Parents Are Profiting From Child Abuse, And Corporate Media Like Fox News Are Helping

The Whittington family was once again in the news last week — this time when Fox News lauded their mission to make their 14-year-old daughter think she’s a boy.

Viewers were left furious after the often-conservative-friendly network aired an eight-minute segment fawning over the Whittingtons, a California family that has been pushing their daughter Ryland to deny her sex since she was an infant. The full-block fluff prompted backlash from prominent conservative voices for celebrating sex experiments that lead to “sexual dysfunction, infertility, cardiac event[,] endometrial cancer,” and even transition regret.

Perhaps the most disturbing detail to surface, however, is that Jeff and Hillary Whittington started projecting radical transgender ideology on Ryland before she could even talk.

This kind of imposition by parents and “medical professionals” on children is currently under scrutiny from multiple Republican-led states, including Florida and Texas. That criticism, however, hasn’t stopped people like the Whittingtons from making money from their decision to permanently alter their child’s body and mind because a young Ryland, who received a deaf diagnosis as a baby, showed an “aversion to anything feminine” and would scream “‘I’m a boy!’”

It also hasn’t stopped corporate media outlets like Fox from profiting from elevating stories of children on the path to permanent, life-changing, and often detrimental alterations.

The Whittingtons first publicized their decision to raise female Ryland as a boy in a YouTube video in 2014. The video, featuring photos and home videos of Ryland as a little girl before her parents cut her hair and dressed her like a boy, quickly went viral.

Since its publication, the video has recorded more than 8 million views and served as the inspiration for several TV segments and articles by corporate media outlets such as ABC News, national and local CBS News, and stations local to Southern California where the family resides.

Because the Whittingtons were willing to sacrifice their child’s privacy for views on their website, television, and social media, they’ve been hailed by journos at CNN, Fox News, and other corporate media outlets as “incredibly brave” for showing “extraordinary courage … particularly at a time when transgender issues have been politicized.”

CNN, in particular, wrote several articles celebrating the family’s decision to pretend that Ryland, a minor, is a boy. In 2015, shortly before the Whittingtons began exploiting Ryland’s struggles in the form of a book called “Raising Ryland: Our Story of Parenting a Transgender Child With No Strings Attached,” CNN featured the family in a short film designed to encourage parents like the Whittingtons to lean into their child’s “I don’t like to wear dresses” phase, frightening parents scared of unreliable self-harm and suicide statistics into promoting transgenderism.

The film even has its own promotional Facebook page. Multiple publishing companies including Harpers Collins and William Morrow also ran advertisements promoting Hillary’s book featuring personal details about Ryland’s childhood.

The family was also boosted by LGBT activists and organizations including one set up in honor of a known pervert, Harvey Milk.

The Whittingtons are not isolated in their decision to turn their child’s confusion into a public relations campaign for LGBT activism. Take a look at Jazz Jennings, the male child who was pushed into dressing like a girl at a young age. When Jazz’s parents publicized his story, news outlets picked it up and TLC offered the Jennings family a show.

The “I Am Jazz” show documents the young adult’s confusion, mental, and physical health issues, many of which LGBT activists claim will be fixed by chemically castrating and mutilating children.

Ryland’s mom said she felt like “a child abuser” for trying to stuff her protesting daughter into frilly outfits. But when it came to publicly denying Ryland’s sex and agreeing to a future of irreversible castration and mutilation that comes with accepting the anti-biology movement, she was all for it.

Corporate media helped create the transgender craze, which is why outlets are so comfortable promoting families who cash in on their children’s problems. Instead of balking at the idea of manipulating children’s bodies based on whims expressed as toddlers, media outlets plaster transgender models on the covers of magazines, boost stories about parents deceiving their children into believing things antithetical to science, and throw massive tantrums when Republicans say Disney and schools shouldn’t be teaching five-year-olds about drag queens or any sexual content. Even the Associated Press has officially welcomed plural pronouns used for a singular person as fact.

It’s bad enough that Ryland and kids like her will never live normal lives because their parents sacrificed their privacy for profit and political points. But the corporate media’s hunger for exploiting stories like Ryland’s makes it thousands of times worse and only feeds a craze that’s hurting an increasingly large percentage of the youngest generation.

Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire and Fox News. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.

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