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

[oviraptor21]

Yet another example of the trans agenda being pushed on children who are far too young.
www.thetimes.co.uk/article/edec2f5e-4027-11ed-b24d-96120f17513d?shareToken=58fe369e03586016edf674cfc53c2b12

I think you’re scraping the barrel with your first sentence, and I think you know the REAL reason why “they” is used.

‘We hope that families love Tala as much as we loved creating them!’

That's not ideological, why would you want to call an alien which you loved creating and hope others will have affection for 'it'?

Why wouldn’t you say him or her?

Why would you assume aliens are sexed the same as humans?

Steven Spielberg referred to ET as a 'him' in one of the early drafts of the movie script but soon changed it to a genderless creature so as to appeal to boys and girls equally.

It's also quite amusing to think how quickly this comment would have been reported and deleted had it been directed at the devotees of gender ideology.

Because the character is aimed at 0-5 year olds who are trying to make sense of their own world. Characters should be relatable to human children who are sexually dimorphic. It is common practice that non human characters in books for children of this age are depicted in anthropomorphised ways having experiences and feelings common to the intended audience.

ET was never referred to using plural pronouns in the 80’s.

Using the third person plural pronouns to describe Tala is clearly ideological and designed to indoctrinate preschool children and their parents into gender identity and queer theory.

Maybe it's because I've watched the recent video from Brighton standing for women but that critter reminds me of Carly-May Kavenagh.

I wonder if you squeeze it, will it shout fascist baby at you?

It's clearly indoctrination into gender ideology.

And as a pp said, the Bookstart baby bear and mummy or daddy bear was the perfect representation for tiny children being read to by their parents or carers and the warmth and closeness reading together brings. Completely fitted that aims of the charity. Seems like the charity has a new purpose now.

We hope that families love Tala as much as we do.

Job done, no pronouns required.

If the creators don't give this character a sex then the parents/grandparents/carers etc. will. And that sex will be male. People actually default to he rather than they. And then you've got even less female representation for our young girls. Probably feeding into their desire to opt out of femaleness later on.

I would expect that if I read a whole article about a pastry chef called Chris that Chris would be described as "he" or "she" at least once in the entire article. I would not expect someone to write an article about someone else without a bit of basic research into that person. If the writer knew the pastry chef's sex and still avoided using "he" or "she" I doubt the article would read very easily. If they didn't know the sex of Chris despite writing the article that would be rather strange.

Also just realised I have been misgendering ET for decades.

For clarity, is this bear actually non-binary - ie a member of a sexed species who pretends they don't have a sex even though they do, or is it asexual - ie a normal member of a non-sexed species?

If the latter, claiming an asexual alien is non-binary is a rather weird sort of alien cultural appropriation from outer space.

It's just an alien that loves to read, no more information is given in the promotional material about which pronouns to use or whether it is a boy or girl.

This.
It's a cartoon alien for crying out loud. 😂
They're not necessarily going to be a he or a she, are they?!
There's been cartoon aliens around for ages
I didn't sit wondering whether Zig and Zag was either girls or boys, they were just aliens!
Same with Chewbacca, or any other aliens
Who's to say whether aliens even have a sex /gender like us, I mean they're aliens
Been reading MF's tweets about Tala like WTF, seriously ,😁 this whole upset is bizarre!

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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.”

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.