The mother of a five-year-old has apparently been scrutinized for allowing her son to dress as Daphne from the "Scooby Doo" franchise for Halloween. She was further scrutinized for defending her son and her decision on her blog. This has led to more misunderstandings between what it means to be gay versus what it means to be a guy who likes to dress as a woman versus what it means to be a five-year-old who has no concept of sexuality or social norms.
As usual, news organizations couldn't wait to add to the confusion. I've read several stories and seen a few video clips about the "incident," which only became an incident because the elections are over and it is a slow news cycle. CNN seems to be the most highly criticized, allowing a psychologist to appear and state that, "It is the worst nightmare of heterosexual and gay couples to have to fathom that their child might be gay," as if having their child abducted or molested or murdered take a back seat to whether Little Johnny is gay. http://www.afterelton.com/people/2010/10/cnn-daphne http://nerdyapplebottom.com/2010/11/02/my-son-is-gay/ For four years, I worked for two schools containing preschool through middle school students. An annual highlight was the parade of little kids in costumes. Seeing all the princesses, pirates, cowboys, jedi, etc. walking through each of the classrooms was a fun tradition -- a chance for the little students (neither of the two schools I taught at allowed the older students to dress up) to be the center of attention for a morning. At no point in the parade of costumed kids did I see a kid dressed as a pirate and wonder if he'd grow up to sail the seas, stealing treasure and raping women. At no point in the parade of costumed kids did I see a kid dressed as Darth Vader and wonder if he'd grow up to be a mass-murdering psycho. I grant you that I never saw a boy student dressed as a female character, but I don't for a minute believe that a choice of costume made by a five-year-old says anything about the child other than he either likes a given character or the costume was on sale at Target. To me, this is one of those stories that nobody should have given a sh*t about, but now that people have chosen to make a big deal out of it, people need to come down on the right side of it. The debate shouldn't be about whether it is good or bad for a boy to dress as a girl for Halloween. The debate should be about why people feel compelled to butt in where they clearly don't belong. Nothing about the story made it a mental health issue, but CNN chose to bring in a shrink anyway, and the shrink was of the dimestore variety. The CNN anchor, who was also interviewing the boy's mother by phone, should have immediately said, "Whoa, hold on doc" as soon as he opened his fat-f*ck face, but she didn't do that or react to it in any way. The doctor went on to say the mother "outed" her son on her blog, when anyone who read beyond the title of the blog post knows that isn't true. I cannot help but think of Eddie Izzard who has stated in interviews and on stage that, historically, it was actually more common to see men dressed as women (think of the effeminate wardrobe and wigs worn by men of Europe a few hundred years ago, and the first US presidents lived at a time when upper class men would have worn high heels to parties), but now the situation has changed and it is more acceptable to see women dressed in more masculine clothing (when my mom went to college, she could only wear skirts or dresses and wasn't allowed to wear pants). But the media has no interest in contextualizing the story by bringing any of that up; they only want to tantalize viewers and play off their emotions. So CNN not only failed to have a debate about butting out where you don't belong, they failed to place the situation into any sort of context. Instead, CNN brought on a psychologist who had no business opening his mouth. And they changed the story into something it wasn't because they weren't mentally equipped to cover what the story actually was. Scooby doobie doo! -- Kevin M. (RPCV) -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en
