there feel a little bit less alone.”

The festival is a way to “step beyond your comfort zone to listen, feel, and see yourself reflected in the stories presented on screen,” insisted Jacqueline Handy, the AMNH Director of Public Programs.

It’s more insidious than that, said downtown mom of two, Jacqueline Toboroff. Showing a loaded film aimed at kids is “predatory indoctrination” meant to sow chaos, she said.

“It’s an attempt to dislodge American traditions,” said the author of “Supermoms Activated,” claiming that the focus on kid-rich environments – “libraries, schools and museums” – is an “intentional effort to groom these kids. 

“It’s meant to sexually exploit impressionable minds and to mainstream sexual deviance.”

New York is among the states with the most gender-affirming care, with 1,154 minors in the state who were sex change patients between 2019 and 2023. 

There’s social contagion being artificially created and “harming a new generation of kids that can’t escape this ideology,” according to Maud Maron, a parents-rights activist in NYC running on the Rrepublican ticket for Manhattan district attorney against Alvin Bragg. 

She added, “You just don’t have a right to push it down New Yorkers’ throats in taxpayer-funded institutions.” 

The museum said the festival is funded by the New York State Council on the Arts with support of the “Office of the Governor,” but Gov. Kathy Hochul’s spokesperson insisted the state stopped directly funding the film festival in 2021. “The state did not allocate funding for this film festival and was not involved in the curation or selection process,” the spokesperson insisted.

The arts council budgeted $25,000 in capital grants for the museum this year and that money may have been funneled towards this year’s festival, said the rep. AMNH did not respond to repeated requests for comment.