Johnny the Walrus is a Picture Book written by conservative political commentator Matt Walsh and illustrated by K. Reese.
It is about a boy named Johnny who enjoys pretending to be a different animal each day. One day, he pretends to be a walrus, which his mother finds adorable, posting a video of it on the internet. However, this causes a large number of people on the internet to think he is really a walrus, and start demanding that his mother help him transition into becoming a real one, which she caves to very quickly. Johnny, however, is not comfortable with what his mother is making him do to fully transition. Despite his protests, however, his mother keeps forcing the transition process on him, lest she be labelled a bigot by people on the internet.
The story is a not-so-subtle allegory for gender transition written by someone who opposes such treatment, as Matt Walsh claims it should be banned for everyone of all ages
. The book was written in response to progressive children's books Walsh disliked like C is for Consent and The GayBCs.
The book was published on March 29th, 2022.
The books contain examples of:
- Abusive Parents: Johnny's mother makes him wear itchy makeup and dress up like a walrus to his discomfort.
- Adults Are Useless: Johnny's mother and the "Woke Doctor" as well as several people on the internet want to force Johnny to become a walrus.
- An Aesop:
- The book's intended lesson is "Don't force being transgender on children who are too young to understand what it is and haven't really figured themselves out yet, and just let them be kids in their own way.".
- Another thing Matt has pointed out, and can be seen as another lesson in this book, is "Children have very active imaginations and like to pretend to be things they clearly aren't. If your son says he's a girl, that doesn't automatically mean he identifies as a girl and needs to transition into one, it's more likely he's just pretending.".
- Allegory: The book is a very blatant one of gender transition, with people calling Matt's mother "phobic" if she doesn't let her child transition to a walrus. The medical doctor represents the medical community as a whole, which supports transition.
- Ambiguously Absent Parent: Johnny's mother appears to be his only parent. His father is nowhere to be seen, but his whereabouts are never explained.
- Artistic License – Biology: Walruses eat fish and mollusks, not worms. It's never explained why the "wormones" for the transformation would be delivered in that form.
- Artistic License – Medicine:
- Johnny is not the one who wants to start walrus treatment, and is in fact extremely vocal about not wanting to do it from the get-go. No trans healthcare is going to force a kid to start treatment when they are literally explicitly stating, from the very beginning, that they do not want to do it.
- Johnny goes on "wormones" which are said to make whiskers grow. Judging by his prepubescent appearance and childish behavior, Johnny would actually be much too young to even potentially start hormones, or even puberty blockers (which are obviously only taken when puberty starts).
- Author Avatar: The "voice of reason" zookeeper looks like a crudely drawn Matt Walsh.
- Clueless Aesop: The book is meant to be an allegory about why forcing kids to be trans is bad. But since it is a children's book, the book is forced to use a kid being forced to become a walrus as a metaphor. And since he cannot touch on how gender transitioning actually works, the book depicts the process as Johnny being forced to undergo cartoonishly ludicrous proceedures that are immediately reversed at the end. It's telling that when Matt Walsh read the book to a group of kids, they had absolutely no idea what Matt was talking about.
- Easy Sex Change: Metaphorically speaking. Johnny's "transition" into a walrus is meant to be an allegory for sex change, but the process happens far too fast to work as one. Johnny is forced against his will to wear makeup, stick wooden spoons in his mouth, eat worms (which come in a pill bottle labeled "Wormones"), and is scheduled for a surgery that will mutilate his feet, all after a single check-up, and without any input from Johnny himself. In reality, before any medical treatment would even be on the table, a minor's transition would start off with a several months-long psychological evaluation period, during which it would quickly become apparent that Johnny isn't a "trans-walrus", considering how much he complains about wanting the transition to stop.
- Mad Doctor: The "Woke Doctor" immediately suggest amputating Johnny's feet to turn him into a walrus.
- New Media Are Evil: The internet community is portrayed as being stupid and reckless, trying to turn Johnny into a walrus without good cause.
- Nonconformist Dyed Hair: One of the pro-walrus sign-wavers has purple hair, while the Woke Doctor has bright pink hair, marking them as caricatures of left-wingers (who are often stereotyped as having dyed hair).
- Only Sane Man: The zookeeper, who tells Johnny's mother not to listen to the people on the internet who are making her force transitioning into a walrus on her son.
- Propaganda Piece: This book is an introduction to transphobic rhetoric for kids, from a political pundit who is known for rallying against LGBT civil rights.
- Scare Campaign: The book makes a distinct attempt to depict gender affirming treatment as something scary that's forced upon children against their will. One can draw parallels between the "Woke Doctor" trying to amputate Johnny's legs to the canard of referring to gender-affirming surgery as "mutilation".
- Straw Character: The internet community is depicted as a bunch of idiots who think Johnny should transition to a walrus, as a straw version of transgender activists.
- Strawman U: The Doctor got a "Woke Doctor" degree from the "University of Doctoring". This aligns with Walsh's belief that any sort of higher education amounts to liberal brainwashing.
- Scare 'Em Straight: Or "Scare 'em Cisgender", anyway. The book tries to warn readers about the harm of gender transition (using species transition as a metaphor).
- Trans Nature: People in the internet assume that Johnny wants to actually become a walrus.
- Waving Signs Around: The people who demand that Johnny's mom let him embrace his true walrus self are shown waving around signs saying things like "Johnny is a REAL Walrus" and "Let Johnny Transition".
- What the Hell, Hero?: The Zookeeper questions Johnny’s mother for her willingness to value public opinion over the needs of her son after she nearly leaves Johnny at a Zoo to live as a Walrus.
- World Gone Mad: This is a world where doctors are trained to give surgeries to turn people into walruses, a procedure which activists support performing on minors without their consent. The allegory being used suggests that to the author, a world in which trans people have rights is itself a World Gone Mad.
