ABSOLUTELY NOT BUYING ANY OF IT! The whole thing is absurd and is not founded in any medical or scientific literature. It is 100% cultural, social contagion. I love the overvalued belief concept. I truly believe that it is the media and a very small minority of people that have whipped this whole thing up. Crazy.
Not buying it either. Having rights does NOT equal removing rights from someone else, in this case, real girls and women. No crime should be punished by rape. No girl should have to change for a game in the bathroom to avoid a naked male in the locker room. No woman should be kicked out of her gym for complaining about a rude, aggressive man in the women’s locker room. I remember a world before Title IX, when we DID have to change in the bathroom because there were no girls’ locker rooms. I’m not willing to see this generation of girls relegated to the same miserable treatment just because a deluded boy and his parents think his feels are more important that girls’ actual RIGHTS.
Good point about ghosts of the pre-Title IX days returning to haunt us. I have countless memories, and have heard even more stories, of the times when all the school and college resources were invested in boys' sports, while we girls had to make do. We must not allow the male-centered powers that be inflict the same second-class treatment on girls today.
I used to babysit for an awesome family and one day I asked the three-almost-four-year-old what she wanted to be when she grew up. She replied instantly: 'A boy!'. She just graduated from college and is not a boy. And never wanted to be as she got older. A three year old knows some things. But not all the things. I do believe that for a very small group of humanity, that they do inherently know something different about themselves when they are small. But it's definitely not of a size that warrants all this cancelling, kow-towing, and wide acceptance of anything and everything with no questions asked.
"A three year old knows some things. But not all the things." Ha - how true. I too "believe that some kids know something inherently different about themselves"... but as one of those former kids myself, I think it's usually a sense of differentness, and sex-adjacent, because they're gay or gender-nonconforming. They don't fit into the world they see. They express it a variety of ways. None of it should be taken any more literally than other childhood beliefs. They just need support, permission - and facts, including that sex is permanent and unchanging.
its the speed of the takeover that really got me, so many people willing to believe in the gender dysphoria without question. then i guess covid did the same. we need some sort of hand break on the human condition to believe absolute nonsense
I don't disagree with any of this. Where I live, the local news has been covering a story about a kid who is homeschooled for religious reasons and his parents are suing the state high school sports governing association because they want him to be able to participate in organized sports. So to me, this is a misplaced sense of entitlement. And all I see with these pronouncements about how trans men should be treated is entitlement. All of this is out of control. The entitlement some people feel -- to be entitled to my space as a woman, entitled to my support as a voter, entitled to my approval, entitled to my support as a human -- is frankly appalling. I don't appreciate being accused of some kind of bias because I don't agree with the decisions people make. Because it is a decision. To have surgery is a decision. I do feel that this for lack of a better term trans evangelism is a complete loser with average voters and we have to find one or two sentences to articulate agreement with average people that it is not the majority view.
Hi Carol, Well, I searched at length, but can’t find it. Alas. That was from memory, rather than notes, so I’ll have to give up. I removed it from the story. Sorry about that.
It's definitely nonsense, and it immediately falls apart if you ask: what is a trans woman? And reply to the idiocy of: everyone who feels like a woman, with: so I'm a trans woman, when my period hurts, but not when it's over, and I'm not feeling especially womanly anymore?
A woman claiming she's a trans woman because she feels like a woman immediately lets the genderistas froth at the mouth. They immediately show unbridled how much they hate actual women.
But you can only get there by asking the actual question, which isn't: what is a woman.
That is a question no one should never have asked! It was the question they wanted us to ask, because it's the entryway to their bs.
The only legitimate question in this debate that needs to be answered is: what is a trans woman?
And any answer to this can immediately be dismantled, because only a man can ever be or become a trans woman. It's absolutely impossible to define that term, without admitting that they are men.
Good question, though you might consider using the compound form, i.e., "transwoman". And try looking at Wiktionary's more or less coherent differentiation between that and the adjective-noun pair that you're using:
Wiktionary: "Trans woman" is often spelled with a space, with "trans" as an adjective modifying the noun "woman", similar to "Asian woman", "tall woman", "fat woman", etc. The unspaced spelling "transwoman" is sometimes used interchangeably, including by a few transgender people. However, it is often associated with views (notably gender-critical feminism) that hold that transgender women are not women, and thus require a separate word from woman to describe them; for this reason, many transgender people find "transwoman" offensive.
That many "transgender people" find "transwoman" "offensive" is sufficient reason in itself to use it at every opportunity.
But to answer your question, transwomen are, at best, just male transvestites if they still have their nuts attached and sexless eunuchs if they don't.
But you may wish to take a gander at my kick at that kitty -- something of a Cheshire cat, one with rather more than 9 lives 😉🙂 -- close to 4 years ago now:
The problem, in a nutshell, is that far too many people don't quite realize that "male" and "female" are just names for categories; that, biologically speaking at least, "male" and "female" are simply labels -- not "immutable identities" -- for those individuals who have some significant properties in common, i.e., the presence of either spermatogenesis or oogenesis, respectively:
As I think I've indicated in that post, "male" and "female" are something in the way of abstractions. It is the "sin", the logical fallacy of reification to turn those abstractions into real things. Absolutely no one has or can point to their males and females -- except as euphemisms for their genitalia:
QUOTE; Oxford Dictionaries:
sex; noun
1) (chiefly with reference to people) sexual activity, including specifically sexual intercourse.
1.1) euphemistic; in singular; A person's genitals.
2) Either of the two main categories (male and female) into which humans and most other living things are divided on the basis of their reproductive functions. UNQUOTE
About children saying that they are the opposite sex:
When i was a kid growing up if you had asked me I would've told you I wanted to be a boy, in fact I remember being asked and saying this. Well of course, in my eyes boys got the freedom to climb trees and get dirty, they didn't have to wear dresses etc... what I also remember is at one stage a friend managed to convince me I was a vampire, I was so convinced that I was walking around my house in the dark and when my mother went to turn on the light I cried in horror because I GENUINELY thought I was going to die.... (it's funny now)
I was able to grow up without the gender nonsense, it gives me chills to think what would've happened had I grown up in this climate..
When I was 14, I wanted to study car mechanics at school. I was told no, because that was a subject for boys. Instead I could do typing (which, to be fair, I enjoyed and excelled in). Looking back I probably only wanted to do it because I liked to push the boundaries, I was a feminist even then! And I can see that if the option had been available then, I would have pulled the trans card out and said "I think I'm a boy". Which of course would have been wrong, but it would mean I would have got my own way. And potentially gone down the whole physical change route.
I'm so glad that being able to choose your gender at will if life wasn't going your way wasn't a thing then.
Yes! So many young feminists, lesbians, rebels and nonconformists are convinced we would have embraced the trans route also. Thank goodness we were not born in this era. And thank goodness we can effect change by speaking out now.
Exactly. Children play, fantasize, develop irrational ideas and fears. They need permission to do all that… and information about reality. And yes, boys had and still have much more freedom, and much less sexual harassment, and zero compulsory femininity, which I perceived as a strait jacket. I thought feminism would fix all of that, but… alas.
I'm not buying any of it anymore. I may have bought parts of it piecemeal at one time, but I have since returned all of it. People who believe in it deserve the same protections as any other group, but trying to bend law and society around this belief system as if it were unassailable concrete reality has been chaotic and unproductive in the extreme.
I don’t know many kids but the ones I do are forever making stuff up as they try to figure out the world. Such creative, curious and interesting persons! ❤️ your reply to the alleged “trans” infant.
I wonder why parents don’t just ask their kids when they make these profound statements “why do you think you’re a girl?” Because guaranteed they will have an answer and it’s not going to be something big like “because I think sex is a social construct”, “I think a doctor arbitrary assigned me the wrong sex at birth”, or “because my “gender identity” doesn’t match my birth sex”. This crap is fed to children by adults.
It’s most likely because he likes pink, dolls and someone older who he thinks knows more than him has told him that makes you a girl.
So be the adult in the room and just say “I’m not buying any of it” and tell the little ones why that is in simple words they can grasp.
My neighbor's grandson has said 3 or 4 times between the ages of three and six, "I'm a girl." Why? Not because he likes sexist toys reserved for girls. Not because he wants to wear dresses. But ONLY because he's being taught in school that some boys are girls.
I don't know how to change someone's mind who is that far into the cult. All I can do is tell you how it happened for me.
When I met my neighbor, we were on the sidewalk bemoaning Trump, and she said, "And I have a trans grandchild in Vermont. . ." I began involuntarily shaking my head, saying quietly, "Don't, don't, don't." She said, "What?" I said, "Don't trans the child. Don't do it. It's a horrible cult and will destroy his body."
Because she knew I hated Trump, and I was obviously genuinely scared for the child, she listened for a few minutes and asked me to send her links to the articles I was citing. I sent them to her, saying, "Your beautiful little grandson needs to be told the truth: human beings can't change sex. Boys are always boys, and girls are always girls. That's the truth. He's a beautiful little boy. Please, please tell him the truth."
She might have discussed it with her daughter in Vermont, but it didn't stop them. I saw her daughter one day walking down the street looking like a furious robot, and I thought, 'That's how she has to face the world now, because she knows what she's doing is wrong, and she's still absolutely determined to do it.'
When I raised my son pacifist and non-sexist, I knew what I was doing was right, so I was able to walk down the street like a normal person. I wasn't at war with the world. I was at peace with my values.
One day about a year later, my neighbor wanted to text me something, but came back saying she couldn't find me in her phone. She had no idea why, but I'm guessing someone blocked my number.
Now my neighbor refers to the boy as "she," while I continue to guilelessly refer to him as "he." In fact, I've stopped hanging out in my yard until we can get a fence built, because I can't force myself to go along with it whenever she comes by.
He was a nice little boy and used to wave and call hello to me whenever he saw me. I even texted her once, after she brought him by wearing a girl's hairband, and told her I liked his hairband and that my little boy used to wear one just like it. I'm guessing she never got that.
All I want is for her to let me get close enough to the child to say, "DON'T LET THEM GIVE YOU THE MEDICINE. The doctors are lying to your parents. It's not safe. It will hurt. It will damage your body. Your parents love you and just want you to be happy, so tell them you're happy as a boy. DON'T LET THEM GIVE YOU THE MEDICINE."
I don’t think she’s completely down the rabbit hole yet. I think she thinks she’s being supportive and “following her son’s lead” by buying him girls’ clothes at his request, not pushing them on him. She seems more bemused by the whole thing than anything, the other day referring to him as “non-binary” but saying he hadn’t asked for different pronouns. (We were around other colleagues so I couldn’t really probe into what she meant by that without it becoming a huge thing.)
Like you, I desperately want to keep the boy from being medicalized. The trouble is, we’re in a blue workplace in a blue city in a blue state, so all the cultural influences are in the direction of affirmation. (And hence my reluctance to get into it with her in others’ earshot.)
It’s funny you mention raising your son as a pacifist. Apparently it’s this child’s peaceful nature that is at least in part contributing to this identification: he has reacted to seeing boys fighting in the schoolyard by basically saying he doesn’t want to be a boy if that’s what boys do. When I heard this (from my colleague, the mom, some time ago) I didn’t have the presence of mind to say something like “but can’t you point out to your son that his dad [who I’ve met] doesn’t get into fights either and that doesn’t mean he’s not a man.” I’m hoping to get another opportunity along those lines before it’s too late.
We've always lived in blue areas too. It has been a terrible education on human nature, over the last ten years, to learn that the generation raised by hippies without a mix of perspectives have turned out just as tribal and blinkered as anyone in red areas.
When talking about this in blue areas, I lean hard into feminism. Feminism is non-sexist. Feminist is AGAINST gender stereotypes. Anyone who says that boys are fighters is anti-feminist, i.e. a sexist.
Your colleague doesn't want to be that.
So I might ask this colleague, "How's your sweet pacifist little boy doing? Have you found other pacifist boys for him to play with? I know, these days with all the sexist gender stereotypes being shoved down our throats, that can be hard!"
My little boy had beautiful long hair (and a very beautiful face). I made him a dress to wear whenever he felt like it. He once wore that dress to a birthday party and marched right up to the mother and said, "Some people think boys can't wear dresses, but we think they can, and we're RIGHT." (The mother, who agreed with him, was gobsmacked at his clarity.)
He played with dolls and a dollhouse. His favorite color was pink. He also played with trains and dinosaurs and science experiments. He also had a typewriter for writing stories and a little video camera for filming them. The only thing he didn't like was math. He also had kittens, who grew into cats, whom he absolutely adored.
He didn't know about war. He didn't know about guns. He didn't know about sexism. He didn't know that some adults think it's cute when children bicker. (I edited all that stuff out of his books.)
He was just a sweet, kind, very silly boy who loved to laugh and play.
You can tell your colleague about him. Tell him that we raised him feminist: to embrace ALL his interests, not just the ones restricted to gender stereotypes. He always knew that being a boy had NOTHING to do with what he liked and how he liked to play.
He is now 28 and a happy, healthy, well-adjusted young man who works with trains and can still be reduced to a puddle of mush by a kitten (or, really, any baby animal).
His great shining characteristic is his wonderful, silly, witty sense of humor. Rigidity kills humor. Flexibility nurtures it.
Raise children to be loving and flexible, and they will always be able to find joy.
YIKES. And yes, of course. The schools are suggesting that all kids might be trans, and kids are suggestible. Schools are raising the possibility: Maybe you're a girl. So all the boys have to try that on, and decide.
How tragic to see parents who are so anxious for their kids to be “ happy” that they forget why they are parents not enablers. To guide their children thru love and experience to give them the best opportunity to succeed later in life.
I recently heard the Head of John Hopkins medical center comment that the boys frontal lobe does not fully develop until the age of 25 to 30 !! (which certainly looking back explains some of my lobotomy decisions in those early years.)
That is why need children need parents !!
Just last week in the USA today newspaper an article stated 1 in 10 of these children attempt suicide. These children need our love & support by guiding them in truth not some fantasy that defies basic biology
The suicide myth has been debunked. Trans activists admitted this in your Supreme Court. Couldn’t agree more that children need love, support and for people to tell them the truth.
You raise an excellent point that children do not have fully developed brains until maturity so we must watch over them and guide them to make good decisions.
ABSOLUTELY NOT BUYING ANY OF IT! The whole thing is absurd and is not founded in any medical or scientific literature. It is 100% cultural, social contagion. I love the overvalued belief concept. I truly believe that it is the media and a very small minority of people that have whipped this whole thing up. Crazy.
Not buying it either. Having rights does NOT equal removing rights from someone else, in this case, real girls and women. No crime should be punished by rape. No girl should have to change for a game in the bathroom to avoid a naked male in the locker room. No woman should be kicked out of her gym for complaining about a rude, aggressive man in the women’s locker room. I remember a world before Title IX, when we DID have to change in the bathroom because there were no girls’ locker rooms. I’m not willing to see this generation of girls relegated to the same miserable treatment just because a deluded boy and his parents think his feels are more important that girls’ actual RIGHTS.
Good point about ghosts of the pre-Title IX days returning to haunt us. I have countless memories, and have heard even more stories, of the times when all the school and college resources were invested in boys' sports, while we girls had to make do. We must not allow the male-centered powers that be inflict the same second-class treatment on girls today.
I used to babysit for an awesome family and one day I asked the three-almost-four-year-old what she wanted to be when she grew up. She replied instantly: 'A boy!'. She just graduated from college and is not a boy. And never wanted to be as she got older. A three year old knows some things. But not all the things. I do believe that for a very small group of humanity, that they do inherently know something different about themselves when they are small. But it's definitely not of a size that warrants all this cancelling, kow-towing, and wide acceptance of anything and everything with no questions asked.
"A three year old knows some things. But not all the things." Ha - how true. I too "believe that some kids know something inherently different about themselves"... but as one of those former kids myself, I think it's usually a sense of differentness, and sex-adjacent, because they're gay or gender-nonconforming. They don't fit into the world they see. They express it a variety of ways. None of it should be taken any more literally than other childhood beliefs. They just need support, permission - and facts, including that sex is permanent and unchanging.
I'm buying what you stayed in this post
Sorry sayed not stayed! Stupid autocorrect
its the speed of the takeover that really got me, so many people willing to believe in the gender dysphoria without question. then i guess covid did the same. we need some sort of hand break on the human condition to believe absolute nonsense
When my son was 4, he said he was a dinosaur.
Did that make him a dinosaur?
Of course the F not.
Any young child saying they're the opposite sex is making the same claim my son made: silly nonsense.
Hope you have seen the 50s-era cartoon w a girl who says to her mother, "I think I'm a boy," and she responds, "Well, you're not."
I LOVE that cartoon.
lol
That's how my mother responded whenever we made farcical claims as children. We learned early on that Mom couldn't be guilt-tripped.
I don't disagree with any of this. Where I live, the local news has been covering a story about a kid who is homeschooled for religious reasons and his parents are suing the state high school sports governing association because they want him to be able to participate in organized sports. So to me, this is a misplaced sense of entitlement. And all I see with these pronouncements about how trans men should be treated is entitlement. All of this is out of control. The entitlement some people feel -- to be entitled to my space as a woman, entitled to my support as a voter, entitled to my approval, entitled to my support as a human -- is frankly appalling. I don't appreciate being accused of some kind of bias because I don't agree with the decisions people make. Because it is a decision. To have surgery is a decision. I do feel that this for lack of a better term trans evangelism is a complete loser with average voters and we have to find one or two sentences to articulate agreement with average people that it is not the majority view.
Can you link me to info about the kindergarten class where everyone came out as trans?
(caroldansereau.substack.com)
Hi Carol, Well, I searched at length, but can’t find it. Alas. That was from memory, rather than notes, so I’ll have to give up. I removed it from the story. Sorry about that.
It's definitely nonsense, and it immediately falls apart if you ask: what is a trans woman? And reply to the idiocy of: everyone who feels like a woman, with: so I'm a trans woman, when my period hurts, but not when it's over, and I'm not feeling especially womanly anymore?
A woman claiming she's a trans woman because she feels like a woman immediately lets the genderistas froth at the mouth. They immediately show unbridled how much they hate actual women.
But you can only get there by asking the actual question, which isn't: what is a woman.
That is a question no one should never have asked! It was the question they wanted us to ask, because it's the entryway to their bs.
The only legitimate question in this debate that needs to be answered is: what is a trans woman?
And any answer to this can immediately be dismantled, because only a man can ever be or become a trans woman. It's absolutely impossible to define that term, without admitting that they are men.
CaveAdsum: ... what is a trans woman?
Good question, though you might consider using the compound form, i.e., "transwoman". And try looking at Wiktionary's more or less coherent differentiation between that and the adjective-noun pair that you're using:
Wiktionary: "Trans woman" is often spelled with a space, with "trans" as an adjective modifying the noun "woman", similar to "Asian woman", "tall woman", "fat woman", etc. The unspaced spelling "transwoman" is sometimes used interchangeably, including by a few transgender people. However, it is often associated with views (notably gender-critical feminism) that hold that transgender women are not women, and thus require a separate word from woman to describe them; for this reason, many transgender people find "transwoman" offensive.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/trans_woman#Usage_notes
That many "transgender people" find "transwoman" "offensive" is sufficient reason in itself to use it at every opportunity.
But to answer your question, transwomen are, at best, just male transvestites if they still have their nuts attached and sexless eunuchs if they don't.
Good point. I was surprised they asked the question, and even more surprised that they were happy about the results.
Thanks for the previous Like -- 👍😉🙂
But you may wish to take a gander at my kick at that kitty -- something of a Cheshire cat, one with rather more than 9 lives 😉🙂 -- close to 4 years ago now:
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/what-is-a-woman
The problem, in a nutshell, is that far too many people don't quite realize that "male" and "female" are just names for categories; that, biologically speaking at least, "male" and "female" are simply labels -- not "immutable identities" -- for those individuals who have some significant properties in common, i.e., the presence of either spermatogenesis or oogenesis, respectively:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spermatogenesis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oogenesis
As I think I've indicated in that post, "male" and "female" are something in the way of abstractions. It is the "sin", the logical fallacy of reification to turn those abstractions into real things. Absolutely no one has or can point to their males and females -- except as euphemisms for their genitalia:
QUOTE; Oxford Dictionaries:
sex; noun
1) (chiefly with reference to people) sexual activity, including specifically sexual intercourse.
1.1) euphemistic; in singular; A person's genitals.
2) Either of the two main categories (male and female) into which humans and most other living things are divided on the basis of their reproductive functions. UNQUOTE
https://web.archive.org/web/20190326191905/https:/en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/sex
All that the words denote are those common, though quite significant, biological properties.
Not even for $.01
About children saying that they are the opposite sex:
When i was a kid growing up if you had asked me I would've told you I wanted to be a boy, in fact I remember being asked and saying this. Well of course, in my eyes boys got the freedom to climb trees and get dirty, they didn't have to wear dresses etc... what I also remember is at one stage a friend managed to convince me I was a vampire, I was so convinced that I was walking around my house in the dark and when my mother went to turn on the light I cried in horror because I GENUINELY thought I was going to die.... (it's funny now)
I was able to grow up without the gender nonsense, it gives me chills to think what would've happened had I grown up in this climate..
When I was 14, I wanted to study car mechanics at school. I was told no, because that was a subject for boys. Instead I could do typing (which, to be fair, I enjoyed and excelled in). Looking back I probably only wanted to do it because I liked to push the boundaries, I was a feminist even then! And I can see that if the option had been available then, I would have pulled the trans card out and said "I think I'm a boy". Which of course would have been wrong, but it would mean I would have got my own way. And potentially gone down the whole physical change route.
I'm so glad that being able to choose your gender at will if life wasn't going your way wasn't a thing then.
Yes! So many young feminists, lesbians, rebels and nonconformists are convinced we would have embraced the trans route also. Thank goodness we were not born in this era. And thank goodness we can effect change by speaking out now.
Exactly. Children play, fantasize, develop irrational ideas and fears. They need permission to do all that… and information about reality. And yes, boys had and still have much more freedom, and much less sexual harassment, and zero compulsory femininity, which I perceived as a strait jacket. I thought feminism would fix all of that, but… alas.
I'm not buying any of it anymore. I may have bought parts of it piecemeal at one time, but I have since returned all of it. People who believe in it deserve the same protections as any other group, but trying to bend law and society around this belief system as if it were unassailable concrete reality has been chaotic and unproductive in the extreme.
I don’t know many kids but the ones I do are forever making stuff up as they try to figure out the world. Such creative, curious and interesting persons! ❤️ your reply to the alleged “trans” infant.
I wonder why parents don’t just ask their kids when they make these profound statements “why do you think you’re a girl?” Because guaranteed they will have an answer and it’s not going to be something big like “because I think sex is a social construct”, “I think a doctor arbitrary assigned me the wrong sex at birth”, or “because my “gender identity” doesn’t match my birth sex”. This crap is fed to children by adults.
It’s most likely because he likes pink, dolls and someone older who he thinks knows more than him has told him that makes you a girl.
So be the adult in the room and just say “I’m not buying any of it” and tell the little ones why that is in simple words they can grasp.
Fantastic article.
Yeah, my mother never bought any guff off any of us.
Her favorite words were, "Forget it."
Kept us in the real world!
"So be the adult in the room and just say “I’m not buying any of it” and tell the little ones why that is in simple words they can grasp." Yup!
Somehow I missed this earlier. Thanks so much, L Word.
My neighbor's grandson has said 3 or 4 times between the ages of three and six, "I'm a girl." Why? Not because he likes sexist toys reserved for girls. Not because he wants to wear dresses. But ONLY because he's being taught in school that some boys are girls.
That's all.
And only 3 or 4 times in three years.
So his parents are trying to "trans" him.
I have a colleague who may be doing that. Any suggestions on how to gently suggest that this is a terrible mistake?
I don't know how to change someone's mind who is that far into the cult. All I can do is tell you how it happened for me.
When I met my neighbor, we were on the sidewalk bemoaning Trump, and she said, "And I have a trans grandchild in Vermont. . ." I began involuntarily shaking my head, saying quietly, "Don't, don't, don't." She said, "What?" I said, "Don't trans the child. Don't do it. It's a horrible cult and will destroy his body."
Because she knew I hated Trump, and I was obviously genuinely scared for the child, she listened for a few minutes and asked me to send her links to the articles I was citing. I sent them to her, saying, "Your beautiful little grandson needs to be told the truth: human beings can't change sex. Boys are always boys, and girls are always girls. That's the truth. He's a beautiful little boy. Please, please tell him the truth."
She might have discussed it with her daughter in Vermont, but it didn't stop them. I saw her daughter one day walking down the street looking like a furious robot, and I thought, 'That's how she has to face the world now, because she knows what she's doing is wrong, and she's still absolutely determined to do it.'
When I raised my son pacifist and non-sexist, I knew what I was doing was right, so I was able to walk down the street like a normal person. I wasn't at war with the world. I was at peace with my values.
One day about a year later, my neighbor wanted to text me something, but came back saying she couldn't find me in her phone. She had no idea why, but I'm guessing someone blocked my number.
Now my neighbor refers to the boy as "she," while I continue to guilelessly refer to him as "he." In fact, I've stopped hanging out in my yard until we can get a fence built, because I can't force myself to go along with it whenever she comes by.
He was a nice little boy and used to wave and call hello to me whenever he saw me. I even texted her once, after she brought him by wearing a girl's hairband, and told her I liked his hairband and that my little boy used to wear one just like it. I'm guessing she never got that.
All I want is for her to let me get close enough to the child to say, "DON'T LET THEM GIVE YOU THE MEDICINE. The doctors are lying to your parents. It's not safe. It will hurt. It will damage your body. Your parents love you and just want you to be happy, so tell them you're happy as a boy. DON'T LET THEM GIVE YOU THE MEDICINE."
But I don't think that's going to happen.
That little boy haunts me.
Thanks!
I don’t think she’s completely down the rabbit hole yet. I think she thinks she’s being supportive and “following her son’s lead” by buying him girls’ clothes at his request, not pushing them on him. She seems more bemused by the whole thing than anything, the other day referring to him as “non-binary” but saying he hadn’t asked for different pronouns. (We were around other colleagues so I couldn’t really probe into what she meant by that without it becoming a huge thing.)
Like you, I desperately want to keep the boy from being medicalized. The trouble is, we’re in a blue workplace in a blue city in a blue state, so all the cultural influences are in the direction of affirmation. (And hence my reluctance to get into it with her in others’ earshot.)
It’s funny you mention raising your son as a pacifist. Apparently it’s this child’s peaceful nature that is at least in part contributing to this identification: he has reacted to seeing boys fighting in the schoolyard by basically saying he doesn’t want to be a boy if that’s what boys do. When I heard this (from my colleague, the mom, some time ago) I didn’t have the presence of mind to say something like “but can’t you point out to your son that his dad [who I’ve met] doesn’t get into fights either and that doesn’t mean he’s not a man.” I’m hoping to get another opportunity along those lines before it’s too late.
We've always lived in blue areas too. It has been a terrible education on human nature, over the last ten years, to learn that the generation raised by hippies without a mix of perspectives have turned out just as tribal and blinkered as anyone in red areas.
When talking about this in blue areas, I lean hard into feminism. Feminism is non-sexist. Feminist is AGAINST gender stereotypes. Anyone who says that boys are fighters is anti-feminist, i.e. a sexist.
Your colleague doesn't want to be that.
So I might ask this colleague, "How's your sweet pacifist little boy doing? Have you found other pacifist boys for him to play with? I know, these days with all the sexist gender stereotypes being shoved down our throats, that can be hard!"
My little boy had beautiful long hair (and a very beautiful face). I made him a dress to wear whenever he felt like it. He once wore that dress to a birthday party and marched right up to the mother and said, "Some people think boys can't wear dresses, but we think they can, and we're RIGHT." (The mother, who agreed with him, was gobsmacked at his clarity.)
He played with dolls and a dollhouse. His favorite color was pink. He also played with trains and dinosaurs and science experiments. He also had a typewriter for writing stories and a little video camera for filming them. The only thing he didn't like was math. He also had kittens, who grew into cats, whom he absolutely adored.
He didn't know about war. He didn't know about guns. He didn't know about sexism. He didn't know that some adults think it's cute when children bicker. (I edited all that stuff out of his books.)
He was just a sweet, kind, very silly boy who loved to laugh and play.
You can tell your colleague about him. Tell him that we raised him feminist: to embrace ALL his interests, not just the ones restricted to gender stereotypes. He always knew that being a boy had NOTHING to do with what he liked and how he liked to play.
He is now 28 and a happy, healthy, well-adjusted young man who works with trains and can still be reduced to a puddle of mush by a kitten (or, really, any baby animal).
His great shining characteristic is his wonderful, silly, witty sense of humor. Rigidity kills humor. Flexibility nurtures it.
Raise children to be loving and flexible, and they will always be able to find joy.
What a lovely story. We need more men just like him.
Child abuse. Plain and simple. Child abuse.
YIKES. And yes, of course. The schools are suggesting that all kids might be trans, and kids are suggestible. Schools are raising the possibility: Maybe you're a girl. So all the boys have to try that on, and decide.
And it leads straight to drugs that destroy their young bodies.
An evil cult. And these parents are eager to join it.
This is so good.
How tragic to see parents who are so anxious for their kids to be “ happy” that they forget why they are parents not enablers. To guide their children thru love and experience to give them the best opportunity to succeed later in life.
I recently heard the Head of John Hopkins medical center comment that the boys frontal lobe does not fully develop until the age of 25 to 30 !! (which certainly looking back explains some of my lobotomy decisions in those early years.)
That is why need children need parents !!
Just last week in the USA today newspaper an article stated 1 in 10 of these children attempt suicide. These children need our love & support by guiding them in truth not some fantasy that defies basic biology
The suicide myth has been debunked. Trans activists admitted this in your Supreme Court. Couldn’t agree more that children need love, support and for people to tell them the truth.
You raise an excellent point that children do not have fully developed brains until maturity so we must watch over them and guide them to make good decisions.
Not remotely, although I am in favour of body modification for rapists. Castration, specifically.
Your response merely betrays your complete ignorance of the topic.
!!! If only.