Yesterday I saw the article somebody posted on here about an animated show on Netflix called Ridley Jones, which just came out with an episode revolving around a non binary character (who is a regular member of the cast) coming out and revealing her name and pronouns to her grandmother (who still knows her as a female).

Out of curiosity, I thought I would watch the episode for myself and see exactly what kind of message it would teach to kids. I ended up watching two episodes of the show, and it was much worse than I thought.

Happy Herd Day

I had never watched this cartoon before, so I went in completely blind with this episode. The show seems like a sweet little cartoon at first, it’s about a girl who lives in a museum where all the exhibits come to life. But then the actual plot of the episode got going, and I was horrified.

The plot of the episode is that the bison, Fred, is seeing her grandmother for the first time in a while for her “Herd Day” where she gets to learn how to lead the herd of bison. However, the grandmother calls her by her original name, Winnifred, not knowing that her granddaughter now identifies as nonbinary. The rest of the story is about Fred working up the courage to come out to her grandma.

There were several things that annoyed me about this episode:

• Fred is a female bison (calf?). She’s tomboyish and headstrong, but there’s no reason why she can’t just identify as a girl.

• Fred actually uses the word “non binary” in the episode. And keep in mind, this is a preschool show, not a show aimed at older kids or teens. Kids as young as 3 or 4 could be watching this episode.

• The song at the end of the episode is very clearly trying to shove in as many “theys” and “thems” as possible when referring to Fred. It’s grammatically confusing and jarring to hear as an adult, and I’m sure it would be even more difficult for a young child to understand.

• One of the transitions between scenes in the song shows bands of colors that are very obviously meant to be the non-binary flag colors. It was almost like they were subliminally adding that in, because children probably wouldn’t know what the nonbinary flag looks like.

• Throughout the episode, Fred becomes repeatedly stressed out and anxious when she is referred to as “she” or even when her grandma says the word “granddaughter.” Like being called that term by someone who loves you very much is the worst thing to happen to you.

I wanted to watch this episode because while non-binary characters in kids shows have been seen before, this is the first time as far as I know that a main character identifies this way, and that their pronouns and gender identity are made into a plot for an entire episode. But it turns out that there was another episode featuring Fred and her non-binary identity, and it was just as bad.

Bison Ball

This episode came out before the one I just talked about. In the episode, the characters are having a dance/ball in the museum, and Fred wants to find something to wear. Her friends try and help her and pick out a dress for her, which Fred does not like. She ends up wearing a blue suit and feeling much better about it.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with the basic idea of this episode, a girl not wanting to wear a dress and learning it’s okay to not wear a dress if she doesn’t want to. In fact, I would love this episode but for one thing. They make it clear that Fred is not a girl, and that she doesn’t want to wear a dress because she’s not a girl. This is a very dangerous message to give to kids. It’s basically saying that only girls wear dresses, and anyone who doesn’t want to wear a dress must not be a girl somehow. I can only imagine how many girls might feel after watching this episode. I hate to sound like a Bible-thumper here, but it’s indoctrination, plain and simple. Let girls be girls. Let girls be tomboys. They do not need to be seeing this kind of stuff. I’m glad the show is getting cancelled.