Atoll Blog article (co-writen with Chatbot ChatGPT-5 / o3, uploaded 26th March 2026) explores the differing cultural stances and norms to a child’s evolving sense of their own gender and hive identity, and considered in the light of recent UK Supreme Court single-sex ruling for Girlguiding and counterpointed with a child’s viewpoint, drawn from the exemplar of recent European films L’immensità and 20,000 Species of Bees

Hive identity and immensity seen through an innocent’s eyes

There are moments when a legal clarification does more than settle a point of law. It delineates, more quietly, the limits of what a culture is prepared to hold in suspension, and the degrees of innocent ambiguity within so-called “cultural norms” on issues like child sexual identity, it is prepared to accept.

The recent UK Supreme Court decision on the definition of sex, followed in December 2025 by Girlguiding’s decision to exclude trans girls and young women from membership, has the feel of such a seismic moment. Not decisive, exactly. But narrowing. A drawing-in of the perimeter.

The language around both has been necessarily formal—clarity, safeguarding, proportionality. Words that close rather than open. Useful, but partial. What recedes, in their wake, is something less easily codified: the space in which uncertainty—particularly a child’s uncertainty—can exist without being required to declare itself absolutely.

It is in that diminishing space that two recent European films begin to feel less like cultural artefacts and more like counterpoints:  L’immensità and 20,000 Species of Bees. Both concern children. Both concern gender. But neither concerns resolution:

L’immensità (2022) is set within the porous boundaries of a family under strain, it allows identity of the young girl Adriana/Andrea to emerge alongside fantasy, performance, and retreat. Its autobiographical inflection is evident, but never declarative. Memory, rather than argument, structures what we see;

In 20,000 Species of Bees (2023), the identity of the young boy Aitor/Cocó/Lucia is not announced but approached—hesitantly, iteratively, through gesture and misrecognition. The adults orbit, uncertain of themselves. Language lags behind experience. The film resists the gravitational pull of a needed moral conclusion.

Neither film is adapted from an existing text. That absence matters. These are not interpretations of an established narrative but acts of observation—constructed without the prior authority, or constraint, of publication. They arrive unanchored, and remain so.

What they share is not a position, but a tolerance and delight: for ambiguity, for contradiction, for the possibility that a child’s sense of self may be both insistent and provisional. Which raises, inevitably, a question that sits awkwardly in the present climate: could either film be made, as they are, within a more mainstream British or American context?

It is not that the subject is absent there. Quite the opposite. Gender identity—particularly in relation to children—has become one of the most visible and contested areas of our contemporary cultural life. But visibility has brought with it a kind of compression. Narratives tend towards declaration. Positions are quickly inferred, then defended – particularly if vilified.

The figure of J. K. Rowling sits, inevitably, within such landscape, (particularly now, Harry Potter is to have a major TV series reboot on HBO Max later in 2026). Her own interventions have been unapologetic, sustained, widely amplified, and deeply divisive. What they have also done—regardless of where one stands—is to harden the terms of engagement. To make it increasingly difficult for any representation of gender variance, particularly in childhood, to exist outside a field of alignment or opposition. That her books were directed to, and were so well received by children, is the ultimate irony perhaps.

But in such a context, ambiguity begins to look less like nuance and more like evasion. A refusal to resolve can be read as a failure to commit.

The Girlguiding decision can be understood, in part, within that same narrowing. An established and much-revered organisation seeking legal coherence; a framework within which boundaries must be drawn. Yet when those boundaries intersect with childhood, they carry a different weight. Not because they are necessarily misplaced, but because they operate on lives still in formation: Protective, perhaps. Constraining, also. The two are not easily disentangled.

What is notable is how little of the surrounding discourse is able to remain with that tension. Coverage tends to move quickly—towards implication, consequence, precedent. Necessary movements, all. But they leave little room for something slower, less resolved.

This is where the contrast with European cinema becomes instructive, though not in any simplistic sense of difference. It is not that one tradition is more enlightened than another. Rather, that certain films—these films—retain a capacity to dwell. To observe without immediately adjudicating. Children, in both, are not in final positions. They are embroiled in an evolving process.

That distinction feels increasingly difficult to sustain within Anglo-American contexts, where identity is more readily treated as something to be clarified, stabilised, and situated within established norms – and where non-standard deviations are often simultaneously cited as a mental health and wellbeing issue. Even acts of empathy can take on a declarative quality. Experience becomes illustrative. Narrative becomes argument.

Filmmaking does not stand outside this. It is shaped by the same conditions—funding, distribution, reception. A work that declines to resolve its central question risks being read as incomplete, or worse, as evasive. Ambiguity acquires a cost.

And yet it is precisely that deliberate uncertainty —particularly in relation to childhood—that these films insist upon. Not as an evasion, but as a form of attention. There is, perhaps, a quiet dissonance here. At the point where public debate is most intense, the forms that might allow for a more patient understanding of lived experience seem least able to circulate, at least in certain cultural spaces.

This is not a claim for cinema as remedy. Nor for European filmmaking as exemplar. But it does suggest that something has shifted in what can be held, and for how long, before it must be resolved into position.

The law cannot accommodate that suspension. Nor, ultimately, can institutions. But culture has, historically, been able to. Illustratively-speaking, the navigation through time and culture of Robert Baden-Powell’s beloved ‘Scout Method’ has arguably now reached breaking point – one where the single sex philosophy of Girlguiding contrasts the opposite, innate inclusivity of the Scouts. Gender politics of inequality and the need for safe space to counter the continuing imbalance of the ‘manisphere’ has a part to play in explaining this fracture, but the comparison between their positions seems a stark and sad one looking forward.

The irony is when viewing explorations of gender identity through a young child’s eyes, whilst their view seems often uncertain and troubled, there is an inherent innocence there that is becoming lost. Not through their part, but caused by a wider judgment of society (and us as adults) in unfairly impeding them.

Postscripts

While both Girlguiding and The Scouts share a foundation in the “Scout Method” created by Robert Baden-Powell—focusing on character development, citizenship, and outdoor skills—their modern ethos differs significantly regarding gender:

• Girlguiding (Single-Sex Ethos): Operates on the belief that girls need a “safe space” just for them. The ethos is built on empowering girls to build confidence and “find their voice” without the social pressures or gender stereotypes often present in mixed-gender environments. It focuses specifically on the challenges and needs of girls today.

• The Scouts (Inclusive/Mixed Ethos): Since 2007, The Scouts in the UK has been fully mixed-gender. Its ethos is centered on being “open to all,” aiming to reflect a diverse society where boys and girls learn to collaborate as equals. It promotes shared values of integrity, respect, care, and belief across all genders.

Notes on the Films Cited

L’immensità (2022 Italy, dir. Emanuele Crialese)

Original work with autobiographical elements. Set in 1970s Rome, following Adriana/Andrea within a fracturing family environment. Starring Penélope Cruz. Premiered at Venice. Praised for emotional ambition and performance; responses divided on its tonal shifts between realism and fantasy.

20,000 Species of Bees  (2023 Spain, dir. Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren)

Original screenplay. A child, Aitor/Cocó/Lucia navigates gender identity within an extended family over a summer in the Basque Country. Premiered at Berlin, where Sofía Otero received the Silver Bear for Best Leading Performance. Noted for its restraint and attentiveness; occasionally criticised for its deliberate, unresolved structure.

Notable Films in Similar Genres

Tomboy (France, dir. Céline Sciamma)

Perhaps the closest tonal companion to 20,000 Species of Bees. A child passes as a boy over one summer. Quiet, observational, and notably unresolved.

Ma vie en rose (Belgium/France, dir. Alain Berliner)

Earlier, more overtly framed, but still centred on a young child’s insistence on identity. Notable for the social response surrounding the child.

XXY (Argentina, dir. Lucía Puenzo)

Slightly older protagonist (early teen), intersex rather than trans, but similarly concerned with bodily autonomy, parental pressure, and indeterminacy.

Girl (Belgium, dir. Lukas Dhont)

Moves into adolescence and is more physically explicit. Critically acclaimed but also contested—useful as an example of where ambiguity gives way to more directed narrative.

A Kid Like Jake (USA, dir. Silas Howard)

One of the few recent US films centred on a gender-nonconforming child. Notably framed through the parents’ anxieties rather than the child’s interiority.

Transparent (USA)

Primarily adult-focused, but its flashbacks to childhood identity are telling—often more tentative and exploratory than the present-day narrative.

Boys Don’t Cry (USA, dir. Kimberly Peirce)

Important but firmly adult, and tragic. Its cultural weight arguably shaped the more declarative tone of later Anglo-American storytelling.

Euphoria (USA)

Includes adolescent trans experience (Jules), though stylised and less observational. Again, identity is narrativised quite explicitly.

George (USA)

A middle-grade novel about a trans girl. Clear, affirming, and widely used in schools—important, though more resolved in tone than the films you reference.

The Art of Being Normal (UK)

Teen-focused, dual narrative. Again, tends toward resolution and identity confirmation.

Felix Ever After (USA)

Older YA, but notable for exploring fluidity and uncertainty within identity itself.

Orlando (UK)

Not about childhood, but foundational in its fluidity of identity. Its tone—playful yet unresolved—feels closer to European cinematic approaches.

The Left Hand of Darkness (USA)

Again not about children, but crucial in decoupling gender from fixed categories. Often cited, rarely matched in subtlety.

Middlesex (USA)

Intersex narrative beginning in childhood. More explanatory, but still attentive to complexity over time.

Petite fille (France)

A documentary about a trans girl. More explicit than Tomboy, but still careful and observational.

Close (Belgium, dir. Lukas Dhont)

Not about gender identity directly, but about boyhood, intimacy, and the policing of identity—highly relevant in tone.

The Falling (UK, dir. Carol Morley)

Adolescent girls, hysteria, embodiment—less about gender identity, more about how young identity destabilises.

Playground (Belgium)

Childhood subjectivity rendered almost entirely from the child’s perspective—formally useful as a comparison.