FFS indeed.

I guess it is true that soft toys are sex-less, so owners are free to impose whatever gender expressions they want on them. BUT TOYS DO NOT SELF-IDENTIFY AS ANYTHING BECAUSE THEY ARE INANIMATE OBJECTS (even when very much loved).

The Funshine transition theory is a common misconception. Actually, the CHARACTER has always been male, he's just been voiced by women actors when he was supposed to be younger and then male actors as an adult bear. People get these ideas in their heads about celebrities and what they have and haven't done and it's nothing to do with the real person who is usually completely blameless and innocent. Not that there is anything wrong with taking hormones, of course!! It would be completely laudatory if he had, but he definitely hasn't. It might be best just to say that he is bear gender.

Draco Malfoy is totally gay, tho.

I'm sorry, I know you're annoyed, but my reaction was more along the lines of...

😂

I mean, it's one thing to create actual trans characters in media for children. But retroactively claiming that a character was trans all along? That's hilarious to me. Like, I imagine the teddy bear coming up to them in tears and asking them in a blubbering voice to please tell the world that they've been trans all these years, and nobody acknowledged them 😭

(This bit, though, did NOT make me laugh:

In 2022, the Shakespeare’s Globe staged a play about Joan of Arc, and the pronouns of the French patron saint were changed to “they/them” rather than “she/her” in promotional material.

HOW DARE THEY 😡!?)

It was really stupid @Seethlaw- there was a thread about it at the time

FFS

I'm prepared to go as far as suggesting that nobody is taking the care bear theory that seriously, however, this makes me cross.

This resonance, according to the exhibition, also features in mermaids, whose “genitalia is not visible, and therefore is irrelevant to their gender expression”..

A substantial part of my reproductive system is not visible, but I suppose they take the male centric view that sex is just a social role and the only thing of any consequence is the bits you can see.

The mermaid stuff annoyed me. "Oh, it's hidden so it doesn't matter!" Well, no, screw that! For all mono-sexual people, it does matter what's hidden there, and even for bisexual people, it can matter a whole lot whether the visible and the hidden bits are aligned. So really, under the guise of acceptance of difference, they are in fact telling the majority of the population to get lost, them and their silly sexual preferences. Ugh.

Well, Isla Bryson’s pink leggings certainly mattered. I wonder if that’s what they mean …

Wtf have they done to them!? When did they start all the gurning?

This bit of the Telegraph article intrigued me: In 2023, Alfred, Lord Tennyson was named an LGBT historical figure on a tour for schools on the Isle of Wight, despite a lack of evidence that the poet was gay.

This review of a self-published book based on a Ph.D. thesis suggests there is next to no evidence that Tennyson was gay. I do wish scholars, journalists and activists would treat historical evidence in a nuanced way rather than selectively interpreting the past in the way they would like it to have been. https://victorianweb.org/authors/tennyson/jones1.html

I hope Andrew Mountbatten Windsor’s teddys are safe from this!

@Seethlaw Pharaoh Hatshepsut (female) was transed about 5 years back. Sorry I have forgotten who by but it wasn't just some random on Twitter

By this logic, Bart Simpson is also trans, because he's voiced by a woman. 🤦🏻‍♀️
Not suggesting that you subscribe to said logic, @NicolaSturgeon.

NOOOOOO!!!

I think we need our own campaign: Leave Women Alone!

My god but those bears are horrific.

Steiff would never. I hope. 🤞😬

Anyone recall when the "Moral Majority" waged war on the Teletubbies because one of them was supposedly gay? Plus ça change..

https://collider.com/teletubbies-jerry-falwell-anti-gay/

Nothing to do with teddy bears ... I was reading information about conifers (as you do when you should be washing up) this morning. I idly wondered what our TA pals would make of The male cones are cucumber-shaped, 4 cm long at first, expanding to 8–12 cm at pollen release. The female cones are globose, large, 12–20 cm in diameter.

I have no idea how these idiots cope with the inescapable fact of sex throughout the natural world. Safer to stick with toys and dead people!

And this is taxpayer funded!!!

Jo, from Little Women, got transed a while back.

Well that's my childhood ruined

I had to laugh at the mer-thems though.

Less amused at non binary Elizabeth I and Jeanne D'Arc

Some of them have bottom surgery where it's all smoothed over like a doll - 'nullification surgery'. I can't remember where I read this, and I wish I hadn't.

This seems a bit of a human-centric way of viewing an advanced, albeit mythical, sapient species, too.

Even if humans can't see fish genitalia, or presumably mermaid genitalia, fish seem to have zero problems determining each other's sex. How do we know that mermaids and mermen can't see what genitalia other members of their species have? Hmm?

Merman. Merman!

Merman brings up some great gifs!