Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
National Geographic Dives down the Rabbit Hole
I often visit kottke.org, a blog ran by Jason Kottke. He’s a typical brain dead liberal, but I usually choose to just ignore the annoying progressive garbage posts and look at the posts where he’s linking to genuinely interesting (and non-political) videos and stories. Anyhow, visited today and saw this image.
So National Geo’s next issue will be all about “evolving” notions of gender and include pics of 80 different 9-year old transgender kids, such as the one featured on the cover. Jason Kottke is, unsurprisingly, happy and excited. PJ Media is less thrilled (and I’ll direct you to them if you’d like more details about the issue beyond what I give).
How about that caption on the cover: “The best thing about being a girl is, now I don’t have to pretend to be a boy.” I no longer have to pretend to have the X and Y chromosomes and male genetic coding that I do in reality have, but…you know what I mean! They not only want to change what the words “boy” and “girl” mean, they want to change the meaning of “pretend” as well. It never ceases to amaze me how the Left, who claims to be the ones who are all about science, can engage in this kind of sophistry and expect that everyone will get on board.
I’m not fond of the idea of introducing new gender pronouns like “ze,” but I think it’d be less annoying than these troubled individuals appropriating (to borrow a favored word of the Left) the pronouns and words that until recently had been reserved for the opposite sex. You may be a transgender individual and mentally not be experiencing what the typical member of your sex experiences, but you sure as heck ain’t experiencing what the typical member of the opposite sex experiences either (a boy can claim to be a girl all he wants, but he’ll never know what it’s like to have a menstrual cycle).
Of course what really makes this whole thing particularly insidious is that this magazine is promoting the idea that prepubescent children should be encouraged and indulged by parents in any transgender tendencies they may exhibit. Avery, the troubled boy pictured on the cover, has been living as an “openly transgender girl since age 5.” I can’t respect people as responsible parents or adults when they encourage little children to make such radical and harmful lifestyle choices. Some children do experience more intense gender confusion than others, but the idea that a child should be encouraged, while their brains and bodies are still far from completing their full development, to claim an identity opposite to their actual sex (and even take steps to alter the natural development of their body), is evil.
While I believe the majority of people in this country still hold to common sense understandings of sex and gender, our popular culture’s take on all this has only gotten more and more relativistic and depraved as the years go by. The plunge down the slippery slope continues to accelerate.
I hope and pray that someday the pendulum will swing back in the direction of truth and sanity.
Published in General
That poor child. How twisted and perverted do you have to be to do this your own son? Terrible.
The saddest part of this is how it flies in the face of what liberals hold true: men and women are equals. Boys can do what girls do! Girls shouldn’t feel less girly for playing with trucks and boys shouldn’t feel like they’re girls because they like to dress up and play pretend. They are instead confirming that no, in order to really be validated you have to *be* the other. You cannot simply be a manly woman. You must be a covert man!
It is sad and it completely defies our ideas of equality, gender, and the ability of men and women to maintain their biological sex while demonstrating flexibility about the behaviors of said people.
Which I could say “I wonder what strange country that is in”.
I would love to read the mail they get.
The cognitive dissonance on this issue has struck me before too. The overarching philosophy seems to be that all ideas that subvert traditional western notions of gender are good, even if the ideas contradict each other. Truth and consistency are no longer goals worthy of pursuit. The more muddled thinking can be on gender, the better!
Who wants to be a white male in school today? Why be the hated enemy when you can be a unique special victim? Plus if you get beat up, it is a hate crime now.
Now if we can just convince the left to view race-identity as fluidly as they view gender, us white males can get all our victim bases covered.
I subscribe to the notion that my race-identity is not identified by how I present to the world. Just because I pass as white, doesn’t mean that’s how I self identify! How dare you put your gender-binary racist ideals on me!
I shared this meme some months ago but I can’t resist posting it again:
This is all beyond insanity.
First of all, the “transexuals” (I refuse to use that other trans-word) are a fraction of a percent of a minority. Why does that tiny minority (and I’m canceling our family’s subscription to Nat Geo) have to be in our [CoC] face ALL THE DAMN TIME?
Second, they must want to KILL these kids. The suicide rate is beyond ridiculous for “trans” “people”. Because they have a MENTAL DISORDER.
That’s not something brainwashing the rest of us will fix. I don’t care if boys think they’re girls or Superman. That’s a disorder. Telling the rest of us to treat them as such doesn’t fix the problem. And so they’ll end up dead.
Sorry but that’s the truth.
I suspect there will be many Nat Geo subscribers doing likewise.
I shudder to think what the next leftist cause célèbre will be.
I used to LOVE NatGeo. My grandfather subscribed, and he kept a box of old issues for me to read whenever I was over. This was classic NatGeo; issues about traveling to exotic places. I ate ’em up.
Fast forward to ten years ago. I cancel my own subscription, which I’ve bought mainly for my oldest boy, so he could experience the same kind of wonder I did. Except I’ve noticed that, while the covers look the same, the layout is similar, the writing is totally different. Instead of exploring our world… Egyptian pyramids, coral reefs in Australia, cattle ranches in Brazil…. NatGeo has become All Global-Warming, All the Time. Almost every single frickin’ article is about how stupid conservatives are murdering Gaia. So, I canceled.
And now…. this. Whoever said this at National Review was right: all organizations not explicitly right wing become left wing over time. NatGeo went from Egyptian Pyramids, to global warming, to pre-teen trannies. Enough. A pox on the culture.
Incest, or pedophilia. You’re already seeing apologetics for both in the Slates/Salons. Logically, it should be polygamy’s turn, but the feminists are against it. So it has to wait its turn.
Objectively disordered.
comment deleted
I don’t mind if my son (1 year old right now) plays with girly toys, but he ain’t wearing a dress in my house. Thinking about all this has made me ponder, though, if there are boys out there who want to wear a skirt- why not just bring back the kilt? Along with the appropriate accessories, of course- broad sword, bagpipes, etc.
I do feel bad for your son-in-law & grandson. I don’t know if my marriage would last if my wife tried pulling that. Fortunately, my wife is a conservative Mormon like me, so I won’t ever have to find out.
Comment deleted
Son #2 tried that last year by giving the boy a kilt for Christmas (Son #2 rocks a kilt and never misses an opportunity to wear one )
Didn’t take
Got it. My oldest sister has some stepsons, and I pray for them and worry about the conflicting messages they get as they go back and forth between homes as well (no transgender nonsense, but religious differences and also some off-the-wall stuff like the biological mother not having them bathe regularly when they’re with her).
Yep. :-(
Dagnammit. Maybe if he also gave him a poster of this:
In a more enlightened world his parents–along with the bosses at NG–would be burned at the stake.
From the top of the cover: “The science of gender.”
Unless the magazine is some stunning breakthroughs, I have heard nothing “scientific” from the advocates of gender-bending. I hear lots about feelings, and I assume there may be some level of hormonal or other chemical make-up in there, but has biology changed? Are there people who do not have that one XX or XY chromosome?
Why are they using 9 year old children to illustrate their discussion? Why not photograph adults?
Why isn’t publishing pictures of 9 year old children for their sexuality per se child abuse?
I have to admit that I can’t see the connection to geography. I suppose they can claim this is only happening in the west.
This is inflicting child abuse on a whole generation and NG is colluding in it. I think the only hope left is that someday the kids rebel.
putting ones son in girls clothes and publishing photos of it is really sick and I’m sure must violate the Geneva convention somehow.
Is there no geography left?
Didn’t you just describe Rachel Dolezal?
A must read on this subject from the American College of Pediatricians:
I cancelled my subscription to National Geographic when they jumped the global warming shark.
My friend’s daughter used to refuse to wear dresses, cut her hair short, and basically tried to look and act like a boy. Now she is a teenager and has blossomed into an attractive young lady, complete with all of attitude you would expect from a teenage girl. In other words, looking and acting like a boy is not something she shows any interest in now.
Children are children and will grow up . . . if you let them.