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 quote in #120 is amazing. Uh…Dude, the reason your kid slept on a princess blanket and had a girl on his lunchbox is because you and your wife gave them to him. And how do we know his lining up with the girls didn’t make him the most hetero boy in the class?
Around the age of 4, my son said he wished he was a girl. Why, I asked. Because boys are bad and girls are good.
Running through my mind, where on earth did he get that idea??? He’s in a Christian preschool, for crying out loud!
I calmly told him that that isn’t true, that God made us male and female and said “It is good” and anything God says is good cannot be bad.
To deal with his interest in princesses and princess dresses (which was kinda funny, really), I didn’t make the issue about my son. I made it about it being time for our family dynamics to change. Young boys need to spend more time with their fathers after a certain age. That’s who teaches them to be men. While my husband’s idea of “manly activities” is bizarrely feminine (shopping and smoothies), my son is a perfectly content and happy boy of 7 who is happy to be just like dad.
Essentially, it wasn’t a subject I talked about with my son. It was a conversation between parents.
The kids are in their 30’s now, but this is something that would never even have been thought of when they were growing up. Well, maybe in CA.
Thanks.
A few hours a day reading the NYT/WaPo and listening to NPR, then a bit more time with the fake news shows inspired by Jon Stewart et.al. Comedy is a great way to make sure the propaganda is received; Norman Lear built an empire on it.
Nothing to it. You internalize the rules, and then with ongoing OS updates coming from continued listening/watching, before long you’re self-correcting just like Winston:
In my 30s, went to public schools, never met a kid who said they thought they were the opposite sex.
I remember reading a while back about a survey a doctor did. He asked well adjusted gay adults if as children they had wished to be the opposite sex. Quite a few said yes.
He then asked how many wished they were the opposite sex now. None said yes. The point he was trying to prove was that there should be no steps taken in “changing” one’s gender before adulthood
Several gay men of my acquaintance have also told me they had wished to be girls when they were young but were horrified at the prospect of being female now.
(To be sure, noting there’s a difference between “wishing to be a girl” and “thinking you’re a girl”.)
Ironically, the left’s newest unfair labeling tag for the right is that we are “post-truth.”
The homosexual movement at one time was based upon “being yourself.” They never get asked to face the issue that that the transgender movement is based upon “denying yourself.”
I understand the science that says sex is different than gender. Clearly the left does not.
I accept that a man should be called what he wants to be called, so I’ll call Bruce Caitlyn.
I accept that there are people who look at society’s cultural markers for sex and gender and wish to personally reject them. So if Caitlyn wants to wear a dress, wear make-up, carry a purse and do culturally feminine things, I accept Caitlyn doing that. If any of the terribly high suicide rate associated with transgender people comes from societal rejection, they won’t be able to blame me. They are welcomed around me if they choose to be.
What I won’t do is “post-truth” the science. It is an imposition for the left to expect me to ignore science and it’s potentially damaging to society, too. It’s too much to ask of me. I don’t owe it to them and I won’t ignore the science.
Caitlyn is a man because Caitlyn’ sex is chromosomally determined. God forbid Caitlyn died in a fire and was unrecognizable, the coroner’s report would find after examining Caitlyn’s bones and DNA that Caitlyn is a male; a man. Caitlyn is not a female; a woman.
So I won’t say Caitlyn is a woman, “because science.” To be accepting of the gender decision, I’ll be ok with Caitlyn being a “feminized man” or Caitlyn’s counterpart being a “masculinized woman.”
Pronouns have always been associated with sex and there is no reason to muck up the science and change that.
I owe it to Bruce to recognize the name change to Caitlyn. I don’t owe it to Caitlyn to call him a her or a woman. It would be rude of Caitlyn to ask that of me.
There’s the compromise: Sex and gender are different. The left needs to learn it.
Right, when the guys are waiting its polyandry.
My wife won’t let me listen to NPR very much. She says my swearing at the radio while driving irritates her.
One sizable note on Natgeo- this is weaponized marketing designed to elicit an outrage and fuel the ‘controversy’.
Understand how the media and their minions are using you to move this kind of thing forward and to create faux outrage that is intended to make anyone who ‘disagrees’ appear backward and small minded… now we have ‘talking points’ about ‘protecting the innocent’.
Annika Hernroth-Rothstein has a post- ‘A Boy Named Lucia‘ which has another company creating ‘outrage’ from whole cloth just to get a fight started and it worked!
This Natgeo article is more reflective of forethought and intent by the author and publisher than about the subject. The cover shot is made by a professional photographer in a classic female ingenue pose, this is all a set up!
At least become aware of the left’s tactics, it makes them giddy to know how easily they can manipulate their detractors.
As long as they can point to the mormons, polygamy will never be mainstream.
How many copies of the mag did NatGeo actually sell?
Yabbut, “they “could then point to transexuals who “transitioned” post-puberty who wish they’d “transitioned” sooner.
Clearly, they were too oppressed to speak.
Misthiocracy- “How many copies of the mag did NatGeo actually sell?”
Not important. They are on the ‘right side’ of social justice and can demonstrate they ‘stand’ for larger issues.
They also want to get a new demographic and expanded demographic which includes; millennials, social warriors and younger more urban readers so they must fight the good fight and demonstrate their willingness to embrace causes with purpose like equality and anyone else who can find a way to be marginalized.
They want to be seen as progressives with foresight, willing to fight the system.
Tommy, I agree with that except this: I owe it to Bruce to recognize the name change to Caitlyn
Unless you know him/her I don’t see why you owe him/her anything of the sort.
Could it be that there is a correlation between these young “transgender” children (boys) and the absence of their biological father in the household?
You know the status of Bruce/Caitlyn’s chromosomes how? Since you in actuality don’t know, how should we as a society discern it in order to make sure we are using the proper pronouns?
Nope. Not so much. I used to wash the car with my dad when I was a tot. He took off his shirt, I took off mine. We had some really cute pictures. Now that is considered obscene. I grew out of it, but there was a special time when we wanted to be just like dad. And that was okay.