The BBC wants parents to stop “gender-stereotyping” their children – and they’re willing to experiment on children to prove their point.
The British Broadcasting Corporation ran a video promoted on social media Sunday in which unsuspecting adults were tested for “gender-stereotyping” children – i.e., expecting little boys to act like boys, and little girls to act like girls.
Are you sure you don’t gender-stereotype children?#NoMoreBoysAndGirls pic.twitter.com/iThZ2P6REW
— BBC (@BBC) July 28, 2018
Here’s how it went down. Each adult was given a child dressed in gender-specific clothing, plopped down in a pile of assorted toys and told to play with the child. Naturally, the adults chose more feminine toys such as dolls to try and entertain “girl” babies, while picking more masculine toys like robots for the boys.
That’s when the BBC pulled their bait-and-switch. It turned out the “girl” babies were actually little boys dressed in feminine clothes, and vice versa. The unsuspecting adults were shocked to learn they’d committed the unforgiveable crime of assuming the child’s gender – since who in their right mind would assume the infant sporting a pink frock covered in pansies was actually a girl, right?
The BBC then accused adults who showed gender-based behavior toward the kids of having “bias.”
“That really astounded me, because I thought I was somebody that had a really open mind,” one woman admitted, clearly dejected by the fact that she’d dared to hand a pink stuffed elephant to a child she thought was a female.
“I automatically went for the pink fluffy toy because they said it was a girl, so it shows I was stereotyping,” another guy lamented.
The BBC promoted their video with the hashtag, “#NoMoreBoysAndGirls.” And suffice it to say, Twitter wasn’t nearly as ecstatic about the BBC’s gender-bending experiment as the network was.
The BBC has finally lost the plot #socialengineering
— Jake (@penfold29) July 29, 2018
Why am I paying for this appalling crap?
— David Whittaker (@DavidWh44528009) July 29, 2018
Not only is it child abuse to NOT pass on feminine knowledge to females and masculine knowledge to males, it is species suicide as those traits have been perfected over a million years of evolution for survival. #StopMentallyAbusingChildren
— Muse B. Strong ☧🇺🇸 ☩(@musebstrong) July 30, 2018
This is child abuse
— Andy Coggins (@andy_coggins) July 29, 2018
I don’t have children, but when/if I do you better believe I will definitely gender-stereotype them....
— Mitchell Lawhorn (@MitchWVU18) July 30, 2018
Because I’m not insane
Turns out the self-congratulatory airheads over at the BBC are just a bit out of touch with the vast majority of their viewers. Along with, you know, basic science.
Of course, while the BBC is certainly out there on a limb when it come to extreme views on gender, they're certainly not the first enlightened Europeans to toss out anatomy as a relevant factor in the human experience. This Swedish preschool went so far as to force children to walk barefoot in the snow and scream their lungs out to combat so-called "gender norms."