A third gender choice available to young participants of a poll on the Barbie doll website was changed after initially offering children the options of "I am a Girl," "I am a Boy," and "I don't know" – eliciting charges that Mattel, the company that owns Barbie, is intentionally promoting gender confusing among kids.
 Barbie poll's original options. |
Apparently due to the criticism, the third gender option has now been changed to "I don't want to say."
Concerned Women for America, or CWA, believes by including the "I don't know" choice the company was promoting the homosexual agenda.
"It's the idea that well, maybe people aren't born a particular biological sex, or they are but that shouldn't determine their gender identity," Robert Knight, director of CWA's Culture & Family Institute, told the Christian Post. "And that's a very big component of the homosexual activist agenda now."
Knight pointed out the homosexual movement now goes by the acronym GLBT – for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered – and sometimes adds Q for "questioning youth."
"In other words, any kid who's not sure about who he is, he's fair game to try to persuade to have same sex acts," said Knight.
CWA has posted a screen shot of the original poll's options on its website. The poll question itself asked about what activities the respondents participate in during January.
Knight also questioned Barbie's emphasis on material things and physical appearance.
"Some critics have said the Barbie dolls really have convinced American girls that the materialistic way of life is the way to go," he told the newssite. "You have to have the hot cars, and the tropical scene. And Barbie has the perfect figure and the perfect outfits.
"It's really steering girls away from the idea of womanhood as predominantly – in terms of Christians – serving the Lord, getting married, having kids, building a home. You don't see any of that with Barbie – it's all about things."
Left-wing blog Big Brass Blog ridiculed the suggestion that Barbie had an agenda by including the "I Don't Know" option.
Under the heading "Now this is just beyond silly," poster the Green Knight writes:
"I'm not sure why 'I don't know' is there; it might be just a programming mistake, or it might be a reflection of the fact that, yeah, sometimes really young kids might not have thought about it too much yet, but this mostly invisible drop-down item in an obscure section of a web page is not evidence of anything. It's certainly not a promotion of anything, other than, well, Barbie.
"And yet … CWA honestly think that this is some nefarious plot to indoctrinate 4-year-old girls into homosexuality and transsexual surgery. Yes, that's what they really think."
Mattel flatly denies any effort to purposely encourage gender confusion with the poll.
"Whenever we ask a child's gender, we provide her/him with three different answers: 'girl,' 'boy' and 'I don't want to say,'"explained Lauren Bruksch, a company spokeswoman. "Barbie.com always provides children with a neutral or non-response option."
Continued Bruksch: "In this particular case it was an innocent mistake; it should have read 'I don't want to say' as it does now. To suggest anything otherwise is ridiculous and irresponsible."
The spokeswoman said the answer "I don't know" is built into the sample answers of the rotating poll, and the fact it was not corrected before going live was an "unfortunate mistake."
