Good Morning America‘s currently planning a piece on potentially gay kids. The ABC morning show posted this call:
Do you have a child under the age of 10 who you think might be gay or “gender-variant”?
If you and your child are willing to be profiled on camera for a segment to air on Good Morning America, we want to hear from you.
How terrible would that be for an unaware queer: your parents, Diane Sawyer and the rest of the nation all pondering your latent sexuality? Awkward!
We’d like to point out that we’re using the same picture as ABC. It’s too good to pass up – and, also, vaguely offensive. Why are tutus always pink!? They come in purple, too.
key
“Gender Variant”??
CitizenGeek
What kind of parents would really do that to their child? Oh wait, I forgot that this is in America ….
sam
This reminds me of a skit from Mr. Show, which includes the brilliant line “No gay son of mine isn’t gay!”
http://youtube.com/watch?v=e5i6BHBuqxE
M Shane
It would be a terrible invasion of any young persons’ privacy to be exposed to the prodings of deranged adults-how the fuck would anybody know someones sexuality for sure at ten and besides what kind of parent would make their child into some kind of side show anomoly: lots yes Kind of like the kiddy beauty queens. “oh look at little gay ken -isn’t he just the cutest little guy in the world-must be gay: why a little ken doll” and then he turns out to be straight even tho everyone at school calls him a fag.” People get to be called gay or whatever sexual or (?)gendered person when they are ready.
Mike
Yeah. What will life be like for that kid when he goes back to school?
Qjersey
feminine boys and masculine girls, the newest media freak show?
Guess they ran out of 50 year old men who left their wives after coming out as trans.
Mikey
Wow… and in the age of youtube these kids are going to have to live with these video clips forever.
porsha
Discusting, but I’m not surprised…ABC should be called on the carpet for such nonsense. GAY IS NOT A CHOISE, dammit! It is an incredibly personal observation. And, if I had a child she/he would NOT be part of a circus freak alley. My compassion is for the kids who have little or no say at that age!
Michael Aaron
Wow, just as I was entering a comment about their new graphic of a sad-faced silhouetted kid, they pulled the link down.
David Hauslaib, Queerty
A couple things to consider.
1) It’s important that these topics are addressed to the American public. GMA reaches millions of people every day, a vast majority of which probably never consider their child’s gender role might be outside the norm.
2) GMA is a TV show. It needs ratings; it needs to make money. But in order to do that, it also has to present its segments visually, and make them compelling. How to do that without having parents and children on air to discuss it?
3) Yes, GMA needs ratings — so my biggest fear here would that they would exploit this topic and make it sensational. It would be easy to do. That said, GMA, the Today Show, and the other morning shows DO have a track record of treating these topics seriously.
4) You might be quick to blame parents who would sign their kids up for this. They must be the worst parents in the world, right? But what if they’ve struggled with understanding their children’s gender roles, and now feel a responsibility to educate other parents? Is that really something we should criticize them for?
5) In the end, it comes down to the welfare of the children. Are they being exploited, at such a young age, by producers and parents? Perhaps.
tracy johnson
I’m lesbian, so does having that same tutu make me gay?
M Shane
The thing is David (above #4) I can see the parent going on and talking about their own sexuality, but not about that of their childrens’ unformed proclivities. It would really amount to a form of exploitation not totally unlike sexual abuse, where the child is just not mature enough for something to be in the province of others. especially without the kids permission
Your point is taken that it might be nice to point things out to other parents, but it might as easily or even more likely be a set up for abuse of the child as encouragement. I think that whatever the case, it would harm the child,.even if he or she was straight. Sexuality is probably a young personsmost difficult developmental hurdle.
Charley
Instant Gay Infant Alert. Be careful sucking that passafier too hard. You might end up on the tube as gay baby of the year. Goo Goo Gaaa Gaaa
fredo777
I have to say, that kid in the tutu is too adorable.
He looks very happy.
odavy
There’s something about a tutu –
My English grandmother made a tutu for me, for my 5th birthday, in 1955. She was a showgirl in the 20s and she thought I should study ballet. I couldn’t agree with her, more (at the time), and would prance and whirl in the tutu, until my siblings, and the kids in the neighborhood (and I), finally ripped it to shreds.
Granny also gave me a Vogue doll, which pre-dated Barbie, by a few years, but was the same thing – a big-busted babe in high heels, with a $10,000 wardrobe.
I refer to the doll as my “child guidance” toy (when I dare to refer to it).
Despite the diabolical assault on my gender identity, I’m oh so Butch!
So who’s queerer? Granny or me?
fredo777
Well, Odavy, I wouldn’t have questioned how butch you truly are if you hadn’t preceded it with “oh so…”.
; )
<3
Rikard
I have the old b/w polaroid of 2yo me in diaper with a baby doll, moms heels and the matching bag. I’m no drag queen now, but don’t know how much of my tastes and interests are a product of trying to hide and trying to fit in. Nobody wants to see a sexual identity assigned to a child that by definition is sexualy undeveloped. The show will likely be weird and exploitative and nobody knows better than a bunch of queers how wrong a surface judgement can be, but there are begining to be parents who don’t freak out at the idea their child is gay. There are an increasing number of parents who don’t take dolls away from their boys and trucks away from their girls, or force them into activities to correct them. They listen to their kids when they say they feel different. We are creating an environment with enough social nutrition for these ideas to thrive. Ideas about what’s good for your kid might include helping them figure out if they like girls or boys. Rather than starving, shaming and beating the impulse into the closet. Every day is a brave new world and I might get a brick to the head, imprisioned, fired, or deported, but until then I stand and speak and represent. There is something cheap and sensational about broadcast media, but it’s where our social dialogue is happening. There’s no better way to flush the homophobes out than a few stories like this and once they are out in the open they can be dealt with. Homophobes are just like homosexuals that way, the scary, dangerous ones are the ones in the closet. Sometimes they are the same senator, er, I mean person.
Michael Bedwell
My problem is that they appear to be proposing EQUATING being gay with being transgendered. While both are “gender variant” in terms of being different from traditional expectations of “males” and “females,” and, thus, the discrimination both groups experience are rooted in the same bigotry, it is counterproductive to in any way reinforce the STILL ubiquitous belief that gay men “want to be women” and “lesbians want to be men” if only by juxtaposition in the same program.
Scratching below the well-intentioned surface of the feature Leslie Stahl did on “60 Minutes” a year or so ago revealed a great deal of homophobic junk science. E.g., you can “spot” virtually ALL gay men by their appearance and/or body language. That homosexuality and effeminacy in males are virtually the same. And one of their main “experts” was a man who has been criticized by his professional peers for his research methods and for denying that transgender people even exist, and is associated with the same murky group of “scientists” to which the author of the racist “The Bell Curve” belongs.
And whatever other good they might do ABC must NEVER be off probation until they apologize for the heinous smear four years ago of Matthew Shepard by “20/20’s” Elizabeth Vargas who essentially blamed Shepard for causing his own murder. Though he denied it, Vargas insisted that Shepard’s main killer is at least bisexual and “why would a gay/bisexual kill someone for being gay?” Everytime she comes on I have fantasies of bludgeoning her and leaving her tied to a fence in the bitter cold night to drift into unconsciousness in a pool of her own blood and tears.
Matt
One day they will find our gay gene and just reengineer us in the womb. All of this equality, marriage, and gender bending will become a moot point.
M Shane
I see the same kind of perverse attempts to find “where they failed” in raising gay people.
The serious question that you always ask when people want to do case studies jlike this is why? what do you hope to change? This is fucked beyond belief. It’s as if they were trying to find the caiuse of a disease.
me
i want to fuck that cute kid
fredo777
gtfo, pedo.
me
im no pedo. im a kid to
fredo777
He’s like 6 yrs. old. If you’re that young, you shouldn’t even be on an adult blog.
M Shane
The entire senario amounts to child abuse from parents to broacasters. Children have forever morally inhabited a universe in which they are cared for, allowed to develope in kindness and are not the object of prurient adult interests.
All of these scummy fuck brains should be jailedor shot and their children sent to develope freely in their abcense.