Just because parents want their offspring to be the world’s wokeist doesn’t mean it will be so. Plonking kids in front of a TV screen and demanding they enjoy a camp concert doesn’t mean they’ll grow up how their parents imagine.
If I was an obsessive wokey parent, I’d be very worried about the inevitable blowback. Know what I mean? You’ll no doubt recall your own years of teenage rebellion, when hormones pulsed through your body. It’s human nature to do the very opposite of what your parents demand, especially when they can be annoyingly prescriptive and preachy. It is, after all, simply human nature to rebel against one’s parents. Blame biology.
Just because you really want little gender-neutral Arlo and Kai to be exemplars of the wokeist take on the human race, doesn’t mean it will come to pass. It’s his or her life, not yours. They’ll do what they feel, ultimately, whether you like it or not. And trying to create the model human, the child of one’s dreams, smells to me of eugenics.
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That bloke Adolf Hitler and his fascist mates had all wanted their offspring to face in the exact same direction too, and you may have read about how that all ended. Little Adolf’s mummy, Klara, doted on her boy and, in return, she was apparently “the only person he genuinely loved”.
And what about those parents who obsessively push their little girls and boys in specific directions? There have been loads of TV documentaries over the years about unhinged mothers and fathers – oh, sorry, parents who give birth and parents who don’t give birth – living their lives through their offspring. You know, the dad at the touchline screeching out instructions to his not-very-sporty son. Or the mum who’s utterly convinced her daughter is gonna be the next big thing in Hollywood and live out her mother’s dreams. Whether the kid agrees or not is irrelevant. Casting directors are always nervous about who might walk through the door when they have a role for a child – and it’s not the kids that cause the nerves but their parents.
And this parental pressure so often backfires. Take Sasha Bennington, a little girl from Burnley, Lancashire, in the UK, whose mother was convinced would take the American beauty pageant world by storm. She was famous for a while, on account of a BBC documentary about her. As an 11-year-old, Sasha was obsessed with Jordan, aka Katie Price, the glamour model with absurdly large fake breasts. Or was it her mother Jayne who had that obsession…? Anyway, a fortune was spent on the girl’s fake tan and make-up and hair extensions. And guess what happened when she turned 15? Sasha rebelled and became… wait for it… a boxer. Awesome!
What about James Hetfield? His parents were devout Christian Scientists and medicine was forbidden, so his mother rejected treatment for the cancer that killed her when her son was aged 16. He went on to become the frontman of heavy metal band Metallica, and penned little ditties such as ‘Enter Sandman’ – a tune that was originally about cot death but then rewritten into a song about the manipulation of kids by adults.
The world is full of the offspring of hyper-religious parents who became Satan worshippers or lovers of death metal and such like, or the sons and daughters of 1960s hippies and communists who became bankers and accountants, arch-capitalists. And, by the same token, obsessing over your child’s sexual orientation or gender identity is not only similarly pointless, but very dim and, frankly, quite offensive, because it isn’t up to you – it’s up to him or her.
I’m a dad. I have a daughter and a son. I have known a little boy in my girl’s school since he was about four years old. He has always liked dresses and Disney Princess dolls and all that. He’s now on the cusp of puberty, and I would be amazed if he isn’t gay. He has seemed that way since he was a toddler. So what? Who cares? The kids in the playground don’t care. He was always that way. They’ll quite possibly only notice when some stupid parent makes a stupid comment. And maybe I’m wrong and he’ll become a heterosexual lothario. Again, though – who cares? It’s up to him and nobody else. The kid will find his own way, because that’s what we all have to do. Human nature. Mollycoddle and control your offspring at your peril – and theirs.
It always amuses me to read the clunky, crap new terms that have been concocted on college campuses in recent years and end up in the pages of The Guardian. The alphabet soup of LGBPTTQQIIAA+ options is utterly exhausting. And, anyway, most people probably fit into more than one category. But again, man – so what? Does a new badge change how you feel? And do you honestly believe there’s anything new in any of this anyway? Ask the Greeks or the Romans or the Egyptians. They’d seen it all before, thousands of years ago. They even drew pictures and made statues showing human beings disporting themselves every which way. It’s all just self-important, self-obsessive and self-inflating woke gas, and thus irrelevant. It’s certainly not new.
So, wokeys, are you getting my drift? Do you see my point? Push too hard in one direction, and a child is very likely to head the opposite way. It’s human nature, be they male or female, boy or girl.
A big virtual Disney+ concert is to be streamed on YouTube and Facebook on June 27, hosted by drag queen Nina West. It’s being staged to mark the end of US Pride month and celebrate all things LGBT. I can’t be bothered to type the rest of the list of letters, given it changes almost daily, and, anyway, many of the Ls – that is, lesbians – want out. The plan is for popular Disney tunes to be re-imagined with (L)GBT themes. Kermit the Frog is in the mix, too, though I dunno what he’s gonna add to the proceedings – does Kermit even have sex organs or a gender?
Anyway, let me dad-splain something (that’s man-splaining but by dads, by the way): if your kids want to watch this camp concert, then let it be their choice. If you force them to sit down and enjoy it – “or else!” – don’t whinge when they grow up into heretics and revert to a type last seen in Victorian-era London, believing there should be no sex before marriage and gay sex should be outlawed altogether. I’m just saying.
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The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
