I listened to a podcast yesterday that was sponsored by an "organic mattress company." They coined and claimed to be "farm to mattress." The materials are bamboo and natural products and all the buzzwords. The real kicker is that the company's name is Avocado Green Mattress. Never before in history has it mattered that your mattress is organically produced. At this point, the only thing more organic than this mattress are the straw beds people slept on in the 1800s; and people would probably buy those if you marketed them similarly.
The brand name really had me in stitches. To name it avocado, the official fruit of woke crunchy and health-conscious people, mocks customers for profit. It's capitalistic, which no small amount of these same consumers reject, under the disguise of health and self-congratulatory earth-mindedness. Why am I getting up in arms about a mattress company?
For the same reason that I want to rail against an opinion piece in the New York Times yesterday about the 1964 stop-motion Christmas classic "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer." Amazingly, neither of these is intended as a parody. Essentially the author, a transwoman, claims that their* experience as a transwoman is the same as Rudolph's experience of not fitting in because of his nose and Hermey the elf's desire not to make toys.
I can't imagine that any of the staff in the making of the film in the 1960s thought, "I want this to speak to the LGBTQ+ community in 2019 in a profound way." The staff would probably just be astonished the movie has been circulating for 55 years! The movie is about not fitting in - something everyone everywhere has experienced in some way, large or small.
I believe the basis of any debate between LGBTQ+ rights and the traditional view of sexual ethics is that the first believes this sexual orientation is not a choice, and the latter believes it is a choice. Just as pro-choice and pro-life debates always come down to whether or not the fetus is a human or a clump of cells, these presuppositions are the basis for the rest of the arguments.
So, ignoring the fact that the author was born a male and chose to transition to change their body to be more similar to the traditional concept of a woman, the thesis of this article is that Rudolph is a champion for queer rights because he too felt different because of his nose. The elf was out of place because he didn't want to do what all elves for all time have been expected to do - make toys.
We should celebrate diversity in physical appearance. Everyone has a worldview and is equally qualified to share that, no matter what they look like. However, there's a fundamental difference between what is inherited at birth at what is individually chosen (and that includes weight, Lizzo). The elf didn't want to work a job that's expected of him. That's just a quarter-life crisis that so many students have, to not fit into the cookie-cutter mold of what's expected of you. We should use our strengths and weaknesses to have a more fulfilling and productive life. These experiences are too general and common to apply directly to the LGBTQ+ community of today.
Below are a few glaring problems in the opinion piece that I'd like to address quickly.
"Conservatives seem to miss the point of a lot of things having to do with Christmas, actually." Christmas is actually about the birth of Christ, the Savior of the world, who was born a person to redeem us so that we can enter into a restored relationship with God. I don't equate conservatives and Christians. The rest of the paragraph after this quote says that A Christmas Carol is a critique of capitalism. Additionally, if I read it right, the author takes a line from Good King Wenceslas as a critique of capitalism, as if that song was written for A Christmas Carol.
"But please. Do enjoy your $60 Keep America Great hat tree ornament finished in 24-karat gold." Stay on topic. Not everyone that disagrees with you is a Trump Supporter.
"Is it worth adding that the character of the misfit male reindeer Rudolph in the special was voiced by Billie Mae Richards, a 40-something woman?" - No, it's not. The casting directors deemed her voice to fit what they needed for Rudolph. Rocky, the squirrel in Rocky and Bullwinkle, was voiced by June Foray with no hint of his sexual persuasion to Bullwinkle or male squirrels they may have encountered.
"Prospector Yukon Cornelius’s sexuality doesn’t enter into the plot, of course. But in a scene that was deleted from the 1964 original, we learn that even though he claimed to be searching for silver or gold, in fact, Yukon C. was looking for a peppermint mine. No further questions, your honor." - This is my favorite. If it hadn't been so far into the article, I would have thought that this is satire for sure. What makes peppermint gayer than gold or silver?
All I'm asking is to take things as they are meant to be interpreted. Be honest in your own conclusions and understanding. Recognize that a mattress company wants your money. Recognize that a 1960's children's film is about not fitting in. Yes, trans people are also not well accepted - for a reason. We all revolve around the sun, which is only the center of our solar system, and our solar system is not the center of the universe. Hardly any mass media is created to personally attack or to individually support. Don't flatter yourself.
*I use they/them/their because I haven't decided what the best pronoun for this individual is. My quick online research shows their preferred pronouns to be feminine. However, because they were born male, it would deny reality to address them as a woman. At the same time, I hope to engage with people of this person's mindset respectfully, so I think I would use feminine pronouns to address them face-to-face, out of respect, to have a productive conversation. So, with these conflicting desires, I'll resolve, right now, to use they because English speakers regularly use it when referring to a person whose gender we do not know.