Literacy alien Tala earns parents’ anger over use of pronouns - article in The Times

Tala sounds like a girls name to me so I’m going with she. It is quite close to the names Thalia, Natalia/Natalya.

This is nuts. Other children's characters ie Teletubbies may appear genderless but they don't sport the they/them pronouns that these days signify an ideology that is damaging to children.

Political ideology doesn't belong in libraries or with small children. I think this is normalizing pronoun preferences. It might seem innocuous but I'm not impressed.

Tala can do one and go back to planet crap.

Ad hominem

Well the best I can say to the last few posters is I suppose ad homing attacks is one up from simple name calling.

Tinky winky never came out officially.

People were not so obsessed with their identity back in the 90s and we didn't have this culture of older men enforcing their language and boundary preferences on children in schools as we do now.
Parents want care to be taken over what adult behavior is pushed in education for young people.

If you haven't got that message yet and are toddling over to a parenting website to sneer at parents, well you may well be on the wrong side of the argument.

Wasn't one of the teletubbies gay because handbag?

”It's a cartoon alien, Prion.”

Oh dear, oh dear. I think you meant to say “They is/are a cartoon alien.

So you see, “it” is the word you naturally used.

Time to reconsider your false arguments?

It's a cartoon alien, Prion.

”Singular they/them for a person of unknown or unspecified gender has been in the language for centuries. It's common and natural usage and whatever your gender critical views, you're showing your ignorance by insisting otherwise.”

I’m not insisting otherwise. You’re pretending you believe this is the same, when you know full well it isn’t. The quoted sentence, where there’s a name, would traditionally have used “it” or “he or she”. Pretending otherwise doesn’t work, because some of us are old enough and educated enough to recognise change and not pretend it hasn’t occurred.

As a previous poster said, most people seeing this bear will revert automatically to “he” as they find this attempt to insert the use of ideological terminology either irritating or boring. A few years back, there might have been attempts to use “she” or alternate between “he” and “she”. This is a misstep, not a positive change.

"It" is the norm for animals. Not for people.

Singular they/them for a person of unknown or unspecified gender has been in the language for centuries. It's common and natural usage and whatever your gender critical views, you're showing your ignorance by insisting otherwise.

But, by necessity, that has always been an unknown person, because a known person would have a known sex. Counter-examples welcome.

The concept of a known person with an unknown sex is novel, because it's not a thing that happens in reality - it's a make-believe thing for the gender identity role play game.

For a known singular creature with an unknown sex (which does happen, because people aren't as good at sexing other species) or of no sex, "it" is very much the norm.

The actual sentence is "We hope that families love Tala as much as we loved creating them." My first thought on reading that was Tala was some kind of plural identity - I had to re-read it. "Them" of course can be used as a singular as in "I saw them from a distance but couldn't describe them" but it's not usually used as a single with a known name.

However, as I said before I don't think this is a sensible issue to be getting agitated about since the creator's sentence won't be seen by anyone and the alien itself seems perfectly fine.

Singular they/them for a person of unknown or unspecified gender has been in the language for centuries. It's common and natural usage and whatever your gender critical views, you're showing your ignorance by insisting otherwise. Meanwhile, referring to a person (in the sense of a sentient being, which can include fictional aliens) as "it" is obviously rude and depersonalising. And getting hung up on the sexual reproductive capabilities of a children's cartoon alien is obviously silly and tbh worthy of a bit of mockery. Maya has missed the target on this one quite badly.

And yet the wording used would not have been used even a couple of years ago. It has been introduced ideologically, so to suggest that the use of this incredibly clumsy, ugly phrasing is coincidental, rather than ideological is a perfect demonstration of how far down the ideology rabbit hole you are.

Fortunately, nobody normal uses such language and so it will die out as fast as it has been thrust down our throats. The sooner the book industry return to the real world the rest of us live in, the better.

I do think we need to be wary now that gender critical views are (thankfully) getting more widespread coverage that we don't end up with postures that won't make much sense to the general public.

The publicity the children will see makes no reference to pronouns - as far as I can see the only use of "them" is a clumsy sentence from the creators where "them" would have been better replaced with "it". So most people who see a reference to the controversy will just wonder "what's wrong with a cute alien?" If the alien picture had a big pronouns badge with "They/Them" on it it would be different but it doesn't.

Uh, I wasn't the one who said I was feeling sorry for her.

Oh lordy 😱😱😱😱😱
Memes on twitter!!!
However will she cope? Very well actually, if the Radio 2 interview is anything to go by.
Imagine a whole world that doesn't give a toss what kiddos on Twatter think.

The robot is fine as an IT, though the bear was definitely better.

Good luck to the poor costumiers saddled with making those Tala aliens to fit all shapes and sizes. Bookstart bear was a somewhat forgiving shape.

I say this as the mother of many a fancy dress horror.

Why can't a blue and white bear be an alien?

It's a weird sense of priorities when a lot of new parents are more concerned about keeping kids warm and fed this winter.

Entirely Maya's own fault for not being able to wind back or admit she was wrong/over-reacting. She's making herself and the movement look absurd.