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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
Me, too. And my kids get the National Geographic Kids magazine, and I was wondering if we needed to get a family subscription to the “Grown Up” version, in spite of their frequent climate alarmism.
But this settles it. Unless I see an apology from National Geographic for going full-SJW, I will no longer have anything to do with them.
(You never go full-SJW.)
Thankfully, you can still find stacks of old National Geographic magazines in thrift stores and antique shops. Those will still have some value.
I fully agree with this. They are quacks preying on the mentally ill for profit.
30 years ago, I would have agreed. But in the current culture, letting them pretend is dangerous because they will receive mixed messages from adults and classmates.
And homosexuality is as disordered today as it was decades ago. There are plenty of behaviors and inclinations normally associated with one’s sex that needn’t be so. But romance and marriage aren’t among them.
I’m not shocked all this nonsense has become popular. I am shocked it has happened so quickly. If Americans can’t share even the most basic assumptions about human nature and moral responsibilities, this country will tear itself apart.
The National Geographic was known in pre-Playboy days as a good place to find socially/parentally tolerated pictures of bare breasted and nekkid wimmen. Or,
As is well known, people only used read Playboy for the articles and the National Geographic’s photos of savages in a state of undress that would have really been taboo to show if the subjects were
whitecivilized women couldn’t possibly have appealed to any decent person’s prurient interests.In this day and age, why are we surprised that it seems to have devolved to People Magazine with intellectual pretensions in order to serve its progressive agenda?
At some point it is wrong. It can go too far. If you don’t push them, the vast majority will express their gender within the typical range of their sex. The question is what to do about marginal cases and the “Not in my house” mentality has a high risk of doing more harm than good.
FIFY
Polygamy would seem to be all about waiting your turn.
It IS unbelievable. Being Progressive means believing the unbelievable, and being outraged at the deniers who don’t believe.
Well, most of them anyway. But now that “one man and one woman” is gone, polygamy is coming.
A former business associate told me that he used to go to Salt Lake City and had had occasion to visit a very upscale neighborhood with some large properties including some with compounds with multiple dwellings. He told me in no uncertain terms that polygamy was still going on and that some Mormons were just waiting for the gender activists and polyamorists to do away with laws banning plural marriage; and that was before the argument “how can we discriminate against Muslims for practicing polygamy, an intrinsic part of their religion?” was a glint in most progressives’ eyes.
That was actually Douglas. I agree that polygamy will probably take its turn as a religious freedom argument on behalf of Muslims, and feminists will be afraid to point out how repressive Islamic societies are for women, because, as one told me, it’s blaming the victim, which isn’t right, even if it’s correct.
I couldn’t hope to be a progressive – trying to keep straight the rules would drive me insane.
No, I remember that story. From what I recall, though, wasn’t she roundly condemned and mocked. Her identity preference was not respected by the popular culture, unlike transgender people’s.
If a child seems interested in toys/clothes/lifestyles of the other gender, I think its great to allow them to explore these things without making a big deal about it. But it seems wrong to TELL these kids, “oh, you’re transgender” and cement something in their minds that may, in the end, not be true at all. So much potential for a lifetime of harm to be caused.
And to provide hormone therapy to kids is barbaric and monstrous!
And to tie those two magazines together, I remember reading an article years ago that stated they were the two magazines least likely to be thrown away. This was based on people digging through landfills and finding National Geographics and Playboys in much smaller numbers than other magazines.
Looking at that NatGeo cover, the thought that comes to my mind is: “So now the definition of ‘girl’ is ‘person who wears pink’?”
Seems pretty sexist to me. Woe be to the boy who wears a pink golf shirt to school.
I assume you mean only androgens and estrogens, and only in cases where kids are already producing these within the normal range for their sex.
That’s because pictures remain enjoyable while information and editorials become outdated or boring.
In my lifetime, National Geographic’s primary appeal was always photography. These days, a simple internet search on an ever-handy smartphone can pull up more quality photos of any location or subject along with comparable information.
Yep. This cover is a pedophile’s delight.
First of all, no one that still has the biological organs of their birth sex is transsexual (I refuse to use the term “transgendered”). They may be on the road to becoming transsexual, but until then? You are what you are, which is male or female.
I think it is cruel, possibly even child abuse to encourage a young child to go ahead a “be” a member of the opposite sex. I firmly believe that it is the parents’ duty to raise their child to be normal. If the child needs help, the parents should seek it out.
However, having said that . . .
My wife and I know a couple who have an adopted boy that has taken on all the characteristics and behaviors of a female. They tried to fight it at first, but the child “won”. The last time we saw “her”, she was a pre-teen that had all the physical characteristics and mannerisms of a young girl. If you saw her, you would never guess the truth. What’s more, she was happy and well adjusted-as a girl.
So what am I getting at? The left wants to make national policy and promulgate enforceable rules not just for people who are truly willing to undergo the transsexual regimen (counseling, hormone therapy, surgery), but anyone who “claims” to “feel” like they are of the opposite sex (a male pervert who wants access to a girls locker room).
What has to be a process for less than a thousand people should not result in a mass disruption of the normalcy millions of citizens need to get by.
She was mocked all right. But she got a lot of support from the usual suspects. It was just a Bridge Too Far. For now.
I don’t think that people recognize that children do not see sex differences the same way as most adults or teenagers. Kids usually see the other sex as mysterious and strange, kind of like aliens. It’s not uncommon to want to pretend to be something else as a kid, whether a space alien, animal, or superhero. Why should we be surprised if they want to play at being another sex? They might get to see the other sex bathroom – usually rumored to be a mysterious place. Also, the other sex does stuff differently. Daddy shaves and Mommy puts on makeup. And obviously classically boy or girl hobbies can attract the opposite sex child’s interest.
Remember, kids pretend to be lots of things. You can play along, but you have to be the voice of reality eventually.
If your kid is normal, the hormones flow, they become an annoying teenage pain in the neck, and sufficient doses of the sex hormones ensure that they have a sufficient sexual identity.
If they are abnormal, they might not really get sexual identity thing worked out. If they have crossed wires somewhere, they might still lack any strong sexual attraction to men or women. That’s not the end of the world, but it will make things a bit awkward. I don’t think that is usually the result of parenting to be honest, outside of abusive situations (like cross-dressing as a punishment or sexual abuse)
I can totally understand people’s anger and reactions out of concern for what appears to be inadequate parenting, hence the multiple deleted comments here. What I can’t get my head around is the choice of venue, NG for this topic. I could understand perhaps Scientific American, where they could advocate while at least pretending to be objective. But to advocate, and … I suppose they were going to include where on the earth these kinds of things were being promoted or tolerated…maybe? Remember folks, everything they want to do politically and otherwise is justified with some scientific basis — even though a sober person would justifiably recognize most funny business as a con job. And it seems the job of discriminating healthy from non-healthy is devolving back onto the necessarily self-educated masses, as we can no longer depend on mental care professionals who have co-opted or intimidated into acceptance, while they pursue their expansion of what constitutes reality in the name of science. It’s enough to make someone like me who grew up respecting the achievements of science angry. Dag nab it!
Only for the women…
Actually, for the left, this goes for all traditional western notions. Western civilization is their enemy.
She got a book deal out of it, I think.
Did she really? Dear heavens…
And teenagers and adults don’t?
This is sick. Very few things outrage me more than encouraging this idiocy on kids. I used to love National Geographic, but a few years ago I could tell that the Liberal bias was increasing and so I cancelled my subscription. I have been tempted to resubscribe. Forget it now. What a rag.
http://thefederalist.com/2015/02/02/what-parents-should-know-about-giving-hormones-to-trans-kids/
A comment from the last link in #118:
It is disturbing how eager parents are to latch on to this idea of having a “trans kid.” It’s very telling that there are tons of trans kids, trans infants even! But where are all of the parents proudly toting around their gay kids? Because there are plenty of children whose parents suspect they may grow up to be gay because they are non-conforming. Often this suspicion is never voiced out loud because it is something they pray will never happen. But still, it’s not uncommon for parents to tell their gay kids that they “knew” for a long time.
Obviously I don’t see anything good in parents preemptively labeling their child’s sexuality; can you imagine someone walking around introducing their “gay” 2 year old son? But somehow there are tons of parents who see their two year old boy pick up a “girl” toy and are comfortable pumping their kid full of drugs for the rest of “her” life because surely he’s got a female brain!
(cont’d):
I mean, if these two things were unconnected, parents rejecting their gay children and parents transing their children then I suppose I would not feel so sick right now. But I know they are connected! We all know that many of those kids will grow up to be lesbian/gay/bisexual and thirty years ago, it would have been a lot harder for their parents to surgically/chemically “straighten” them if they wanted to. Now any parent who is freaked out by even the *prospect* of having a gay kid will be congratulated for their “open-mindedness” by medical professionals. It’s [expletive] terrifying. I mean, this quote:
/It wasn’t an easy decision. “I was brought up in a religious family,” says Nicole’s father, Jim, a Houston native. “We were taught, ‘Live right, or you’re going to burn.’” That dogma, he said, crumbled under the task of raising Nicole. Nicolas wasn’t just a boy who liked to wear pink. By the time he was in preschool, he was lining up with girls, napping on his princess blanket, and carrying his lunch to school in a box stamped with Disney’s latest heroine./
“It wasn’t an easy decision”? So the kid had female friends and a Merida lunch box. That any parent would assess this situation as a crisis is stunning