Oh yes, the “show with the mouse”. Week after week she explains to us, and above all to our children, how the world works on television. Which meanwhile involves a bit more than the quality of a pencil or the question “How does the grass get into the stadium?”. The mouse always explains something. So that the children understand. So, in a post weeks ago, she pointed out what transsexuality is: “A trans person is someone who, for example, was born a girl, but is actually a boy. Or the other way around, when a boy was born but actually feels like a girl.”
That first excited ex-“Bild” boss Julian Reichelt. He fears that the children could be instigated with this ARD contribution to question their gender. The elaborated version of this point of view was recently provided by a hotly debated guest article in the “Welt”. Five authors accused ARD and ZDF of indoctrinating “our children”. In the “show with the mouse” there is a “transgender ideology”, public television wants to “sexualize and re-educate” children.
This not only upset the queer community, but also Springer CEO Mathias Döpfner, who in a letter to employees criticized the generality with which public broadcasters were criticized for their reports on transsexual identities among children and young people.
He also disliked the guest post’s suggestion that there are only two gender identities. Scientifically, the text is at best “roughly one-sided”, the “whole tone superficial, condescending and resentful. Not far removed from the reactionary attitude: homosexuality is a disease.”
Leaving aside the debate on freedom of expression, this dispute would certainly help if there was some relaxation on all sides. Anyone who watches the incriminated mouse program in the ARD media center or on YouTube will ask themselves: If this is an incitement to question gender, then after the program with the pencil we should all want to become a pencil.
Seriously, why shouldn’t children be introduced to this topic? Especially since it’s not in a vacuum. There are diversity debates everywhere, more public education and coming-outs. This could also help young people who are unsure of their sexual identity, who feel like a boy as a girl or vice versa, to deal with this critical situation, to seek help, to build on understanding.
The mouse arouses sympathy for people who do not belong to mainstream society, including trans people. That is the reality of life. It belongs in the “Broadcast with the Mouse”.
