(One of the images)
(For the tweet see here: https://twitter.com/Mermaids_Gender )
They caught my attention because back in 2018 I'd made similar images for a blog post about another Mr Men themed furore. That time inspired by the politician Emily Thornberry calling the Little Miss book series sexist.
(This was one of my
attempts at the time)
It's so easy to predict these trends. You can mock them before they even happen. It's also slightly funny as at the time Emily Thornberry and others took issue with the name "Little Miss" itself - as it implied that women were less than men. Whereas Mermaids clearly don't take issue with that, and use the term themselves. Though I'm sure if someone from the left pointed out how "problematic" this was they'd happily change it.
The images are quite cute and fun though, so you do feel a little mean mocking them.
..a nice narrative
This once again though has just reminded me that there's a natural dichotomy in all these left/right debates.
On one side we have the "nice" narrative - the "Yes, you can!"
On the other the "strict" narrative of "No, you can't!"
So the right-leaning people often come across as nasty (sometimes they actually are, and revel in their nastiness), whereas left-leaning people get to be the nice guys, who never say "No", but also never take responsibility.
It's like two parents. One parent says "No, you can't have a candy bar, it's tea time soon", so the child naturally feels resentful and views that parent as "bad". Then the other more lenient parent comes along and says "Go on then, have some chocolate, just don't tell mam" and the kids think that parent is great.
It's not really fair, especially as the first parent is trying to be responsible and do the right thing. Though as ever with these things sometimes the strict parent can be too strict so it works both ways.
I found myself on the strict-parent side of the argument about a week or so ago, when I was arguing that gay men shouldn't be raising children. I felt bad being so mean. I understand that people naturally want to have a family, and I appreciate how bad it must be for people who can't do this for whatever reason. Be it issues of fertility or just the simple fact that someone hasn't found the right partner to settle down with.
Being gay is one of these unfortunate circumstances. Two gay men can't make a baby. This is just a simple fact of life that people have to live with. It'd be nice if I could be the "nice" parent and say "Yes, of course you can have a baby", but nice though that would be it's just too irresponsible. So sorry, I have to say "No". It's not that I want to, but someone has to.
A child needs a mother.
We all grew up having the benefit of a mother, and those few unfortunate people that didn't know only too well what they missed out on. So who amongst us can truly say - hand on heart - "I have a mother, and that relationship is the cornerstone of my life on Earth, but you little child, you can do without."
And of course, as two gay men cannot make a child, the only way they can get one is by removing a child from its mother.
People may say "..but ah, no, the mother is giving the child to these men." Or that the mother carrying the child is simply the child's surrogate, but all these things are just plain wrong in my opinion. A woman should never want to give away a child she's carried for nine months. Normally women only do such a thing when they're in truly desperate circumstances and see no other option.
Again, the reply may come:
"No, you misunderstand. This is a great act of kindness. This woman wants to help these men have a family."
But again, my reply would be that it's wrong for a woman to care more about the happiness of two grown men than the happiness of the child she's just given birth to. What sort of woman says "I care so much about the happiness of these two men that I'll happily never see this little child again." If your mother isn't going to love you above all others who in this world will.
I'm being a little harsh on these surrogates here of course. I understand only too well that they've been conditioned by modern society to believe they're doing something wonderful. Likewise it plays on a women's natural hormonal desire to have children. In fact, if the situation was flipped and there were two lesbian women wanting a child and I was given the opportunity to have sex and be the father, from a purely biological point of view I'd be very tempted, as most men would. Even though obviously, from a wider moral point of view it would be fundamentally wrong to father a child you had no intention of taking responsibility for.
Ultimately it just all shows that people are putting adults before children in our modern world. Again, it's understandable, and I completely have sympathy. People want to believe that they can have all the things they want in life, including their own image of their perfect family - and too few people are prepared to look mean and say "No, you can't always get everything you want from life. You can't just get a child like you get a pet dog."
I've wandered quite far from original topic, but we're now in a world where children have the right to switch gender when they please, but have no right to a mother. We need to say "No" to the adults that are cultivating this. I know I sound mean, but hopefully I've articulated myself well enough that anyone reading will understand that I'm not just being mean. Whether they disagree with the points I'm making or not.
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