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.
It’s a weird thing. Here we are in a culture in which, they say, children are encouraged to “be themselves.” However, as soon a child steps outside the strictest gender stereotyping, then adults claim the child is homosexual or has even changed sex.
When I was about 3, I told everyone I was Christopher Robin. He had all those nice animal friends and what seemed like the best possible life. Nobody in 1969 went crazy and said I’d changed into a boy or “identified as male.”
That’s what happened to Warren Beatty & Annette Bening’s daughter Kathlyn. She goes by the name Stephen name and considers herself a homosexual male.
I recall she had some vicious words for another mentally-insane female, Chastity Bono, saying, “I don’t want any rich white trans guy [sic] telling the media that testosterone made him [sic] a misogynist. He [sic] has some deep-seated misogyny to work through.”
It’s so confusing in Hollywood.
Didn’t know about Shirley MacLaine’s daughter, but I did read Mommy Dearest by Joan Crawford’s daughter. And I was just thinking of Cher’s really pretty daughter, Chastity, who became Chaz.
Perhaps the most prevalent disease in Hollywood is narcissism. It leaves a lot of wreckage in its wake. Narcissists don’t seem to suffer but everyone around them does.
I think Brad Pitt is probably a decent parent who is staying around for the kids…unless his mother was also a narcissist and he’s used to taking abuse. But handsome, successful Brad Pitt?
Freak, and the parents are child abusers. Please, NK, nuke Hollyweird
I think you are right about Cher and all the poor victims of Hollywood upbringings.
I had no opinion on Brad Pitt (aside from liking him in a movie long ago) until he appeared in some comedy interview in which he spit on the interviewer. He did it with such hatred and ugliness that I thought: he’s a pig. He’s no Steve McQueen. It turned me off.
“Stephen’s” a homosexual male now? LOL! What a revenge on Beatty who screwed a thousand ladies and now pays the price. If he even cares...
Dads have to show they value the femininity in their daughters from the time their girl is little. Moms have to teach the girl what is feminine. It works really well this way!
I have two teenage daughters. Both are gorgeous, btw. They know when to wear t’s and jeans and when to put on a dress. That was taught! They both know they are pretty GIRLS because they were told that by us. One is an athlete, and one is quite the tomboy.
These parents have not done their job of developing a healthy self concept in their daughter. Yet I am sure they think being supportive of her choices is the right thing.
REally? He spit on the interviewer? The eternal puer.
I do have a hard time watching him try to look manly onscreen…he isn’t aging well, in the sense that he doesn’t look mature. Maybe that’s why he hangs with Angelina, who, I’m totally convinced, is a micro-managing narcissist who surrounds herself with low-self esteem people.
Is this not Child Abuse? Perhaps The Reverend Jesse Jackson and other members of 'The Black Church' would be interested if this were a Negro child.
Yes; I wish I could tell you what it was but it was in passing while probably watching something equally improbable. I agree that she wears the pants in the family and is a complete idiot.
BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley.
she has two x chromosomes. she is female.
this breaks my heart. Angelina Jolie knows better. Sad.
LOL @ your reply. I never meet these kinds of weirdos in my sheltered little life, I almost wish that I did so that I could make some such reply just to pizz them off like you did :) Thanks for bringing a dose of reality to the reality-challenged, for all the good it probably did, since this sick world “validates” them.
“Angelina said she didn’t care for her natural child as much as she did the adopted ones.”
This is another psychotic behavior of liberals. Their tendency to think that the grass is always greener on the other hill. That other countries, besides their own and especially communism, has better insight into managing a country. That someone else, especially “elites”, are better at determining how things should be governed. That children other than their own are smarter and better equipped to take on the world. So they diss their own children and treat them as outcasts. Liberals hate themselves and their own offspring.
Yes and Stalin enjoyed the ballet and Hitler loved dogs and Idi Amin was a funny guy who could tell jokes. Every human on earth that ever lived had some semi-decent quality.
Angelina had a sexual relationship with her brother, an affair with a married man and is raising her daughter as a boy. She does not get an earthly pass just because she hates Obama and adopted a few kids. What happens after her earthly life is over is a mystery, just like the rest of us.
To a certain extent, one should care. Unfortunately we live in a media-connected one-world. Court jesters and actors have been deemed the new nobility and many peasants revere them. Monkey see monkey do.
It took him a while to accept it, but Warren is now very proud of his “son.”
As twoetc observes, this kind of thing trickles down. Every couple of months, there’s discussion here of the latest case of some parents making the local news claiming their child is “transgendered.” They didn’t come up with this on their own: they saw it on TV or read it in “People.”
A generation ago, kids could grow up without their basic biological identity’s being challenged. Now, more and more nutty parents realize they can get some attention by psychologically warping their children.
She said this in 2008:
“Obama is fighting for international justice, he wants to intervene militarily in genocides abroad, and he wants to close down Guantanamo Bay. They are things which could move me to vote for him, not his roots. Of course, an American president like Barack Obama would be great for my family.”
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