Posted on 12/28/2014 12:18:17 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Hollywood recently unveiled yet another of many feature films for the holiday season, this one the ambitious World War II era character study, Unbroken. It was directed by Angelina Jolie, and while I haven’t seen it yet, the topic looks fascinating. When it came time for the red carpet activities, though, Jolie’s family had to step in for her and do a quick turn for the cameras. Here’s one photo from the event, featuring husband Brad Pitt and several of their children.
That’s a handsome group of fellows, isn’t it? But if you look a bit closer there’s a bit of a mystery here. The blond haired child in the center isn’t actually a boy at all. It’s Jolie’s eight year old daughter by birth, Shiloh. Susan Goldberg at PJ Media caught this story recently, in which we discover that Shiloh “identifies as a male” and chooses to go by the name John. This tale was oh so politically correctly highlighted by Refinery 29.
Angelina Jolie’s entire family recently stepped out on the red carpet to support their mother’s new movie, Unbroken. The couple’s oldest biological child, who was assigned female at birth, joined brothers Maddox and Pax wearing sharp suits and short haircuts.
Pitt and Jolie have been fairly open over the years about Shiloh’s interest in all things considered masculine. In an interview with Oprah in 2008, Brad Pitt discussed how Shiloh wanted to be called John.
The eight-year-old’s family fully supports their decision to self-identify — from an affinity for suits and ties to shorter hair to the name change.
While you pick your jaws up off the floor, I’ll offer up this example of the great lengths the reporter went to in order to ensure that nobody’s gender sensibilities were offended.
Editor’s Note: We have followed the Advocate’s lead, and referred to John Jolie-Pitt as “they” as a gender-neutral pronoun to respect John’s decision, whatever gender they may end up being.
While I generally try to avoid all things Hollywood in my own writing, this story has to make one wonder precisely how things went so far off track as to come to this turn of events. Goldberg has a theory:
Probably about as dumb as the Advocate grasping at straws via the stale tale of Shiloh Pitt, who apparently has been dressed in boyswear and given boyishly short haircuts by her parents since she was a toddler. Four years later, why wouldn’t an 8-year-old girl think she ought to be called “John”? If anything she’s aiming for a more defined gender identity than her parents have yet to give her, either through her name, her hair, or her clothing, let alone the gender-neutral pronouns being used to identify her in the media.
What is to become of this little girl in the future? And given the massive media attention paid to her parents and all things related to them, how can a new generation of children – most of whom have smart phones and tablets by the age of 8 these days – avoid thinking that there is something normal about this?
Young girls who grow up in a household with brothers can frequently take on tomboy characteristics. I observed that myself while growing up, visiting two male cousins at my Uncle’s farm. Their younger sister would traipse along with us (generally to our annoyance) and was frequently dressed in jeans and tee shirts since we were out playing on the farm. But she kept her birth name, and after puberty struck she was quickly wearing dresses and “girly” clothes, obsessing over boys and doing all the things that teenage girls do. There’s really nothing unusual about that at all.
But when media exposure changes the child’s perspective from wanting to go search for turtles and snakes with her brother to a reevaluation of her gender and switching to a masculine name, the car of that family is heading for the ditch. An eight year old knows nothing of sexuality and “gender identification” and, frankly, doesn’t need to know anything about it. She needs to have time to be a kid and do all the silly, fun things that kids do without worrying about such adult notions.
Shiloh may still turn around in a few years and become “Shiloh” again. But in the meantime, children around the world are looking at her and thinking, “I wonder if that’s who I am too?” This is not a solution. It’s a problem.
Wow. That’s low even for the Left.
I agree, unless they happen to be discussing linguistics.
If a person is pretending to be a person of the opposite sex, we have terms for that. If it's a job, he's "acting." If he or she really believes it, he or she is "nuts." If they're children, they are "pretending."
Just like Nancy Mekon
Wow. I was just kidding!
What a strange place...
That naturally follows, when children are the offspring of “Parent A” and “Parent B.”
You know, I went out to find this and found it.
I just watched the interview. If it's the one I found, I'm not sure I wouldn't have been offended by the (supposed) comedian doing the interview.
Perhaps this is what passes for funny on the show, but this was over the top IMO.
I would have stood up and walked off the set.
100% insightful. Also, I have noticed that mothers of “transsexual children” gain a lot of attention through being brave enough to support such unique children ... yadda yadda ... The whole situation is usually created by a neurotic, attention seeking mother.
Yes, I agree. This really needs to be confronted.
Here is where FReepers all turn on me. Sliding into my ash-covered flameproof overalls..,.
Children whose gender identity doesn’t match their gender are innocent children. They really feel the way they feel. IN MY OPINION after experience with these kids, they are exactly the same as children with ADHD or born addicted to drugs or born with Diabetes 1 or even cancer. THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG WITH THEM hormonally / neurologically. They can’t help this and it is not directly their parents’ “fault.”
It is important to allow these children as normal a childhood as you can. Just as we make changes and allowances for kids with cerebral palsy and Down Syndrome we need to include kids with gender differences in our world. We don’t force kids with known, named disabilities to do things they can’t do.
REMEMBER, as conservatives, we hate the gay AGENDA pushing us in politically correct directions. This agenda is keeping us from calling gender differences “disabilities,” which would be correct.
I know very well that these kids, and there are MANY MORE OF THEM these days, to where your family’s next generation may well be affected, can’t help the way they deeply feel. They show these preferences right away, as soon as they transition from baby to toddler.
The Jolie - Pitts decided to accept their daughter’s wishes as they stood. She considers herself a “he.” This may last or it may not. I have seen it go both ways. But for now, the kid is heard, understood, and allowed to simply be. She is EIGHT. She has a gender problem caused by hormones in the uterus or plastics or fake sugars or who knows what in our environment is influencing these diseases of the sex centers in the brain and genitalia. There is an epidemic of defects in these centers, and something outside of this innocent girl is causing this.
Please, as conservatives, let’s focus on freedom. Let everyone parent THEIR WAY. If one of my children, no matter what I did, insisted they were the other gender, would I really want all my energies spent fighting what they feel? They are EIGHT!!!
Everyone who is about to flame me, please try this. Ask your doctor for the opposite gender’s hormone creams. After a month of men taking estrogen and women taking men dosages of testosterone, please come to me and tell me what you could not will away. How much less can a fetus will away, when she is being bombarded with the wrong stuff at exactly the window when her gender center is being CREATED? Now come after me. Take your best shots.
Surgery, especially one as detailed as this, carries risks. So does the body’s reaction to foreign materials (especially plastics) being inside my body. When weighed with the fact that it does not 100% prevent bc, my breast team and I decided against it. They did encourage genetic testing, but I turned that down for the reasons I stated previously. The bottom line is early detection. If one chooses an extremely painful and risky surgery to maybe prevent something that might not even happen, and additionally becoming more preventable and treatable every year, then so be it. It’s just not the correct choice for me.
God bless you and keep you. I’ve seen loved ones battle cancer and my prayers are with you.
this is a difficult subject for me I have a sister that claims that she should be a man and treated as one. my sister started talking about it being all right to be a girl with masculine qualities when she was 21 or 22 five years later she was claiming that she was transgendered and wanted to be called by a male name not her female name. it is really hard on me because I see and I know that it is psychiatric in nature but because of political correctness and those having psychiatric disorders like this taking over psychiatry in the 70s it is not treated as a disorder. I find that most people that claim they have an understanding About this don’t including those that realize that gender is not interchangeable. no mater what you do you cant change your chromosomes. I don’t claim to understand what is happening with my sister and I always cringe when I hear jokes about it because it is to close to home for me to see the humor in it. When I see some one like Angela Jolie encouraging there daughter to think she is a man I cringe because I think it is not good for the kid at all. maybe the kid will feel that she is a he later on after puberty but to encourage it before adult hood is not helpful. let the kid be a kid and don’t reinforce the belief that they need to change there sex.
Wow, that's going out to my women's group. Thanks for the link.
If this story is true, someone should make both adult Pitt’s kneel down and have their a....s literally kicked for one hour straight. Hard with a steel-toed boot.
Nancy has had quite a successful career since then, and is married with two children. It appears she’s currently performing in some Disney Channel thing.
Jolie is also reputed to be a libertarian who strongly dislikes President Obama, so there’s that also to bear in mind when parsing the headlines that the Hollywood actress is “crazy.” In the view of many Hollywood liberals, anyone who disagrees with them is ipso facto “crazy.” It is unclear if politics plays any role in the emails’ strong language.
Given that her father is one of Hollywood's handful of "out" conservatives, let's cut her some slack until more is known. Hope the kid "recovers" around age 11 when the hormones start kicking in.
Nonsense.
Especially in a case like this where the family would eat only expensive organic food and not even that much meat.
“”I’m sensing some sort of warped identification with her stepfather from that photo””
Brat Pitt is her natural father but to use the word natural when it comes to that family just isn’t - well, natural!
You can google the “female” part of that couple and you will see that she doesn’t know if she’s afoot or horseback. She is really a pathetic individual. There is no way those kids will grow up unharmed but of course, what we consider “harmed” is foreign to anyone in Hollywood. Of course, Pitt himself at one time was considered normal but hitching up with that person sure destroyed that description.
Want a live in boyfriend/girlfriend at the age of 14 - no problem; their mother did it with the consent of her own mother. Drugs, no problem - ditto. Bisexual relationships - ditto. Urge to marry someone of your own sex - don’t fight it; embrace it.
A very sick individual and I don’t care how much money she makes in the pretend world.
Yaelle, there is something certainly wrong our environment (and I'm not talking about anthropogenic climate change) with GMOs, growth hormones in meat and milk, plastics, certain untested vaccinations and a plethora of harmful chemicals that people come in contact with every day. There are indeed more children born with indeterminate genitalia and we must be sensitive those who deal with this. However, this is not androgen insensitivity or Klinfelter's, etc., issue.
This is something else. Certainly, there are children who display characteristics which do not conform with their biological sex. There will be boys who act "girly" and girls who act "boyish." But you are conflating actual biological, intersexual issues with parents who will NOT do right by their children.
It is an atrocity to tell those children that simply because they act or dress a certain way, they were born in the wrong bodies. To tell them that their perfectly healthy sexual organs are a biological mistake and must be removed is evil. If the brain is at odds with the reality of their healthy sexual organs, then it is the brain that must be treated. Destruction of natural, orderly body is wicked.
I think in your noble need to be kind and supportive to innocent children, you are doing them a disservice in assuming that everything will be ok if we just let them be what they want to be, rather than conform to what they actually are.
A few years ago when my daughter went to dance class I met a divorced woman with three daughters. Her middle child was tomboyish, but looked in every way female and the woman proudly called the girl, "My son." Why could this woman not be proud of her daughter who was just not into dancing like her sisters, but enjoyed other pursuits?
And to say, well, Shiloh's only 8, she'll grow out of it, is not true. The first 5 years of a child's life are critical to forming their identity. Why do you think children are starting school earlier and earlier? It is so the state can form their minds, not parents. If Shiloh has been called John since she was 2 years old and treated like a boy all her life, despite the fact that her body is female, she will always relate to being a male, because that is what she has been raised to think herself as.
I know you speak out of kindness, but that sort of kindness leads to utter cruelty and lies. Yes, people have a right to raise their children as they wish, but they do not have the right to abuse their children. This is abuse, plain and simple.
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