Off Target: more hate, less sense
Randomly I happened upon the hashtag “#OffTarget” in my regular downward spiral of consuming too much media before bed. Boy did the Internet not disappoint. In fact it delivered so viciously that I was at one point in disbelief that people could be so ridiculously consumed by their zealous dogma.
The Target Corporation recently announced a move toward gender neutral toys. This just means that girl assigned stuff will be removed from the aisle labels. Normally my feministic passion would protest because of zealous women rule motives but this is actually a great and sensible move toward science base reasoning on child psychology and understanding how sex and gender work… FYI sex assignment and gender are not the same thing; but to the feeble minded they are. (Here is my blog post about heterogeneous toy options and why I think they are better for kids.)
So Target Corp takes the word “girl” off some stuff and then a barrage of Twitter hate follows, spearheaded by the efforts of Franklin Graham- who I assume is a famous right wing Christian.
Now ok, I get how Christians want to preserve certain “values”, but I’d like to say that if his campaign wasn’t spearheaded in the wake of the EPA travesty at the Gold King Mine on the Animas River I would say “yes, you tell those corporations what they should not be doing with their marketing dollars you contributed with your consumer spending”. Everyone has their right. But this highly trivial point led to more anti liberal anti conservative and mostly ignorant opinionated banter in an imaginary world we call the Internet. What real things are these people doing to make the world better other than yelling in 140 characters.
It’s preposterous beyond entertaining. It’s sad and its bleak for us on this planet. A major fresh water supply has been ruined for most of our own personal eternities and we are focused on how parents buy toys that ultimately end up in the trash or maybe at a Goodwill if we “care”.
The throwing around of the term “PC” also had me a bit nervous. This meant that ultra conservative whites still felt ok with having their very bigoted beliefs about everyone other than themselves. They believe in the Donald Trump dream of offensive slurs and hate induced rants. They believe in the dream of the first Amendment amended to their own ideas of what can and cannot be said. They use their constitutional rights and religious freedom to insight their modern day Red Scare or Salem Witch Hunt. Bullies.
Societal extremism makes me nervous. Not just conservative extremists but liberal extremists as well. On one end we are allowing religious fervor motivated by a racist, sexist white male God to rule society. On the other end we are allowing humanity and human desire backed loosely by science to rule society. Both in small doses are not so bad; but in large doses are destructive to the intricate balance of human preservation.
It ultimately comes down to common sense. Why are we fighting about what people are putting in their carts? If we want to get all biblical, consumerism and capitalism would go against many Christian covenants. How are religious leaders not stepping in to send aid to those in the Amina’s River region? Did Jesus not preach giving and helping our bretheren or are most conservative Christians convenient Christians?
Whatever scientific or non-scientific side of the sex assignment and gender debate you’re on, that’s your right. It’s also your right to boycott a massive corporation for their lack of fitting in with your beliefs. I just want everyone, liberals and conservatives, to keep their zealous fervor in perspective. If not, we’re no better than the Pharisees and Sadducees or the Patricians and Plebians and one day we’ll succumb to the insanity and self destruct.
