THE CHRISTIAN POST–
The Babylon Bee’s Kyle Mann and Joel Berry want to make one thing clear: When satirizing hot-button issues, from LGBT ideology to celebrity pastors, their goal isn’t to demean individuals — it’s to mock harmful ideas they see as pushing society away from biblical truth.
“We love people,” Joel Berry, managing editor of the conservative parody website, told The Christian Post.
“We’re all made in God’s image. Our intention is to mock ideas because we see image-bearers of God being destroyed by these bad ideas. We always want to emphasize that, when we’re being especially savage or mocking in our tone, we’re trying to tear down an idea, not a person, and with the hope that the ultimate result is the elevation of that person to find their true meaning and purpose in Christ.”
And gender, particularly the confusion surrounding the topic and the chaotic aftermath that happens when individuals try to take control of definitions, is the latest controversial issue to get the Babylon Bee treatment.
The Babylon Bee Guide to Gender: The Comprehensive Handbook to Men, Women, and Millions of New Genders We Just Made Up!(Salem Books, Sept. 19), penned by Berry and Babylon Bee editor-in-chief Kyle Mann, explores the “colorful rainbow of genders and shares everything you need to know about gender identity, transgenderism and biological sex.”
The third installment in the duo’s guidebook series, the illustrated book gives gender and the ideology surrounding it the “full Babylon Bee treatment it deserves,” Berry told CP.
“This is something that we’ve been writing about and joking about for a few years now,” he said. “It’s almost become our bread and butter. If you look at us like reporters from clown world, gender ideology is kind of our beat; it’s the main lie that’s being propagated in our culture today. Writing this book felt like a natural extension of what we were already doing with the site.”UnmuteAdvanced SettingsFullscreenPauseUp Next
In the guidebook, Berry and Mann dive deep into the satirical exploration of gender ideology. They begin with tackling “traditional” male and female roles before citing “all 437 genders” and offering a “genderator” to help readers pick out some “new pronouns” like an “Elvish bi-annual oracle” or “Hylian hyper-dental hedgehog.”
“We tried to make them as insane as possible and I’m sure some of them are actually real,” Mann said.
There’s also a “reflect and apply” section where readers are prompted to, for example, “draw how you feel about your gender at this moment” or, for men, “list how you plan to become less toxic in the coming year.”
“We got to be really, really just disgustingly sexist in a good-natured way,” Mann said. “I think some of those male and female jokes are some of the joys of life. As married people who experience those differences, it’s fun to kind of joke about those. It anchors the book because you start with men and women, and then you get into gender ideology, where all of that is completely upturned, and it just becomes crazier and crazier.”
The duo’s approach to controversial topics hasn’t come without backlash. Last year, the Babylon Bee was suspended from Twitter after it awarded Rachel Levine, a trans-identified Biden official, the “Man of the Year” title.
They’re anticipating similar pushback once their latest book is released. Continue reading…
