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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
I think age of consent will be the next target.
“Bobby is 13 and his parents won’t let him date a 40 year-old man because they are homophobic. We need to support children’s rights.”
Deeply deeply sad and never thought National Geographic would pull this. The challenges to the mental stability of the youngest generations seem to be increasingly getting worse. This is right out of Mad Max – a world gone bonkers. A teenage twin who decided she wants to be a boy that we know is also lovely, but stated God made a mistake when He made her. The family has accepted her wishes, including the twin sister, but it has been a very very difficult road. This family had issues back in the first marriage – this is a second marriage and the new husband is a relative of ours. He has been through it.
I deeply resent the appropriation of my gender by persons without a “Y” chromosome!
This should be unbelievable.
Someday, I pray, the matter will combine with the anti-matter and the Progressives who gave us all this ….stuff will go “poof” and disappear.
But its so much more satisfying for an SJW to have a cause celebre in their own
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Cultural appropriation. Brilliant!
In which a magazine about geography decides to identify as a magazine that puts children in cover girl poses.
He he he he.
Good thoughts from Christina Hoff Sommers
Unsubscribed years ago because of its reflexive progressivism, and glad I did.
Thanks for posting this EJ.
I stopped reading NG when I saw that Alexander Cockburn was writing for them.
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I thought The Barbarians covered this topic adequately 50 years ago.
Reflect on the fact that this issue of National Geographic will land in virtually every public school library (and many private school libraries) in the country.
What is strange to me about this is that I wanted to be a boy when I was little. I dressed more or less like a boy (circa 1970) and insisted my loved ones call me “Kit” (as in Carson). My parents—Mom, mostly—nodded and smiled. Eventually, I grew out of it.
My best friend’s little brother loved to have his mother put his hair into a “ponytail” and to dress up in the spangled tutu that my grandmother had inadvisedly given me for Christmas; he, too, grew out of it, and is now married, a dad and a police officer.
My cousin’s daughter dressed like a boy, and kept her hair short (ish—think Dorothy Hamill, not G.I. Jane) when she was little; she’s grown out of it.
Kids do this. Who knows why? It’s not a big deal. Sometimes they turn out to be gay or lesbian, but probably mostly not. My best friend from childhood didn’t dress like a boy—she’s lesbian, I’m straight. Whatever.
I shudder to imagine what would have happened to me, my cop-buddy, and my cousin’s daughter if we were all little children today, and parents were encouraged to take our “gender identity” seriously. What a mess!
If a twenty-five year old man tells me he thinks he’s a woman, okay. That’s an issue. (What kind of issue, we aren’t sure —even if everyone is pretending that the science is settled on this, too— though I am very sure it’s a painful one). If a five year old tells you he’s a girl…nod and smile. Let him wear tutus for play, make him wear proper boy clothes for school, and the chances are really good that he’ll just grow out of it.
Two therapists have stated that it’s my son in law that has the problem; not the boy. I dare say you could find dozens to agree and it would take a long hard search to find a therapist to go on record and state that indulging the fantasy is wrong and destructive.
This doesn’t speak well for therapists.
If they said “Oh, well, he’ll get over it,” they wouldn’t have therapy jobs for long.
… not to be crass, but I wonder if they’ll run a story when that kid commits suicide as an adult.
I got my senior mother a subscription to NG for christmas before I saw this cover.
Deeply regretting that decision.
Yes. And they will blame it on all of the hateful non-accepting right-wingers he/she had to deal with in his/her life.
I wonder how many years you’d have to go back for the cover of that issue and content of the article to be grounds for prosecution for child abuse? The laws under which the prosecution would be brought haven’t changed. It’s just the willingness to do it that has vanished.
This is the front page in all its glories, you know how the press works. The rest of story is told to be sure but it is told on page 13, in one paragraph, in the bottom left hand corner of the periodical.
Gender appropriation!
At National Geographic, normal is the undiscovered country.
Wait, does telling them they’re delusional and broken fix the problem? Cause that seems at least as likely to cause suicide.
why don’t you just slap the p-turkey out of the woman and tell her to buck up or ship out. Treat her as though she were fred cole.
Only so long as they don’t use cultural pressure to create more, in the same way that they made homosexuality “cool.”
My wife has an unfortunate friend in California whose wife and mother-in-law are doing their best to convince their son that he should be a girl. They squeal with delight when he said he wanted to be a princess and they make sure he has a large collection of barbie dolls. He was five at the time we saw him last. It’s very disturbing to watch.
Of course, we bought him a gift of a Marine hat. I’m sure they took it away from him.
I think I will never go back to California again.