We all get it. Conservative pundits (very) occasionally tire of flogging a dead horse and leave Greta Thunberg alone for a day. They cast about for some new outrage to fulminate on and usually look to the LGBTIQ community as reliable fodder to entertain their ‘back in my day’ audience. And there’s nothing better to rouse the ire of the self-proclaimed ‘normal’ people than the good old gender wars bullshit.
On 16 December, Prue MacSween had a go at combining the gender wars with that time-proven classic, the imagined War on Christmas.
Prue MacSween
MacSween tweeted a story of a child traumatised by the sighting of a mythical creature — no, not a unicorn — a female Santa.
So a 4 yr old is walking through Myer Bondi Junctn. Thrilled to see Santa. Then realises Santa, complete with beard, is a woman. Distressed, he cries “that’s not Santa”! Why are we traumatising little kids with this gender nonsense? Child abuse? You betcha
— Prue MacSween (@macsween_prue) December 15, 2019
There was a tiny little problem with MacSween’s story, however.
Myer never put any Santa in their Bondi Junction store this year. Neither male, female, non-binary, trans nor even an artificially intelligent robotic Santa ho ho hoed in that particular retail establishment.
Respondents were quick to take the piss.
No. Child abuse is what Pell was convicted of
— My dog would make a better PM 🐶 (@JanEdwards62) December 15, 2019
The War on Christmas shall be fought on the battlefield of GENDER IDENTITY!!!!!!
— Amplify Magazine (@MagazineAmplify) December 15, 2019
When I was four my mother tried to pass off Sunkist for my favourite soft drink. As that sugary orange fizz hit my tongue, distressed, I cried “That’s not Fanta!”
Maternal trust was destroyed for me on that day.
I’ve been in therapy ever since.— Pup Fiction (@jjjove) December 16, 2019
Oh yeah totally, like when I had my fifth birthday at Maccas and Ronald McDonald came out and I realised he wasn’t the real Ronald McDonald and I just crushed my Happy Meal toy in my first and then lit up my first cigarette right there at the table
— Patrick Stokes (@patstokes) December 15, 2019
So hard to tell which is Santa and which Mrs. Claus
The store did employ, not a female Santa, but a Mrs. Claus to read books to the kiddies.
MacSween later told the Daily Mail that she was familiar with the character of Mrs. Claus but that stores should clearly identify imaginary persons.
“I think it is the responsibility of the stores to clearly identify the person in the red suit as Mrs. Claus.”
I sympathise. It pisses me off when they don’t put signs on the reindeer. I get confused about which is Rudolph.
The Gender Wars Bullshit Part II
Meanwhile, at the Courier-Mail, Lucy Carne says, “From the annals of ‘I Swear I’m not Making This Up’ comes the shrill clarion call to make Father Christmas gender neutral.”
However, that ‘shrill clarion call’ came not from gender activists or indeed any activists. It came from a business card design company’s obvious ploy to manufacture outrage and thus garner free publicity.
PR agents flood the inboxes of media outlets with this sort of bullshit. It’s invariably nonsense. A beat up. A trifle in desperate search of viral sensation. On slow news days, as we flail about in search of copy, some of us succumb to the temptation.
GraphicSprings reported 27% of 400 respondents to their fun little survey wanted Father Christmas rebranded as either gender neutral or female.
However, as Snopes points out, the survey asked, “If you could ‘rebrand’ Santa for modern society, what gender would he be?”
It then gave participants a choice of three answers from either male, female or gender neutral.
The survey was about as scientific as the one I took of a representative sample of trans and gender neutral friends.
I asked, “Is Santa male, female or gender neutral?”
Respondents uniformly answered, “Who gives a fuck!”
*Disclaimer: The ‘representative sample’ consisted of people I knew would provide the response I sought.
Here is the news on the gender wars bullshit
The term ‘gender neutral’ is clickbait heaven. Conservative pundits never miss an opportunity to embellish an otherwise unnoteworthy story with ‘gender neutral’ as a keyword, tag, or headline.
Nothing lures trolls out from under the bridge in search of thirst-quenching Kool-Aid like gender neutral.
So, if someone builds unisex toilets for reasons of efficiency, economy, safety, and inclusive use, there’s no story. But describe those toilets as gender neutral and the clicks just keep on coming.
A religious school decides not to assign a gender to their supreme being? Ring Lyle Shelton. You can be guaranteed of a quote that attributes the move to LGBTIQ activism.
More gullible readers drink the Kool-Aid and gird their loins against an imagined army of gender activists destroying the world as they know it.
They yearn for the uniformity of the past. Those glorious days when most Australians looked the same. When baby boys wore blue and girls pink. Back when men wore crisp white shirts and the same haircut and everyone wore white underwear. When society dictated the length of a woman’s skirt, and no one chose their own pronoun.
Oh yes, the nostalgia for an era when minorities, be they racial, religious, sexual or any other, knew their place — out of sight and out of mind.
The poor sensitive darlings who feel entitled to reclaim a past where conformity reigned supreme have nothing left but to be perpetually offended.
‘Humph, humph, humph… we knew what to do with that sort back in my day… what is the world coming to… before you know it will be compulsory…”
Well, folks, you tried to make your lifestyle compulsory back in the day and we all know that failed.
Time for a little ‘live and let live’.
There is no war on anyone’s gender. LGBTIQ people have no wish to take over the world. But they do demand their human right to take an equal place in it.
Enough with the contrived clickbait of bogus gender war bullshit.
For the latest lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer (LGBTIQ) news in Australia, visit qnews.com.au. Check out our latest magazines or find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.
