Barbies and pirates
I have complained to the BBC for the first time in my life, about an episode of Radio 4’s iPM in which Jennifer Tracey interviewed a ten-year-old who we were told “identifies as gender non-binary”. The mother said she’d spotted “signs” her daughter wasn’t truly a girl: aged three she wanted a pirates (not princesses) birthday party, disdained dolls, liked Peter Pan, Iron Man and Wolverine.
Instead of buying books on lady pirates, declaring girls can like superheroes — indeed girls can like, do or wear anything! — this mother “did a bit of research on the internet”. Whereby she concluded her daughter was a trans-boy and asked what name she’d like to use. “Leo” said this tiny child, so they called her that, used male pronouns, put her in “male” clothes. But later the child said she wanted to keep her Barbies, so the mother read a few more websites and decided her daughter “didn’t have a male brain” but was between genders.
In the entire 30 minute program, Turner says, Tracey didn’t challenge anything the mother said.
Not whether asking every day “are you a boy or a girl?” was good for her daughter’s mental health. Not whether it was appropriate to ask your ten-year-old “if you were a man would you be gay or straight”? Not whether posing her periods as “problematic” or talking about puberty-blocking hormones was driving a still-developing child towards a lifetime of sterility-creating drugs and surgery.
What is wrong with everyone? Have they all simply forgotten the whole point of feminism, which is that your sex should not dictate what you do with your life or what you wear or whether or not you can travel by yourself?
The BBC is allowing to enter the mainstream, unquestioned, a pernicious ideology that demands parents patrol their children for gender crimes — boys who like dolls, girls who climb trees — and then seek a label and treatment.
Boys can like dolls. Girls can like climbing trees. Let them grow; they don’t need pollarding.
In short, yes.
Why have we forgotten so much? It is possible to be inclusive, accept that a person has body dysphoria, address them how they wish to be addressed, and not be obnoxious assholes without pitching all feminism overboard, and declaring all people who don’t fit the mold to be the opposite gender (or some other term, like gender fluid, which is really a nonsense term since it fits nearly everyone when defined this way).
The inclusive-femininity has become toxic to women, by declaring that gender is innate, inborn, and hardwired.
“The mother said she’d spotted “signs” her daughter wasn’t truly a girl: aged three she wanted a pirates (not princesses) birthday party, disdained dolls, liked Peter Pan, Iron Man and Wolverine.”
For women who grew up before the advent of “princess play,” were we all non-binary? I played with dolls, sure, but also cars and action figures and anything else I could get my hands on that looked fun. I don’t recall anyone ever telling me I couldn’t or even analyzing it too deeply. I think my childhood was pretty common.
Ophelia, I am so grateful for your blog and for introducing me to the very excellent works of Meghan Murphy, Sarah Ditum, Becca Reilly-Cooper and other proper, *actual* feminists, because I’m afraid without someone else countering all of this freaking madness I would feel even more alone with my views and also would have probably died of a rage stroke by now. HOW ARE ALL OF THOSE SUPPOSEDLY FEMINIST LIBERALS NOT GETTING HOW REGRESSIVE AND SEXIST THIS IS?? What the hell is going on in their brains?
You and me both, Imber.
I’m glad she complained, I wish i had, but about two thirds in i switched it off in disgust.
Confession: I took a few sips of the Kool-Aid. Since so many friends were talking about how everyone HAD to have a gender identity, I picked genderfluid (I agree with iknklst) as the best fit. I’m grateful for Ophelia and other feminists for pushing back against trans ideology because I really just feel like *me*, and one of the things that is me is that I like for words to have well-defined meanings.
I’m having dinner with friends this weekend who have kids. I can’t wait to see the look on their faces when I inform them that their 11 yo girl is actually trans because she likes archery, plays with tools, roughhousing and detests both pink and long hair. I’ve never seen her with a doll, although she is besotted with horses. Then again she doesn’t find anything gross about horse poo and wonders why we wrinkle our noses when she comes back from a session volunteering mucking out the stables.
Of course puberty hasn’t really bitten yet, so in a couple of years I might be describing a completely different girl. Who knows. Who cares. She’s healthy, happy, intelligent, likes her hobbies and friends. In short pretty much everything a parent or pseudo uncle could want at this stage in life. Why load her up with worries about what and who she is? Why project our concerns and curiosities onto her? Why do it to anyone just because they haven’t conformed to some arbitrary ‘normal’?
Anne Bonny would like to have a word, as would Grace O’Malley and Jeanne de Clisson. In fact, the most successful pirate ever was a Chinese woman called Ching Shih.
Ah, but YoSaffBridge, how do you know those weren’t really trans-men that were just denying that they were trans?
What’s especially galling is that the whole lunatic campaign of trans essentialism seems to be driven by a tiny handful of ‘activists.’
Who may change their minds next week. Are we really experiencing some media megaphone fueled by Jenner-mania? Are tabloid hacks churning crackpot press-releases into ‘content’ enough to set off this dancing madness?