I had a “Mister Potato Head” as a kid. Two things were true.
It did not have much “play value,” meaning time spent playing with the thing. And I wasn’t thinking about gender norms when I stuck ears on it.
I often chose to stick the ears in the front of the head, where the eyes belonged. Mom said I was “creative.” Dad said I needed psychiatric help.
You may have heard or read that manufacturer Hasbro had a brainstorm and decided to, sort of, well, abandon “gender norms” for Mr. Potato Head because in the 21st century we are told there are no norms. And if you say there are norms, you are a bigot, a “hater.” (“Hater” is the second-most overused word by the Left. “Racist” is No. 1.)
Snopes had a pretty good report on what happened.
Hasbro is trying to have it both ways, like some in the LGBTQ+ community. I said “some,” so don’t be tweeting to the Human Rights Campaign.
What do I mean by having it both ways? I’ll let Woody Allen explain, in words he used in an innocent time many decades ago: “Bisexuality immediately doubles your chances for a date on Saturday night.”
That was way back when we recognized only three or four selections on the gender menu, and before Woody was accused of pedophilia, which violates the “norm” that we don’t sexually abuse children. Assuming we believe in norms, which are under broad attack, along with our culture and traditions.
Facebook gives you 56 gender choices.
One less than Heinz.
Wait! That’s out of date. We’re up to 71.
The number goes up almost every year and that is proof that it is based on something other than science. FB is just pulling it out of its butt, maybe playing a huge practical joke on normal people.
Except you can’t say “normal.”
Can’t say “usual.” Can’t say “typical.” Can’t say “average.” Those are all phobic, cisgender terms, we are told.
Who are you to judge, you in the overwhelming majority, you who have no confusion about your gender, no panic about which personal pronoun to use (I am he/him/his but I am not putting that on my social media profile because that’s trying just a bit too hard).
I remember getting a press release from a city agency that announced a newly hired person preferred the pronoun “they.”
I have no idea why saying that was necessary — do press releases announce the proclivity of straight hires? — but the funny thing is whoever wrote the press release slipped and accidentally called the person “him,” in the fourth paragraph because that’s what he looked like. “He” did not look like “they.” If you are not a twin, how do you look like a “they”?
How far do we have to go to accommodate someone’s imagined, perhaps psychotic, view of themselves? Would you comply if I requested to be called “majesty”? There is tolerance, and then there is stupidity.
The Hasbro gender-bending brainstorm, which was tweaked when an uproar ensued, seems to have come out of an HR department filled with Ivy League grad students. It proves my adage that not all change is progress.
Dropping the “Mister” would be done, the company explained, to “break away from from traditional gender norms.”
Because so many toy buyers were clamoring for that?
They were not. This is just part of the craziness of 21st Century America where identity politics, and exalting minorities, have reached absurd heights. We are pulling apart. It is an assault on e pluribus unum.
Look — everyone should be respected, but they don’t need to be idolized and protected from even a sideways glance.
When I was a kid, there were boys and girls.
At some point, we discovered fags (that’s what we called them when we were 10) who were boys who acted like girls.
Sixty years later we discovered boys who are girls. It’s a lot to adjust to.
Because I have written about it, and have two transgender acquaintances, I know they account for 0.07 of the population. They are featured on magazine covers, on hit TV shows, yet they face real challenges..
But playing around with Potato Head — which always disguised gender by not including genitalia — will do nothing to enhance their lives. (Thank God the Potato Head characters are not white, otherwise we’d be hearing about supremacy.)
A slightly revamped Mr. Potato Head will not make things better and neither will a bill written by a couple of chucklehead California legislators who demand that stores eliminate separate sections for “boys” and “girls.” No, this is not a joke.
One of the idiot lawmakers said the bill “is important in regards to addressing perceived societal norms, but also ensuring that prejudice and judgment does not play a prominent role in our children’s life.” God forbid your child should learn about norms and exercising judgment.
At the same time, the politicians did not say, it was important that supermarkets not separate vegetables and meat,. and that dairy must be offered with household goods to avoid discrimination between them.
“This is step one,” one of the loons did not say. “Step two is to eliminate all signage in the store as implicit bias. Aisles can have numbers, but you can’t list the products on the shelves. Step three will be piling all the products in a huge pile in the middle of the store.”
I grew up, and maybe you did, too, knowing there were differences between boys and girls, men and women.
The French coined an expression: Vive la difference!
As one woke Daily News editor once explained to me, “Men and women are different, Stu.”
“It’s funny,” I said. “When you say it, it is feminist. When I say it, it is sexist.” He laughed really hard.
In their desire for equality, some feminists declare that there are no differences between men and women, they are completely equal and totally the same.
But they are not. Different means neither superior nor inferior.
Trying to pretend men and women are identical, and to erase gender differences, is a fool’s mission.
And those of us who are not fools should laugh at it.
HAPPY SUNDAY !!!
pallie,
I said it before. Rhetorically speaking, I don’t get any of this. Is everyone on drugs ? We have to make a point. Years ago, it was valid, today it is asinine !
Yea, we all had Mr. Potato head. I don’t know why? First, the potato is covered in dirt. Then you have the dirt. Then you have a mushy potato, then in the garbage pail. Somebody made a lot of money on that invention!
Tony
We got played again. One press release and everybody’s talking. It sure would take a lot of advertising dollars to get this type of response. Nobody cared about Mr. Potato head. Well, they fixed that.
Very timely Stu, In a similar area a recent book by Abigail Shrier should place a scare to parents who see their daughters taking steps to make gender changes without their knowledge at a very young age and it is not illegal for them to make the change without parental knowledge or approval. The following is an excerpt from her book.
“Until just a few years ago, gender dysphoria — severe discomfort in one’s biological sex — was vanishingly rare. It was typically found in less than .01 percent of the population, emerged in early childhood, and afflicted males almost exclusively. But today whole groups of female friends in colleges, high schools, and even middle schools across the country are coming out as “transgender.” These are girls who had never experienced any discomfort in their biological sex until they heard a coming-out story from a speaker at a school assembly or discovered the internet community of trans “influencers.” Unsuspecting parents are awakening to find their daughters in thrall to hip trans YouTube stars and “gender-affirming” educators and therapists who push life-changing interventions on young girls — including medically unnecessary double mastectomies and puberty blockers that can cause permanent infertility.
Coming out as transgender immediately boosts these girls’ social status, once they take the first steps of transition, it is not easy to walk back. She offers urgently needed advice about how parents can protect their daughters because if this trend continues a generation of girls is at risk.”
UMMM.
I have never been called a hater. BUT I am often called the other things beginning with racist/misogynist for making controversial comments like “boys and girls are different”.
Also I have been know to go to restaurants with a clean shirt and creases in my trousers, which puts me in a suspicious category.
Some old words for homosexuals are “sissified and Tom Boy. I do not recall hate attached to either term.
It’s a shame that we can’t enjoy our differences, we have to try to make everyone the same.
On the net 3 days ago — … the US — including 16% of Gen Z adults — identify as lesbian, bisexual, gay, or transgender.
My question is why so many? And the purpose? If there were no internet I believe this wouldn’t be happening, but that’s beside the point. Generation Alpha (2010) are easily being lured. What’s the end goall?
Then there was Rachael Levin dodging a question by Rand Paul at her nomination hearing this week re, teaching the young about these things without parental consent. She replied that she’d be glad to discuss in his office. Paul replied ‘Let the record show the nominee refused to answer ”
I’m not shocked and do not take pc or the potato thing lightly anymore. If traditional values can be a thing of the past then the left has won.
I suspect the sudden rise of, um, non-binary people is due to peer pressure, and a warped desire to somehow to relate to this minority. It reminds me of LWIC —Lesbian While In College.
I’ve known a LOT of straight girls who make out at parties. Never seen guys do it at parties.
Let’s rewrite Frankie Avalon’s song so it reads “Venus with a penis…” America is a sick nation. The sickos are in charge, in the media, the entertainment industry, in academia, in all the facets of life of the people of the United States — especially the youth. Our children are being twisted emotionally and physically into shapes only the sickos desire to see. Does anyone really believe this sickness if somehow good for the country’s future?
Interesting article Stu.
I do agree that this issue has moved too far.
Yeah…Sigh..
When I was a kid, back in the 20th century, I owned several sets of Potato Heads–Mr., Mrs.,
and all sorts of accessories. This was so long ago that actual potatoes were necessary.
It brought a whole new meaning to “playing with your food”.
I’m reminded of a similar “controversy” (keep those quotation marks in mind), a few years back about
the exact relationship of “Sesame Street’s” beloved Bert and Ernie.
The production company simply responded (rationally), that Bert and Ernie are PUPPETS!
Someone should point out that the Potato Heads are POTATOES!
Yeah, but the Muppets are in trouble, too.
True enough, and that could (sigh again) be the subject of another blog..
That moment has passed, but there will be more insanity.
No question about that!
But, just thinking about the current Potato “controversy”,
I’m reminded of a famous misheard lyric. In the famous
recording of “House of the Rising Sun”, it sounds as though
The Animals’ lead singer, Eric Burdon, is wailing; “My mother
was a tater”……
Philadelphia, PA
Dear Stu,
You are right, of course, that this kind of thing is deeply rooted in Madison Ave. hype; and the most damaging aspect of it is that techniques of advertising have now become standard methods in political campaigns. Once so transferred, Madison Ave. hype becomes pretty much indistinguishable from classical techniques of political manipulation and propaganda. So, are we really to wonder if people see democracy in danger?
Common sense and “E pluribus unum” have so often gone out the window, because it has been found that valorizing difference for its own sake is a very successful strategy to attract attention and get ahead of the crowd. The strategy is very typically American, even when the apparent aims are nonsense. Valorization of difference for its own sake is viewed as the only plausible way of advancing any group which has been treated poorly in any fashion. But this is a pernicious process since it is destructive of the commonalities of life and citizenship and depends on deprecating all those who persist in traditional values. No country can survive by trying to eliminate (or “marginalize”) its own distinctive conservatives.
One may reasonably doubt that this “identity politics” when generalized is consistent with the coherence and integrity of any political society. Implicit assumption: there is nothing much in American life and society worth preserving? Well, of course, the far left may think so. But so does the “creative destruction” of big business and purely economic, “libertarian” tunnel vision?
But do we see a shift in the politics of Senator Paul?
H.G. Callaway
Once “identity politics’ were used to unite. Now, to divide.
It all began with hyphenated Americans, and had gone straight downhill ever since. E unum pluribus.
Philadelphia, PA
Dear Benedict,
Or, did it begin with ever repeated political pressure for mass immigration and cheap labor?
Once you allow mass immigration, the “hyphens” are facts on the ground; and simply suppressing them is inconsistent with liberty and congenial relations as needed for peaceful cooperation.
H.G. Callaway
Philadelphia, PA
Dear Stu & readers,
Keep in mind that the techniques of identity politics first developed in the universities.
In my experience, it was always unscrupulous, pernicious and self-aggrandizing. There is always a favored insider or “friend” to be promoted, by hook or by crook, and a competitor to be eliminated –usually by pernicious and distorted insider gossip aimed at reputation. Any exaggeration with the least grain of fact will be blown out of proportion to the required effect of undercutting the opponent.
Once complete any piece of work, anywhere in the world, and the response is “just in time defamation.” The information needed to time this is usually available on-line. It amounts to life-long persecution of the unsuspecting. Do you wonder why half the country voted for Mr. Trump?
A reminder: I didn’t vote for Trump, and he was not my candidate. But I can certainly understand the sorts of elite practices which produced the reactions of the Trump and Sanders voters.
H.G. Callaway
Many toxic notions come out of the faculty lounge.