Thought From a Fly Over State on Gender Identity

We are hearing a lot about schools attempting to convince children they can choose their sex. We see videos of ‘progressive’ parents raising ‘gender neutral’ children. We are shaking our heads when these ‘progressive’ parents parade their children in videos on the internet to the amusement (or derision) of the masses. We are grappling with how to map a course of inclusivity for a growing number of young people claiming they are neither one sex nor the other.

This refusal to accept basic biology as a nonthreatening part of life is troublesome and, I think, doing a disservice to our children. We cannot change reality, nor should we raise children who believe they must struggle because they are different from what their parents consider to be the norm.

We are all different, and rightly so. Our physical features are simply markers which mean little. We are born male, or female. The environment we live within, the genetic traits we inherit, and the interactions we participate in during our formative years all play a role in how comfortable we feel in our bodies.

Being human is hard enough without having the preconceived notions of others as to who and what we should be used as clubs against our psyches. But, it has been done for ages and now the left has found an insidious way in which to make life harder.

I find the video of parents talking about gender neutral children disturbing, on many levels.

One mother claims she asks her kids if they feel like a girl or a boy. She presents the statement as if she is being kind to her children. I find it to be a most extreme form of psychological child abuse.

Somebody, tell me what a girl or a boy is, other than a human with certain, specific, biological features? Girls come in all shapes, all sizes, all mind sets, all athletic abilities, all mental faculties, and all sexual desires.

If a child is biologically female and prefers to play with trucks, eschewing participation in any traditionally ‘girl’ activities and prefers pants to dresses there is nothing wrong with that. None of this behavior negates her femininity. She is still a girl. To use specific traits to define a sex is not logical, nor is it helpful to the development of strong psyches in our children.

I consider progressive actions to create regressive human beings. Parents using this approach to children are telling their children that there is a cookie cutter definition of human beings that must be adhered to, even to the extent of denying reality in order to achieve it.

A girl, or a boy, would be better served if taught that children can be who they are, should feel comfortable as they are and they should accept others as they are. A young boy who prefers princess dresses to jeans should not be told he is something he is not. We should find a way to accept him as he is. If he prefers to play with girls at a tea party it may make him out of the cultural norm but it doesn’t make him a girl. Telling him he was born a girl negates the value of diversity.

Raising children with predetermined notions of what a girl or boy should be also raises bullies. Children are mean and, in many ways, it is a learned trait. You tell your children what makes a boy a boy and a girl a girl, and they will take that to the bank. A boy at a tea party will be taunted as a sissy, a girl wrestling with a boy will be labeled a tom boy and if children see that they elicit a negative reaction with the taunts they will double down and the teasing will spread to others.

We humans instinctively understand that there is safety in numbers, physically and psychologically. Those who have not been raised with an emphasis on psychological strength will fall victim to the herd mentality quite quickly. Emotional scars attained during our developmental years rarely, if ever, completely heal. We can put them into perspective, count the influences which drove those who participated in the attacks upon our psyche, mentally commit to never causing such harm to others; or, we can simply never attempt to gain perspective and leave the wounds wide open.

But children laughing at each other for being different should not cause society to cultivate a belief that we are somehow not what we are; thus pitting science against our mental health. Because, if we pretend reality is not for the eye to see, for the sake of the delicate sensibilities of an individual grappling with what it means to be who they are, we create even more problems for society.

Insisting that a male child with an effeminate nature must accept the label of girl denies the individuality of the child. It also reinforces beliefs the child has been taught; that girls must do certain things and boys do another. It reinforces a belief that they are different in a negative way. It sets up the child to, on some levels, believe their traits are problems which are naturally open to ridicule and scorn; instead of taking the more sensible course of celebrating that child’s diverse nature.

Teaching children that certain traits should supplant biological features in order to determine the sex of the individual culminates in many problems

The fact that the suicide rate of young people who label themselves transgender is as high as 50% tells us that depression brought on by attempts to resolve reality to desire is a dangerous problem.

The only thing that can help these facts is to help our young people understand that there is nothing wrong with being who they are, in the bodies they have. This is little different from explaining to a young girl who is insecure about her looks that beauty is skin deep and superficial to intelligent people.

The unhealthy abuse of the body in order to bring superficially observed reality and personal expectations into line with one another can be dangerous and is certainly costly. But, even with that the individual has to accept the fact that biology has not been beaten. This is no different from skin piercing, face lifts or tattoos.

You are who you were prior to cosmetic changes. You do not become a male, able to sire a child, or female able to bear one. So, for those who have been confused since childhood (by a society insisting a litany of traits are reserved as male or female), this surgery can only cause thwarted desires to fester within the mind.

This problem is also culminating in the demand to allow new words, intended to subdivide the classification of people, to alienate us from each other. Its common practice will be an insult to individuals who have never had a problem with being labeled different.

I, for one, possess diverse traits that are commonly relegated to male, and traits defined as female. I have always been comfortable with who I am. I was raised to be who I was, unapologetically. If I were to live in a society where upwards of 90 pronouns had to be remembered, and used, I’m certain I would be continually labeled as something other than what I am; a female, a she, a biological woman. And it would be, to me, insulting. It would deny my individuality in a vain attempt to ignore a simple truth.

I think every person struggles with uncertainties of who they are and insecurities of what they think others think of them. We all attempt to (to one extent or another) hide behind the image we want to project. Denying biology is simply attempting to create a façade that can never be universally agreed upon and it can only serve to negatively affect the individual who has allowed preconceived notions to make them incapable of celebration of the body they were born with.