The Daily Wire is bringing back Saturday morning cartoons and more, in a bid to challenge Disney’s loosened grip on the family entertainment market. The streaming platform Bentkey, with new episodes dropping weekly, features “content kids will love and parents can trust,” Jeremy Boreing, The Daily Wire’s co-CEO, promises in a launch video.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/10/19/daily-wire-slams-disney-in-launch-of-bentkey-platform-for-kids/
I subscribed to Bentkey because I massively support the idea of creating a conservative alternative to Disney. Also, it’s a beautiful dream to not have to be constantly worried that my kid will be shown “gender-fluid polyamorous” characters in a cartoon.
I don’t know if Bentkey will work. I very much hope it will but it’s extremely hard to compete with Disney’s enormous amounts of money. Bentkey cartoons lose out in what concerns graphics. Their graphics are much more primitive and basic than what kids are used to. Whether this will be a decisive factor, I don’t know.
It’s definitely great to see conservatives who are doing instead of complaining. And it’s really important to mention that the conservative response to Disney isn’t about brainwashing kids in the opposite direction. There’s nothing whatsoever political in these shows. We don’t want to expose kids to an alternative to the politicized crap that they get from the existing mass entertainment. Our goal is to spare them any politics.
When my kid watches something, I want to be certain that everything she sees is age-appropriate. Surely, this isn’t much to ask?
A parent of a young child lives on a minefield, constantly alert to the danger of the kid being manipulated or confused by entertainment. Back when Klara was 3, I had to invent a whole fairytale world to explain why llama llama red pyjama never sees his daddy and why little hippo’s daddy can’t pick him up at school when his mommy is stuck in traffic. You have no idea how absent fathers are from books for the toddler crowd. And then we go straight from no dads to the evil dads and loser dads in the entertainment for 6-7-year-olds. Dads who are present and not bumbling idiots or evildoers are very hard to find.
And this is just one single issue. There’s tons more.
Clarissa's Blog 
To the left asking for nonsexualized entertainment is the equivalent of censorship and homophobia. They see graphic sex in school library books and say they have no problem with it. Literally.
Amanda
LikeLiked by 2 people
That’s exactly it. This is the crucial difference between left and right that I’m talking about. All we want on the right is no propaganda. We don’t want anti-gender-fluid propaganda. We simply want none. Of any kind. We just want normal, child-appropriate content, that’s all. And that’s impossible to get.
LikeLiked by 1 person
“We just want normal, child-appropriate content”
Many on the left think that’s what they want too…. you have to specify ‘apolitical, non-sexualized, non-violent’ because they think that all politicized sexualized violent content is perfectly child-appropriate….
LikeLiked by 1 person
Would you consider showing married lesbian mothers with two daughters propaganda?
LikeLike
Of course.
In any interaction with the kids, the #1 question to ask is: how is this helpful to the kids? Every interaction. Let’s say you want to give an iPad to a 3-year-old. How is it good for the kid? If you can’t answer, don’t give the iPad.
Now let’s try your example. Why would anybody show to kids a situation that is relevant to the tiniest percentage of them? How does it benefit then to see these “two mothers”? It clearly doesn’t. The kids gain nothing.
So who gains?
The adults who want to use kids to feel good about their life strategies. If they were certain of the goodness of their life strategies, they wouldn’t need to insert them into children’s entertainment. For instance, I’m completely opposed to mentioning the war in Ukraine in children’s entertainment. It’s real, it exists, it’s extremely important to me. But children gain absolutely nothing from knowing about it.
I now want to hear why it’s necessary for kids to hear about “married lesbian mothers”.
LikeLiked by 2 people
It’s not necessary. They have been my neighbors for the last four years. Are the straight parents who let their kids play with these girls traumatizing/brainwashing/confusing their kids?
LikeLike
The parents will have to explain to the kids where the daddy is and who the other lady is. I’d say to my kid, “Anna’s daddy can’t be there, so Ms. Jessica is helping Anna’s mommy to take care of her.” Which is the truth.
LikeLiked by 1 person
“Anna” herself would make it quite clear to her friends that she has two mommies, not a mommy and a helper, so it wouldn’t be safe for your kid to play or even talk to her.
“Why would anybody show to kids a situation that is relevant to the tiniest percentage of them?”
You’re describing education.
Why would you read your child a book that has identical twins or triplets as characters? Why let your daughter learn about firefighters given it’s almost certain she won’t become one?
LikeLike
I would be a strange mother, indeed, if my kid trusted my intellectual authority less than that of another kid. 🙂
Nobody has “two mommies”, right? That’s not biologically possible. We have that clear, don’t we? Anna is fantasizing to make her mom feel good about herself. As long as we have it clear that I’m saying what’s true and describing objective facts, then the situation is becoming very clear.
The foundational reality of every person’s psyche is coming from two people, Mom and Dad. The constant loving presence of both is an inevitable ingredient of a healthy, calm mind in a child. This doesn’t need to be explained because babies know it by instinct. It’s an evolutionary mechanism. The presence of both people who gave life to you is a guarantee of the preservation of that life. Place a baby between Mom and Dad and observe the reaction. It’s actually pretty stunning.
This is why when I communicate to a child that this setup, which the kid’s mind perceives as the only one guaranteeing survival, can be disrupted for reasons that the kid doesn’t understand, this produces intense anxiety. If Dads can disappear, then what about my Dad? Is he even going to be here in 10 minutes? A small child cannot cope. Surely, you know that children make everything about themselves. This situation will immediately be turned into “my Daddy can disappear at any time and some strange lady will move in”. This is fundamentally different from firefighters or triplets. Firefighters didn’t bring about your entire existence.
My question remains. How is it good and useful for a child to lie to her about “two mommies”? How are you planning to explain the biology of having “two mommies” when kids know by the age of 2 that a kid comes out of the mommy’s tummy?
LikeLiked by 1 person
“Anna’s daddy can’t be there”
May have mentioned this before… when I was 10 or so there was a funny bit on tv that mentioned words like ‘streetwalker’ and ‘call girl’ so I asked my dad what those words meant.
“A streetwalker is a woman who walks around town looking for a man to take her on a date. A Call girl stays at home waiting for a man to call to ask her for a date.”
I realized at the time there was probably more to it but those explanations were enough for that day.
LikeLiked by 2 people
These are really good explanations.
LikeLike
This “two mommies” lie has been so normalized that people seem sincerely unaware that it’s an obvious lie.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I can’t reply to your comment because it’s too many levels deep, so I’ll reply here.
Sounds like these girls wouldn’t be safe from you, then.
I’m pretty sure my neighbors don’t tell the older girl that she was simultaneously in both tummies (the younger is a toddler). When I say they have two mommies, and that the older girl would say that, I mean that they have a family. Two parents who love them. Not a parent and a helper. Not a deficient family missing a daddy.
I think you’re projecting your own anxiety onto kids.
Didn’t you explain the biology of where children come from by saying that God put the baby in mommy’s tummy? Well, that’s what God did to each of the two mommies.
LikeLike
Let’s keep the vocabulary of safetyism off my blog, thank you.
You are trying to massage reality into ideological constraints and it never works. The kid in question does have a dad. It’s a biological fact. That dad is not present. That’s also a fact. Nothing, absolutely nothing can make you a parent if you aren’t one. You can be an adoptive parent but not an actual one. People who actually love their adoptive kids never try to pose as anything other than adoptive parents. They don’t lie to children. They don’t write their father – one of the two most important people in the child’s life! – out of the child’s history out of convenience. Think about what you are advocating here. Children aren’t stupid. They’ll know there’s a dad. And they’ll know they can’t mention that because that will upset mommy’s sex life.
Before we get into a round of unnecessary strawman arguments, I feel exactly the same about hetero moms who do this. We’ve had a million debates about it on this blog and I don’t want to reiterate them.
Don’t lie to children. And most definitely don’t try to get me to collude in these lies.
LikeLiked by 1 person
As for my own kid, she has known since forever that there can’t be a baby without a Dad.
Because it’s the truth. Remember that concept? Or is it too “unsafe”?
LikeLike
I’m not raising these girls, so I can’t ask. Let’s assume they – well, the oldest one – know where kids come from biologically – about the sperm and the egg, and the baby growing in mummy’s tummy. Their friends have dads. They know about the sperm bank. Just like kids whose parents have used IVF and possible donor sperm or eggs know.
I don’t know if you’d be able to mask your disdain if you were to be around the girls. I wouldn’t want them to feel it coming from you, and they’re not even my children. That’s what I meant when I used the word “safe”.
LikeLike
You are hiding from the actual issue behind a completely invented scenario of me meeting some people I have zero chance of meeting.
The issue is that “two mommies” is a lie. You are suggesting that it’s OK to lie to kids and get them to pretend they don’t know this is a lie to accommodate Mom’s sex life. Think I this. Everybody, including the kids, are supposed to dance around a grown woman’s feelings because she wants to pretend that laws of nature don’t work for her. Isn’t it easier to ask her to get over herself and join us in reality?
LikeLike
“Isn’t it easier to ask her to get over herself and join us in reality?”
What would that consist of? How exactly would you like lesbian women who are married to each other and raising children together to behave to satisfy you? What do you want their children to call them? Do you need them to keep track of who gave birth to whom, and use the terms “your mom” and “my mom” when talking to their siblings*? Do you want them to use terms like “my half-brother” and “my adoptive sister”?
either half-siblings or adoptive siblings since you’re so hung up on definitions
LikeLike
I’ll let you in on a secret: it’s not that hard to keep track who you gave birth to. Giving birth tends to be a pretty memorable event. 🙂
Just be honest, is what I suggest. Not for me but for the kids. It isn’t so hard to say “your mom”, “my dad”, “my half-brother”. I promise that the kid knows extremely well who the real mom is. It’s really weird that I have to explain this. Have you ever seen a baby react when the mother enters the room? It’s like the sun suddenly came up for the first time in years. No need to track anything down.
LikeLike
Adding to the contentious discussion here, I would say I’ve known a lot of people over the years who called someone who was not their biological father “dad.” There was no deception involved; all families were honest about the circumstances. Fathers were involved to the degree they wanted to be or could be involved. But their stepdads have become important enough parts of their life that they just call them “dad.” They aren’t lying to themselves about biology, they just mean “male parental figure.” Feels a bit pedantic to quibble about other people using words differently than I might.
And really, if an adoptive father had raised me since a very young age, I’d probably consider him a father figure on a gut psychological level regardless of biological relation; this seems to be the case for my friends. None of this is to say that biological parenthood is irrelevant or that kids aren’t harmed by being deprived of their biological parents. I’m deeply glad to have both of mine.
Obviously, just as these families use the terminology they see fit to use, so can other families. So it’s also nobody’s business how you explain these situations to Klara. And to me you seem to be doing a pretty good job. You always seem ready in situations where many others are umming and ahhing.
LikeLiked by 1 person
As long as everybody is honest and nobody uses the child to play make-believe, it’s all good.
LikeLike
I lack optimism when it comes to an entertainment company made by the Daily Wire. But I definitely hope to be proven wrong.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I don’t have a lot of hope for it– previous forays by explicitly conservative companies, on a mission to make safe entertainment for kids, have all sucked. That’s where we got Veggie Tales. I mean, A for effort and all, but… the talent goes where the money is, and at least in the US, the talent can’t resist being edgy. I lean toward… just read them books. Screens aren’t good or appropriate for little kids anyway. Not fantastic for adults either.
LikeLiked by 2 people
…I am of course a total hypocrite on that. I successfully kept the older kids away from screens for years, but now that they’re allowed to watch movies now and then (our TV gets no channels, it’s just hooked up to a DVD player, and all movies are vetted by us first), there’s no practical way to keep the preschooler from watching movies with them. But… since the TV is out in the garage and the selection is very limited, this is a once-every-couple-weeks indulgence, not a daily activity. I’m OK with that. Their lives don’t revolve around the television (but it’s also not an alluring forbidden thing)– that was one of those things that weirded me out as a kid– we didn’t have a TV, but all my friends’ households did. And the box was right there in the living room, with all the chairs facing it, like an electronic chapel. When my friend across the alley got a new TV of her own, in her room, and her family got Disney on cable… we practically never saw her again. She just disappeared into the house and then we were one girl short for all our usual games. It was sad, and I didn’t get why the TV was more important than us, her friends.
So it’s ubiquitous, and there are a few things that are entertaining to watch, but– like you ask with the individual elements “what does this do for the kid?” and the answer for the vast majority of electronic media, even when the content is wholesome or unobjectionable is: it takes up time that they might otherwise be playing with friends, interacting with adults, reading books, developing balance and muscle, manipulating physical objects, and other activities important to their development. It’s not just what does this do for the kid, it’s: what is this activity displacing?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Well, we all know that I’m an anti-screen maniac, so I agree completely. But even on the rare occasions that my kid does watch TV, I’m constantly on pins and needles what she’ll end up seeing. I just want to be confident that there’s nothing inappropriate, that’s all.
But yes, you are completely right. It’s a scourge. A kid comes over on a playdate and immediately demands to watch TV. When I explain that the purpose of a playdate is to play, the kid begins to pout.
We have even attended a kid birthday party where the only activity was to watch TV. The kids were playing but the parents interrupted and said it was time to watch TV. My kid was bored within minutes and drifted off to play with her toy. I actually stole the remote when the parents weren’t watching and sat on it. Then everybody spent the next 30 minutes looking for the remote, but at least it was an active pastime.
LikeLiked by 2 people
This is one reason I like our current neighborhood, even though it is a little sketchy: our neighbors have kids, and while they don’t have high-falutin’ principles about childrearing (dads don’t seem to be a thing here, sadly), they also don’t have disposable income, so the other kids on our street are always out playing on their bikes and in our yard … because they don’t have smartphones and game consoles, they live in rather cramped conditions, and outside is really the only place to play. It reminds me a lot of my own childhood escapades with the neighbor kids, what with the constant bicycle traffic in and out of our driveway, the collection of younger siblings tagging along and getting underfoot, etc. Maybe there’s still hope for the world. Or it’ll all go to hell when those same kids reach adolescence and start using drugs. We’ll see, I guess.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I think not constantly watching the propaganda box is more important than what plays on it. I had this thought when watching some kids movie with a friend’s baby. It had a pernicious underlayer of ideological content, but I don’t think a kid watching something like that once in a while causes any particular harm. The problem is they see stuff like this constantly, while at the same time rarely seeing narratives from the other side. A certain “story” gets embedded into their brains.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes. Plus… TV culture is just trashy. Every time I’ve been over at someone else’s house with the kids, and the TV was on (why do people do that– leave the TV on like it’s just background noise?), it didn’t matter what was on, between the actual show content and the ads, it was like having a public sewer outlet in the living room, dumping all over the carpet. Do people really enjoy that? Are they just numb to it?
LikeLike
…like, every time that’s happened, my kids have all sorts of bizarre, sad, and uncomfortable questions when we leave. We do have the occasional discussion at home, about social dysfunction, predatory industries, psychological manipulation in advertising, propaganda, neural hyperstimulation… but like, few and far between, one issue at a time, as we encounter an example that we can discuss and pick apart. With television it’s nonstop, boom boom boom, never lets you come up for air, and by the time you’ve pinned down any particular issue with it, you’ve forgotten twenty others– they’ve sneaked by unremarked and unresisted, dragging down your idea of what “normal” is.
LikeLiked by 1 person
For some people it’s just what they’re used to. At this point I spent far too much time online (much worse) to judge anyone else.
LikeLiked by 1 person
So do I, but my kids haven’t. That’s a thing we can do for them.
They still think that cancelling the nightly bedtime read-aloud is a violation of the Geneva Convention and literally the worst thing that could ever happen to them.
LikeLike
Veggie Tales is actually pretty good as far as this stuff goes, in the sense that it had some level of cultural impact (I once saw a drag queen dressed as Larry the Cucumber) and it had some crossover appeal to secular audiences. The usual fare is more along the lines of “God’s Not Dead,” movies and shows made specifically for a niche audience with low standards that are mocked by anybody outside of that subculture (for good reason.)
LikeLiked by 2 people
On Bentkey there’s one show that’s like a modern Mr Rogers. The host is a woman called Mabel and she does experiments and talks to interesting neighbors. It’s nothing special but when she talks to a banjo player, for example, I can be certain that he won’t suddenly appear in drag or start talking about the climate apocalypse. People have normal conversations about normal things. There’s no effort to “normalize” stuff that’s abnormal.
LikeLiked by 2 people
That sounds promising.
LikeLike
Yeah, I’m only knocking Veggie Tales a little bit. Like I said, A for effort. The problem is that VT seems to be the pinnacle of the genre. Which doesn’t speak well for the rest.
When someone gets around to making this series for real, though, I’m all in:
(we got really excited when we first saw this, it was a bummer when we found out it was a credit sequence with no actual film– a dream or a practical joke, but not a real thing 😉 )
LikeLiked by 1 person
…fork!
(har har, Byzantine in-jokes)
LikeLike
It’s based on the opening to “Neon Genesis Evangelion”, a classic anime. Reworkings of the Evangelion opening to be about anything and everything, are a Youtube genre in themselves.
LikeLike
Ah, probably should have recognized it. But it’s been a long time since I watched NGE.
LikeLike
Btw, I’ve heard good things about the show “Bluey” (and I’ve seen a bit of it and have no objections.) No weird political shit, and the father is very present.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes, Bluey has been almost cancelled because it features no queer or disabled puppies. For real.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Ironically, I learned about this show from a lesbian couple I’m friends with (but of course, they’re not woke.)
LikeLiked by 1 person
Lesbians seem to be weirdly on the outs with the alphabet crowd for being gender absolutists. It’s an interesting dynamic. ABCinc’s loss is our gain, I think.
My kids’ shooting club acquired a kid with lesbian parents this year, possibly a first. Very conservative crowd, generally, but these ladies gamely bring their son out to learn range safety, competitive marksmanship, and Robert’s rules of order. So… clearly not onboard with the entire progressive agenda, though they did show up at the first meet in their rainbow t-shirts (I expect this is a good way to gauge whether you will get any flak from the other parents: they didn’t, and they came back next time).
LikeLiked by 1 person
My friends aren’t gender critical or anything, they’re just not that into politics. Honestly, most lesbians I’ve met don’t seem to care about the issue much. Maybe this varies by region and class.
LikeLike
Ditto. My working theory is that the whole alphabet soup thing is basically effeminacy run wild. And most of the lesbians I know– aircraft mechanics, gym teachers, welders– are anything but. Yeah, I know a couple of femmes too… and they’re the ones most likely to engage with sexual politics.
LikeLike
The whole radfem thing is pretty feminine too, in its own way, another form of sexual politics. The average welder is not gonna see the world that way.
LikeLike
feminine ≠ effeminate
LikeLiked by 1 person
If we’re making that distinction, I’m not sure I’d ever describe a woman as “effeminate” myself
LikeLike
I would be offended if described as effeminate– it suggests dissolution, laziness, selfishness, and an unwillingness to stick to principles or get one’s hands dirty. Some women are like that, of course, but I’m not sure I’ve ever heard the word used for them, it seems to be mostly used for men.
LikeLike
” the whole alphabet soup thing is basically effeminacy run wild”
A better explanation I saw on twitter was that when single sex marriage became the law of the land all the normal people said ‘yay!’ and left ‘activist’ organizations and all that was left were the nut jobs who had to find a new cause in a hurry to justify their ‘activism’…
LikeLiked by 2 people
“all that was left were the nut jobs who had to find a new cause”
Seems plausible.
LikeLiked by 1 person
This never stops, that’s the problem. And it’s the same with abortion. I support abortion rights but the problem is that it’s never enough. It’s got to be celebrated and never questioned, and you are supposed to believe that there’s no difference between aborting at 6 weeks and 6 months. You can’t just support some reasonable version of the rights. It has to go farther and farther into the realm of utter lunacy.
Gay marriage , great. Gay adoption, great. And then you sit there, listening how an adult man “chestfed” a baby, and you are supposed to pretend it’s the best thing ever. And once you accept that, there will be more. It never stops. You have to put the limit somewhere because the limit never appears by itself. You are supposed to “push boundaries” constantly. So that there are no boundaries.
LikeLiked by 2 people
This is the problem with professional activism. If you achieve your goal and call it quits, you no longer have a job.
LikeLiked by 1 person
How is it wrong to feature the disabled? Do you have some theory that your kid will start having anxiety about one of her parents or herself becoming disabled?
LikeLike
Folks, you’ve got to start copy-pasting the bit you are responding to. Nobody can remember the entire discussion days later.
I definitely have no problem with featuring the disabled. The last thing anybody can accuse me of is having a problem with the disabled.
LikeLike
“Yes, Bluey has been almost cancelled because it features no queer or disabled puppies. For real.”
LikeLike
Are you noticing that I didn’t say “Bluey should be cancelled because it features disabled puppies”? This is a comment about the cancel culture. Who knew that it would be so hard to comprehend such a simple phrase.
LikeLike
“Who knew that it would be so hard to comprehend such a simple phrase”
Self-righteous anger is one of the most addictive feelings out there (and very destructive if not firmly controlled). So someone looking for a hit of whatever hormone is released will find a way to intrpretet…. anything really as a way to get that sweet, sweet rush.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Exactly. People would scour a gigantic thread to find something to get offended. “Ooh, she hates the disabled!” I spent four months beating the administration over the head to let us teach ASL. What has this commenter actually done for the disabled?
LikeLiked by 1 person
“What has this commenter actually done for the disabled?”
Ha! As if the wokies’ concern was for the lives and opportunities of actual disabled people. Nah, it’s really just important that every single piece of media, especially cartoons where you don’t have to hire any, feature them. Make them visible. This is the same crowd that started out with awareness campaigns— i.e. spending a bunch of other people’s money to do advertising campaigns that do not materially help anyone except the people who worked on the campaign… who almost certainly don’t have the disability or whatever that the campaign purports to bring “awareness” to.
Yay virtue signaling. Look how much I care. See me emote in public! Don’t look at what I actually do.
LikeLiked by 1 person
We are supposed to speak of the disabled, the gays, the blacks , the Palestinians, etc with the hushed reverence of people who are in the presence of a wounded deity.
Woke people try to do that to Ukrainians, too. Whenever I mention Ukraine, they make these fake, somber faces at me like I’ve just said that my puppy died. It’s beyond annoying. I don’t look for pity. I don’t look for anything except to have normal conversations.
I’ve also observed that the disabled or the black people really appreciate being treated normally, without the hushed reverence.
Just be normal around people, that’s all you need to do.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Aye. In terms of actual helpfulness, among actual disabled people that I know: government programs rank #1, followed by uncool charities like Shriners Children’s hospitals– which offer life-changing surgery for things like clubfoot and severe scoliosis at no cost, and Ronald McDonald House is an amazing support service (a free place to stay for parents, while kid is in hospital away from home).
No awareness campaign has ever done anything for them, and being “seen” in TV shows makes no difference whatever to their lives. People who know them are aware of their disabilities, and people who don’t… don’t matter.
So, even though I’m generally critical of government programs, I fully support state-sponsored schools for the blind and deaf, SSI, Medicaid, speech therapy through the school system, special-needs schools for the severely disabled (where they can access occupational therapy), subsidized adult daycare to give home caregiver families a break, subsidized PCA services (people who go to the homes of seriously disabled people, to help them do basic things like bathe a few times a week), etc. Those make a HUGE difference in people’s actual lives, but still aren’t perfect. Like, if you took all the money that goes into virtue-signaling about disability, you could probably buy an adapted van for every wheelchair-bound person in the country. There’s no govt program that does that, and it’s a huge burden on many families– those are expensive!
LikeLike
“people over the years who called someone who was not their biological father “dad.””
In American English (won’t make assumptions about other kinds) “mother” and “father” mostly refer to immutable biological roles while “mom” and “dad” (mommy/daddy etc) mostly refer to affective emotional caretaker roles. Mostly the coincide but they can differ. It sounds like Clarissa’s mother was never really a mom (much less mommy).
So Heather can’t have two mothers but she can have two mommies (and probably has an internal explanation for that state of affairs). It would be nice if she could have a relationship with her father but that’s not always going to be a possibility.
LikeLike
Friends, this is the pronoun issue all over again. I also said for years, “what’s the problem with using the pronouns a person wants?” And then it turned out we aren’t simply expected to use pronouns out of kindness. We are expected to believe that men are women.
This is the same thing. It’s not about vocabulary. We are expected to believe that two women produced a child together without any participation from a man. And the terrible thing is that children are now used to maintain this fiction. We can’t tell the truth to our own children because it’s easy to wheedle it out of a kid that the parent doesn’t really believe and then persecute the parent.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Remember Pete Buttigieg sitting on a hospital bed with two newborns? The mother who had just given birth having been kicked out? This is not a metaphor. This is what we are actually supposed to believe.
I hoped for a while that lesbians could be our partners in the struggle against trans nuttiness. But then I saw that lesbians had their very own brand of this nuttiness and it was far crazier than women with penises.
Obviously, not all lesbians and not all trans, blah blah. But this is a real, existing thing. “Men who can give birth” are already here.
I know everybody wants to be a nice person and not hurt anybody’s feelings but any complicity with this narrative – any at all – leads us to a place where we have to affirm obvious untruths. Let’s not participate. We always lose when we participate.
LikeLiked by 1 person
“We are expected to believe that two women produced a child together without any participation from a man”
We are?
“any complicity with this narrative”
So no more gay marriage? No single sex couples able to raise children? No more legal cohabitation? Where is the line?
LikeLike
eh. I don’t worry about it much. All the lesbians I know personally, attached or not, fall into three categories: 1) Suffered a horrific childhood abuse and are now wary of men, and doing the best they can (and may be raising a kid from some previous trash-heap of a straight relationship)– they are not pretending that lesbian partner is “mom2” and bio-dad has visitation (and a drug problem). They’re just grateful for stability and support. 2) Not interested in kids (this is most of them), or 3) Have foster kids.
1) I’m glad they’ve got a safe home situation now. Nobody is pretending this is ideal, and there’s a lot that should never have happened, but it’s probably the best they can do with a really f****d up life. 2) Not my business, and no kids were involved. 3) Is dicey. If there were enough regular foster parents to go around, the situations I’ve seen personally suggest they should not be eligible. But given the conditions in most group homes, and the perpetual shortage of foster parents… it’s not the worst that could happen. Like, do I have room to dis that, when I am not willing to step up to the plate and be a foster parent? It’s still better than the group home.
That said, it’s curious that all the propaganda about lesbian “families” is 100% about women who use a donor for one of them to have a biological kid. What percentage of L relationships in the real world could this possibly represent? I understand it’s fashionable among celebrities, but I’ve seriously never met one. Maybe it’s a rich-people thing?
LikeLiked by 1 person
The ones I know are all like this. And you are expected to pretend that they are both actual, “biological” mothers to the children. The freakout if anybody doesn’t play along is identical as when you “misgender” somebody. These are not celebrities but highly educated, professional women. We are supposed to listen to endless outrage about the “ignorant rednecks” who supposedly asked who the father is. The idea that there is a father is painted as completely outrageous insanity.
I was all for gay adoptions until I had to be present at a few of such gatherings.
Please, people, don’t tell me this isn’t happening when I personally was expected to share in the outrage over the idea that every kid has a father. We keep thinking “no, they won’t go there”. And then they do go there, every single time.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Huh. I believe you. But this does make me wonder if it’s… more of a PMC issue than a “lesbian couples” issue. That’s not a scene I’m involved in, so its rituals and attitudes are foreign to me. We have other dysfunctions.
In our neighborhood/milieu, drugs, poor financial choices, and “single parenting” are the biggest problems. What I learned this week, is that the school we live next to, and the neighborhood around us, experience a significant turnover in residence/enrollment around this time of year… because of the county fair. Literally, people take their kids to the fair, blow all their ready cash, and then can’t pay the rent and have to move. Folks next door just got evicted. Not sure if it was the fair, but the timing is suggestive and they did have kids.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I had no idea about the effects of the country fair season. This is hardcore.
LikeLiked by 1 person
We had fair around here a little while back. At an intersection I usually drive through I noticed a man begging for cash with a sign that he wants to take his kids to the fair. I found it rather odd (typically signs say something about being homeless), but you just explained it for me. Thank you.
LikeLiked by 2 people
IKR? I just learned about this, from a fellow parishioner who teaches in the local school system. The school I live next to, plus a couple others, have a reputation for this– the October fair eviction turnover, where a bunch of kids switch schools at the same time because their families got evicted. Never would have imagined…
LikeLike
“people take their kids to the fair, blow all their ready cash, and then can’t pay the rent and have to move”
That has got to be one of the most florida things I’ve ever heard…
(I love fairs but blowing all your money? I guess crackers gonna crack…).
LikeLike
@Cliff
It kinda blew my mind!
We grew up on the low-income side of things, but I’m continually amazed at how much dysfunction my parents successfully insulated us from.
LikeLiked by 1 person
” you are expected to pretend that they are both actual, “biological” mothers to the children”
That is absolutely demented. I have my limits and that’s well beyond them.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I know several sets of gay and lesbian parents and none of them pretend that both parents are the “biological” parents, though they are perhaps a bit older (the kids are now late teens or in their twenties) than the people you would be encountering now as the mother of a younger child.
Buttigieg and his husband give me very weird vibes. From his own account, Buttigieg married the very first man he ever went on a date with. It seems very unlikely that that could wind up being a completely healthy relationship. I do know a few people who married teenage sweethearts and seem to be doing OK, but generally, marrying the first person who seems interested in you is not a good idea.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I married the first guy I ever dated. Fourteen years in, and still don’t regret that. Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it.
A)This is not remotely the same thing as marrying the first person who shows an interest. There’s no rule that says you have to go out with everyone who offers.
B) Why should you rule out a perfectly good prospect just because you haven’t dated a bunch of other crap people yet? That’s just acquiring unnecessary relationship baggage.
C) But yeah, that guy does give off weird vibes.
LikeLiked by 1 person
“Buttigieg and his husband give me very weird vibes”
There’s a theory out there that he’s not really gay but rather that’s a public identity that he adopted for career advancement.
Seems far-fetched and you’ve gotta wonder what would be in it for the husband, but…. stranger things have happened…..
LikeLike
@methylethyl – It’s too late for me to go back and try that.
I am probably suspicious of people who marry the first person they date because young me was usually attracted to people who were not really good for me. I was in my mid-30s before I made any good romantic choices.
LikeLiked by 1 person
What I suggest is exactly what I said at the start. “Here’s mom, here’s dad, and here’s Mom’s wife who is helping to raise the kid”. It’s exactly the same as what I suggest we do for kids raised by a step-parent in a heterosexual relationship.
This isn’t a gay thing.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Seems perfectly reasonable.
LikeLike
“I’m continually amazed at how much dysfunction my parents successfully insulated us from”
I hear ya, I’ll repeat the story of a conversation with my brother a few years after high school..
Me: What ever happened to (old friend of yours)?
Brother: He’s in prison…
Repeat that three or four times. The success story among his friends was working in a gas station….
I’m still kind of amazed that we both made it out of the swamp of cracker Florida without a prison record or drug problem or both (or a few other bad things going around at the time).
LikeLiked by 2 people
No joke! My parents… performed some kind of miracle. I literally thought we were middle-class all my growing up years, because all our relatives, friends, people at church, and everyone in our neighborhood, were. We couldn’t afford the same stuff as them– like air-conditioning or cars less than ten years old– but it was a heckuva buffer. My grandparents gifted them our house, in a safe neighborhood, and they did the rest. For years, Dad’s entire income went to pay our tuition at private schools, and for another four years, we cleaned the school building in lieu of tuition.
Now that we are raising our own kids at a similar income level… I’m finally starting to grasp the awesome scope of what they accomplished.
LikeLiked by 3 people