OK, I’m not quite done with Megan Rapinoe and her crack about being “sorry” that “your kid’s high school volleyball team just isn’t that important.” That’s because it’s yet another case of the disappearing girls, this time involving a neat move I’d like to call ‘musical chairs.’
Of all people, Megan Rapinoe should be sensitive to the acute differences in athletic performance between girls and boys. After all, it's not that long ago that the USA women's football team were beaten, nay humiliated, by a team of 15 year old boys.
You would think that might have give Megan some perspective on this, and reflect on it before throwing girls under the bus.
Her spouting of the accepted dogma is tiresomely predictable, but her use of the word 'kid' when she really means 'Girl' is more sinister, as Eliza elegantly articulates.
Rapinoe's comment about suicide was irresponsible. Not only that, but it has an easy solution. To the extent that teenagers (and younger) are being allowed to transition to the opposite gender, they are making decisions about themselves that require SOME maturity. That being the case, they should be told BEFORE they transition, "If you transition to the female gender, you can't play girls' sports because it is unfair to girls. Nor can you play college or professional sports." Having been told/warned that they can't move right into girls' sports, some of them may choose to remain boys, which would ultimately be good because it would save girls from unfair competition, AND it would save these boys from having to detransition as adults (which most of them will probably do). But of course, the trans community is pushing the message to older kids considering transitioning that they can do whatever they please after they transition.
Those black boys who became girls in Connecticut and then won all those races, I have heard that they weren't even taking hormones. Does anyone know if that's true?
Many years ago, when I first heard about trans girls going into girl's sports, my initial thought was, "that shouldn't hurt real girls too much as long as the trans girls stop competing when they become trans women." The question is, at what point does a girl become a woman? And at what point does victory start to matter? It's one thing to have pre-pubescent girls and boys playing against each other; but once winning or losing becomes an important thing, that is when the trans girls need to drop out or play with the boys.
I believe that Lia Thomas is in college. Seeing her towering over her competitors on the podium certainly put that in perspective for me. Any sport that is important enough that the winners are placed on a podium is important enough that trans girls should compete with the boys.
Also see "kiddos," a comic-sounding term used in online parent cliques to refer to their special, non-conforming offspring. Anything to smooth over they are actively confusing and physically abusing their glitter children
I'm afraid people love to be distracted from talking about half the human race (women) in terms of trafficking, discrimination, policy-making and legislation and instead talk about LGBT discrimination. I watched the documentary about Victoria's Secret and the relationship between CEO Leslie Wexner and Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell and the abuse of young women and girls. And then in the third segment, they promptly forgot about the trafficking of women and girls and were entirely focussed on whether or not Leslie Wexner and Epstein were hiding a homosexual relationship as if that mattered or that trafficking human beings for sex wasn't the actual issue. It was crazy. I'm afraid I yelled at the tv a lot at that point.
McButterfly: "I'm afraid I yelled at the tv a lot at that point."
I can sympathize ... 😉
Reminds me of a quip by Groucho Marx (I think); paraphrasing: "I find TV very educational - whenever someone turns on the TV I go into another room to read a book" ...
Similarly with this passage from Sagan's Demon-Haunted World (copy available at the Internet Archive though not sure that's entirely kosher from a copyright perspective):
"The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30-second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and
superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance."
There are periodically some good programs and informative documentaries on the Tube, but more often than not pretty much a wasteland.
Thanks for the EFF links, though not sure that their claims are all that credible since they claim that the IA "only permits patrons to check out as many copies as the Archive and its partner libraries physically own."
But I've apparently managed to download Sagan's Demon-Haunted World:
Not really the same as me checking out a book that no one else can do without me returning it. But the publishing date for Sagan's book was 1993 or thereabouts so maybe the copyright is no longer valid.
But IA may also have a point or two as well, particularly for books published many years ago which their collection apparently includes. I see IA is asking for contributions to support their claims - I did a one-time contribution of $25 some time ago so don't think I'll do so again for a while.
So true. "Trans people" is similarly obfuscating. "Trans people are more suicidal" obscures the fact that the vast majority in the studies I've looked at report females are more likely to have attempted suicide. "You want to exclude trans people from xyz" obscures the fact that women want privacy from and protection from men.
I've been reading The Feminine Mystique, which is basically a whole book about "women's problem that has no name". It seems to lend credence to the idea (something I finally wrote about on my substack) that it is imperative to patriarchy that the sex-based oppression of females not be discussed. Linguistic control, physical control, and dehumanization through gaslighting are all methods of enforcing women's sex-based oppression.
Thanks Eliza, I read articles bemoaning gender identity nonsense all day. I have written some. We are in the vast majority and I am one of the be moaners. I just get madder and madder. What does is hurts me and helps them overrunning us with whatever god awful thing they come up with next. And when they get their way, they don't go home and be happy. No, they double down! We gave gays marriage (I use the term "we" lightly,) and did they get happy and go home and enjoy themselves? No they pushed and pushed and now we have teachers advocating for them. They have snuck in Drag Queen story hour, among with a host of other debauchery. Now WE are the immoral ones for being against that. With zero evidence they scream that we are homophobic and should have no voice.
Well the slippery slope turned out to be quite slippery, didn't it. We had Obama and the Clintons against gay marriage 12 years ago. But they caved to the screaming mob of one half of one percent of the nation. Was it for votes? No, they would have had those votes anyway. There seems to be some evil at work here that can make people believe what you can't imagine they would believe, not matter how outlandish. We have the people like Eliza and Abigail Schier and many, many more. We have the parents who have been banned from their kids for God's sake.
Are we going to sit back and take it? I guess so. We need to get back out the pitchforks and torches and go save our citizens from this crap. Who will organize? Who will fund? Who will go march on Washington DC? Someone or many have to do this. Come on, Eliza, can't you solve this in your spare time? Come on, man!! Put me on your team when you do.
Craig, I suspect you are a conservative, given your characterization of Drag Queen Story Hour as "debauchery". However, despite being a liberal, I pretty much agree with you. Drag queens are pushing this "service" on libraries as a positive thing by calling it "diversity", but to me "diversity" means multiple races, cultures, nationalities, languages and occupations. Gays and straights are also part of "diversity", and possibly trans people too, but drag queens are, in my opinion, sexual fetishists. The bottom line is that I don't think that drag queens are a good role model for children. Many drag queens dress up like prostitutes, in tight cocktail dresses with cleavage, and some of them dress up like fairy god mothers. Either way, they seem to be mocking real women. There is enough misogyny in our culture without adding bizarre female caricatures to the mix. They used to have a picture on the DQSH site of a small child (dressed in a rainbow by its liberal mother, wouldn't you know) being introduced to a flouncy fairy-type drag queen, and the child (whose gender I couldn't quite make out) had a very quizzical look on its face, as if it were thinking, "What am I supposed to learn from this?"
So the question is, why has this phenomenon arisen? Well, like trans people, the thrill is in being seen. Trans people want to "pass" whereas drag queens want to impress. Being natural performers, I think that there aren't enough venues (drag shows in cabarets, for example) in which they can perform, so they are performing for the kids. The kids make a very uncritical audience, which makes it all the better for the drag queens.
Despite being gay and having encountered drag queens in bars when I was young, I've come to see them as pretty bizarre.
Fetishism, debauchery, degeneracy, what's the difference? The fact that this is even a subject is astonishing. Ten years ago If someone was asked what they thought of drag queens in grade school they would have said, "what?" Now, they are calling us bigots for wanting drag queens out of class. This disbelief would be across the aisle. It was always just assumed it was ridiculous and negative. Asking the question, "do you think 5-6 year olds should be taught that they may be a different sex than they are?" would be of course dismissed out of hand. As if 5-6 year olds don't have enough angst without staying awake at night wondering if their not like the other boys or girls.
This has not been accidental, but a steady hard propaganda and false information campaign spread by the whacked out part of the left. You have to be part of that or not be. Many Dems are against it but they just answer the "hiccup" answer of, well sure. They are afraid not to at times. In your heart of hearts you know all of this is crazy. As if JFK through Clinton presidents would agree with any of this stuff. Thanks for having the insight to know this is not good for young minds or any minds.
Caleb, thanks fir your reply. The whole trans thing is part hysteria mixed with a complicated issue. The sole tool mental health professionals for diagnosing this disorder is to ask the person how they feel at the time of the appointment. They can show up the next day with new pronouns and self declared identity, then get indignant when we tell them we don’t care. The pronouns, attention seeking, and general freak show is being jammed down our throats to the point where teachers think 6 year olds need to know the ins and outs(pun intended) of trans gender doctrine. Can’t they go play jumprope and hopscotch and have the time of their lives without being freaked out by these people?
The problem as I see it is they snuck the T in LBG. It is not equivalent. That is an issue for the gay community. Gays have let the lines be blurred and share magazines with trans people. Trans is a disorder. Homosexuality is not recognized as that. They want in your boat and those who don’t agree are transphobes. Yes, good guess, I love this country and want real values. Not made up ones. Thanks
It sounds like you are a teacher. I couldn't imagine being a teacher in this environment. If I had kids telling me, "I'm non-binary. My pronouns are 'they' and 'them' " , I would refuse to do it.
It's hard for me to tell who you are blaming for the mess. Yes, gays have allowed the T's to join the LGB's, but I didn't have any say over that. As a gay person, I don't agree having trans people in my group. Indeed, I now feel estranged from gay people as a group because of this. My representative in Congress is a stupid gay liberal who is the sponsor of the Equality Act. I have complained to him, but he is completely brainwashed by trans ideology, and I can't change that. My senators too are brainwashed.
The most outrageous thing that is happening today is that parents are losing custody of their kids because they don't want them to transition. In some blue states, the state government will step in and take your kids from you. It's a kind of insanity, like Trumpism. Trumpism is a conservative cult, and transgenderism is a liberal cult.
I agree, but Trump is gone, hopefully, or will be. If our choice is Biden or Trump, we may as well take ourselves out! This just keeps growing like "The Blob." I believe there is traction out there for your position. If gays want more acceptance it seems like common sense. At least some of them. LGBT would turn into just "T." Q would be gone also. No more alphabet soup.
In some instances, parents are giving away their custody in fear of the trans ideologues or, ironically, in fear of losing custody. It's an awful mess.
So, there’s additional nuance to bring particularly to the question of boys on volleyball teams. My son’s only opportunity to play school volleyball was on the girls team, since most schools see it as a girls sport and don’t have boys teams. He ended up joining a club outside of school so he could play for a longer season and is now on the boys team (he identifies as gender fluid, but is biologically male, and so is on the boys team). A coach I talked to mentioned that there are usually a lot of restrictions when considering allowing a boy to play on the team because of the obvious differences in athletic ability that come with biological sex. That makes sense!
While this in no way justifies the takeover of girls teams by trans girls, I think that there is something to be said for not creating more opportunities for people to take advantage of the situation and use it in argument.
This is when it is important for boys and men to make room for differently presenting males on their teams. That is the team they should be playing on for various sports. Are "gender fluid" boys disallowed from playing on the boys' teams? I'm glad. he found a boys' team outside of school he could play on.
Maria, as a mother with a "gender fluid" son, perhaps you can shed some light on the situation. Do you feel that your son got the idea to be gender fluid from other people (such as other students or the media or magazine articles)? Do you think his being "gender fluid" is reflective of something that is actually happening inside him, or do you think he is just seeking attention? Children are very imitative, so I am wondering how much of this is real. Thirty years ago, being "gender fluid" wasn't even an idea, much less an option, so kids never brought it up. Do you feel your son is in a genuine phase of some kind, or do you think he is being manipulative, or trying to make himself more "special"? Thanks. Just curious.
He has been gender fluid since he was quite young, and I must take responsibility for creating an environment that fostered this: as a feminist who thought that just as it was ridiculous to dress girls in pink and boys in blue, it was ridiculous that just because he is a boy he could and should only play with trucks and dinosaurs. I provided him a rich environment with toys, books, and media for both genders. He had dolls, he had trucks. He liked to watch dinosaur train and my little pony. I didn't cut his hair (again, why should long hair only be for girls and short hair for boys). I dressed him in hand-me-downs, though, which were mostly boy's clothes. He did want to be a fairy for Halloween, complete with skirt (he insisted) when he was 4. I made him a "wood fairy" costume, and the "skirt" was made out of felt fall-colored leaves. When he was 8 he asked why there was a boys clothes section and a girls section when he wanted to have access to it all, and begged to buy a pair of purple sequin uggs at goodwill, which why not? He plays with dressing up in all various kinds of ways. He was a theater kid until covid fucking disrupted things (though apparently playing sports was fine, it's no wonder he gravitated toward volleyball). Parents at his school would refer to him as a mini-David Bowie. I didn't see anything wrong with that (I still don't.)
Over the years I have had many many conversations about gender with him. The very first time I did talk with him, at age 7, when we met our first trans person, I asked him about how he felt. He said he was "60% boy, 40% girl...but it doesn't matter, people should just be happy being who they are." Unlike many, he doesn't talk about feeling wrong in his body (though he doesn't like his body hair), wanting to change it, and it's more of a "I feel that I have both feminine and masculine, and some days I feel more one way than the other." He did mention recently that he decided to hold off on hormones and surgical transitioning until he was in his 20's (the age of medical consent in Oregon where he lives is 15.)
Here's what I think: it's not a phase, it's not manipulative, and he's not trying to make himself special. Rather, he has tapped into the part of ourselves that recognizes that gender roles are in some ways, theater, and that one can choose which role to play. I do think that because he's a teen, he's on the woke bandwagon, and right now there's no logical conversation to be had about it because he is empathetic to his friends who, in my observation, are falling into the trending category (they are mostly teen girls, who are now trans) and because he also identifies with that crowd himself, so anything I say is a rejection of him. I think he's adopted the terminology because it best fits him and it's nice to feel like he belongs to a group. I think one of the biggest downfalls of our culture was coining toxic masculinity/male privilege and making being male/man into something to be ashamed of. Now teen boys are adrift in a sea of man-hating culture, so of course, why not become a woman?
That's all very interesting to hear, and I don't see anything in it to criticize you for. I might have done similar things with a son. But I do see the idea that transitioning is an easy and doable thing as a very dangerous idea. Hammering the male body into the female form, and vice versa, isn't a simple task. As I'm sure you've heard before, transitioning just makes you a life-long medical patient (certainly, more so than you would otherwise be). There's a lot of truth in the old hippie idea to love yourself as you are. Hopefully, your son will make good choices as he gets older.
It sounds like he doesn't listen to you that much, which is unfortunate. He doesn't realize the benefit he has in having a thoughtful mother.
Actually, as a gay man, I see a lot of masculinity as toxic. Look at what Putin is doing to Ukraine, and it's all to make himself feel like a man (though it's the soldiers and civilians who are dying).
I will say, even though it doesn't seem that he listens to me much, we used to be quite close until the pandemic + puberty, and he listened to me a lot, and I think he still does, even if he rejects what I say. I think he's just immature when it comes to civil debate, like a lot of youngsters are. Even my emotions get the best of me sometimes, and I remember what it was like as a teen. You think you know things. you think your parents are stupid. that part IS just a phase. At least, that's what I'm telling myself. ;)
I think I've touched a sensitive spot for you, and I'm sorry. I never had kids, so I never went through this. I just knew that I didn't have the patience -- and besides, I never found a soul mate . However, I've heard or read similar things from many parents, about how things go awry when puberty hits. I think it's normal. Who knows, by the time he is 22 or 25, you may be his best friend.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts about your son. I am so dead set against transgender ideology and its potential for harming people, that I forget that there are individual stories behind everything that's going on.
Oh! I didn't feel that you were being in any way inappropriate or insensitive, so no apology is necessary. Just answering your questions as well as adding what our dialogue brings up for me. I appreciate this conversation; I don't get to have it with many people.
Of all people, Megan Rapinoe should be sensitive to the acute differences in athletic performance between girls and boys. After all, it's not that long ago that the USA women's football team were beaten, nay humiliated, by a team of 15 year old boys.
You would think that might have give Megan some perspective on this, and reflect on it before throwing girls under the bus.
Her spouting of the accepted dogma is tiresomely predictable, but her use of the word 'kid' when she really means 'Girl' is more sinister, as Eliza elegantly articulates.
But Jeez, how did that dogma ever become accepted? I'm still trying to figure that out. Aren't people capable of logical thought?
TRAs using language to try and obfuscate again? Well I never.
Rapinoe's comment about suicide was irresponsible. Not only that, but it has an easy solution. To the extent that teenagers (and younger) are being allowed to transition to the opposite gender, they are making decisions about themselves that require SOME maturity. That being the case, they should be told BEFORE they transition, "If you transition to the female gender, you can't play girls' sports because it is unfair to girls. Nor can you play college or professional sports." Having been told/warned that they can't move right into girls' sports, some of them may choose to remain boys, which would ultimately be good because it would save girls from unfair competition, AND it would save these boys from having to detransition as adults (which most of them will probably do). But of course, the trans community is pushing the message to older kids considering transitioning that they can do whatever they please after they transition.
Those black boys who became girls in Connecticut and then won all those races, I have heard that they weren't even taking hormones. Does anyone know if that's true?
Many years ago, when I first heard about trans girls going into girl's sports, my initial thought was, "that shouldn't hurt real girls too much as long as the trans girls stop competing when they become trans women." The question is, at what point does a girl become a woman? And at what point does victory start to matter? It's one thing to have pre-pubescent girls and boys playing against each other; but once winning or losing becomes an important thing, that is when the trans girls need to drop out or play with the boys.
I believe that Lia Thomas is in college. Seeing her towering over her competitors on the podium certainly put that in perspective for me. Any sport that is important enough that the winners are placed on a podium is important enough that trans girls should compete with the boys.
Great point.
Also see "kiddos," a comic-sounding term used in online parent cliques to refer to their special, non-conforming offspring. Anything to smooth over they are actively confusing and physically abusing their glitter children
Omg, is "kiddos" the new "folks"??? I feel like that word is over used among mental health clinicians and social workers as a way to seem progressive.
It’s another cup of words put through the language blender.! 🙄
I'm afraid people love to be distracted from talking about half the human race (women) in terms of trafficking, discrimination, policy-making and legislation and instead talk about LGBT discrimination. I watched the documentary about Victoria's Secret and the relationship between CEO Leslie Wexner and Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell and the abuse of young women and girls. And then in the third segment, they promptly forgot about the trafficking of women and girls and were entirely focussed on whether or not Leslie Wexner and Epstein were hiding a homosexual relationship as if that mattered or that trafficking human beings for sex wasn't the actual issue. It was crazy. I'm afraid I yelled at the tv a lot at that point.
McButterfly: "I'm afraid I yelled at the tv a lot at that point."
I can sympathize ... 😉
Reminds me of a quip by Groucho Marx (I think); paraphrasing: "I find TV very educational - whenever someone turns on the TV I go into another room to read a book" ...
Similarly with this passage from Sagan's Demon-Haunted World (copy available at the Internet Archive though not sure that's entirely kosher from a copyright perspective):
"The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30-second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and
superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance."
There are periodically some good programs and informative documentaries on the Tube, but more often than not pretty much a wasteland.
I will have to look up that Sagan book. Here's some additional information re: Internet Archive
https://www.eff.org/cases/hachette-v-internet-archive?fbclid=IwAR2OirCtKqeefepkdnUg_B7pk997YK_QQH56nvHzk1H1_UgyG8mYaV53RuQ
https://www.eff.org/cases/hachette-v-internet-archive?fbclid=IwAR3TYn1wSVhptLrUYNn-ugI7utXI9zfyXnpS6Bx_o1PLVssYlB5apjszyg0#:~:text=Hachette%20v.%20Internet%20Amicus%20brief%20of%20Copyright%20Scholars
Thanks for the EFF links, though not sure that their claims are all that credible since they claim that the IA "only permits patrons to check out as many copies as the Archive and its partner libraries physically own."
But I've apparently managed to download Sagan's Demon-Haunted World:
https://archive.org/details/B-001-001-709
Not really the same as me checking out a book that no one else can do without me returning it. But the publishing date for Sagan's book was 1993 or thereabouts so maybe the copyright is no longer valid.
But IA may also have a point or two as well, particularly for books published many years ago which their collection apparently includes. I see IA is asking for contributions to support their claims - I did a one-time contribution of $25 some time ago so don't think I'll do so again for a while.
So true. "Trans people" is similarly obfuscating. "Trans people are more suicidal" obscures the fact that the vast majority in the studies I've looked at report females are more likely to have attempted suicide. "You want to exclude trans people from xyz" obscures the fact that women want privacy from and protection from men.
I've been reading The Feminine Mystique, which is basically a whole book about "women's problem that has no name". It seems to lend credence to the idea (something I finally wrote about on my substack) that it is imperative to patriarchy that the sex-based oppression of females not be discussed. Linguistic control, physical control, and dehumanization through gaslighting are all methods of enforcing women's sex-based oppression.
An aside - is that a still from Amadeus?
Is it the scene where Mozart plays a parody of Salieri's music?
It is!!
I love that scene!
Thanks Eliza, I read articles bemoaning gender identity nonsense all day. I have written some. We are in the vast majority and I am one of the be moaners. I just get madder and madder. What does is hurts me and helps them overrunning us with whatever god awful thing they come up with next. And when they get their way, they don't go home and be happy. No, they double down! We gave gays marriage (I use the term "we" lightly,) and did they get happy and go home and enjoy themselves? No they pushed and pushed and now we have teachers advocating for them. They have snuck in Drag Queen story hour, among with a host of other debauchery. Now WE are the immoral ones for being against that. With zero evidence they scream that we are homophobic and should have no voice.
Well the slippery slope turned out to be quite slippery, didn't it. We had Obama and the Clintons against gay marriage 12 years ago. But they caved to the screaming mob of one half of one percent of the nation. Was it for votes? No, they would have had those votes anyway. There seems to be some evil at work here that can make people believe what you can't imagine they would believe, not matter how outlandish. We have the people like Eliza and Abigail Schier and many, many more. We have the parents who have been banned from their kids for God's sake.
Are we going to sit back and take it? I guess so. We need to get back out the pitchforks and torches and go save our citizens from this crap. Who will organize? Who will fund? Who will go march on Washington DC? Someone or many have to do this. Come on, Eliza, can't you solve this in your spare time? Come on, man!! Put me on your team when you do.
The TRAs and their sexist ideology have nothing to do with codifying marriage equality in law.
Craig, I suspect you are a conservative, given your characterization of Drag Queen Story Hour as "debauchery". However, despite being a liberal, I pretty much agree with you. Drag queens are pushing this "service" on libraries as a positive thing by calling it "diversity", but to me "diversity" means multiple races, cultures, nationalities, languages and occupations. Gays and straights are also part of "diversity", and possibly trans people too, but drag queens are, in my opinion, sexual fetishists. The bottom line is that I don't think that drag queens are a good role model for children. Many drag queens dress up like prostitutes, in tight cocktail dresses with cleavage, and some of them dress up like fairy god mothers. Either way, they seem to be mocking real women. There is enough misogyny in our culture without adding bizarre female caricatures to the mix. They used to have a picture on the DQSH site of a small child (dressed in a rainbow by its liberal mother, wouldn't you know) being introduced to a flouncy fairy-type drag queen, and the child (whose gender I couldn't quite make out) had a very quizzical look on its face, as if it were thinking, "What am I supposed to learn from this?"
So the question is, why has this phenomenon arisen? Well, like trans people, the thrill is in being seen. Trans people want to "pass" whereas drag queens want to impress. Being natural performers, I think that there aren't enough venues (drag shows in cabarets, for example) in which they can perform, so they are performing for the kids. The kids make a very uncritical audience, which makes it all the better for the drag queens.
Despite being gay and having encountered drag queens in bars when I was young, I've come to see them as pretty bizarre.
I emphatically agree with your observation sbout drag queens mocking women. Drag is just a misogynistic minstrel show.
Fetishism, debauchery, degeneracy, what's the difference? The fact that this is even a subject is astonishing. Ten years ago If someone was asked what they thought of drag queens in grade school they would have said, "what?" Now, they are calling us bigots for wanting drag queens out of class. This disbelief would be across the aisle. It was always just assumed it was ridiculous and negative. Asking the question, "do you think 5-6 year olds should be taught that they may be a different sex than they are?" would be of course dismissed out of hand. As if 5-6 year olds don't have enough angst without staying awake at night wondering if their not like the other boys or girls.
This has not been accidental, but a steady hard propaganda and false information campaign spread by the whacked out part of the left. You have to be part of that or not be. Many Dems are against it but they just answer the "hiccup" answer of, well sure. They are afraid not to at times. In your heart of hearts you know all of this is crazy. As if JFK through Clinton presidents would agree with any of this stuff. Thanks for having the insight to know this is not good for young minds or any minds.
Caleb, thanks fir your reply. The whole trans thing is part hysteria mixed with a complicated issue. The sole tool mental health professionals for diagnosing this disorder is to ask the person how they feel at the time of the appointment. They can show up the next day with new pronouns and self declared identity, then get indignant when we tell them we don’t care. The pronouns, attention seeking, and general freak show is being jammed down our throats to the point where teachers think 6 year olds need to know the ins and outs(pun intended) of trans gender doctrine. Can’t they go play jumprope and hopscotch and have the time of their lives without being freaked out by these people?
The problem as I see it is they snuck the T in LBG. It is not equivalent. That is an issue for the gay community. Gays have let the lines be blurred and share magazines with trans people. Trans is a disorder. Homosexuality is not recognized as that. They want in your boat and those who don’t agree are transphobes. Yes, good guess, I love this country and want real values. Not made up ones. Thanks
It sounds like you are a teacher. I couldn't imagine being a teacher in this environment. If I had kids telling me, "I'm non-binary. My pronouns are 'they' and 'them' " , I would refuse to do it.
It's hard for me to tell who you are blaming for the mess. Yes, gays have allowed the T's to join the LGB's, but I didn't have any say over that. As a gay person, I don't agree having trans people in my group. Indeed, I now feel estranged from gay people as a group because of this. My representative in Congress is a stupid gay liberal who is the sponsor of the Equality Act. I have complained to him, but he is completely brainwashed by trans ideology, and I can't change that. My senators too are brainwashed.
The most outrageous thing that is happening today is that parents are losing custody of their kids because they don't want them to transition. In some blue states, the state government will step in and take your kids from you. It's a kind of insanity, like Trumpism. Trumpism is a conservative cult, and transgenderism is a liberal cult.
I agree, but Trump is gone, hopefully, or will be. If our choice is Biden or Trump, we may as well take ourselves out! This just keeps growing like "The Blob." I believe there is traction out there for your position. If gays want more acceptance it seems like common sense. At least some of them. LGBT would turn into just "T." Q would be gone also. No more alphabet soup.
In some instances, parents are giving away their custody in fear of the trans ideologues or, ironically, in fear of losing custody. It's an awful mess.
So, there’s additional nuance to bring particularly to the question of boys on volleyball teams. My son’s only opportunity to play school volleyball was on the girls team, since most schools see it as a girls sport and don’t have boys teams. He ended up joining a club outside of school so he could play for a longer season and is now on the boys team (he identifies as gender fluid, but is biologically male, and so is on the boys team). A coach I talked to mentioned that there are usually a lot of restrictions when considering allowing a boy to play on the team because of the obvious differences in athletic ability that come with biological sex. That makes sense!
While this in no way justifies the takeover of girls teams by trans girls, I think that there is something to be said for not creating more opportunities for people to take advantage of the situation and use it in argument.
This is when it is important for boys and men to make room for differently presenting males on their teams. That is the team they should be playing on for various sports. Are "gender fluid" boys disallowed from playing on the boys' teams? I'm glad. he found a boys' team outside of school he could play on.
Agreed. He seems to be well-received and well-liked by his team.
Maria, as a mother with a "gender fluid" son, perhaps you can shed some light on the situation. Do you feel that your son got the idea to be gender fluid from other people (such as other students or the media or magazine articles)? Do you think his being "gender fluid" is reflective of something that is actually happening inside him, or do you think he is just seeking attention? Children are very imitative, so I am wondering how much of this is real. Thirty years ago, being "gender fluid" wasn't even an idea, much less an option, so kids never brought it up. Do you feel your son is in a genuine phase of some kind, or do you think he is being manipulative, or trying to make himself more "special"? Thanks. Just curious.
He has been gender fluid since he was quite young, and I must take responsibility for creating an environment that fostered this: as a feminist who thought that just as it was ridiculous to dress girls in pink and boys in blue, it was ridiculous that just because he is a boy he could and should only play with trucks and dinosaurs. I provided him a rich environment with toys, books, and media for both genders. He had dolls, he had trucks. He liked to watch dinosaur train and my little pony. I didn't cut his hair (again, why should long hair only be for girls and short hair for boys). I dressed him in hand-me-downs, though, which were mostly boy's clothes. He did want to be a fairy for Halloween, complete with skirt (he insisted) when he was 4. I made him a "wood fairy" costume, and the "skirt" was made out of felt fall-colored leaves. When he was 8 he asked why there was a boys clothes section and a girls section when he wanted to have access to it all, and begged to buy a pair of purple sequin uggs at goodwill, which why not? He plays with dressing up in all various kinds of ways. He was a theater kid until covid fucking disrupted things (though apparently playing sports was fine, it's no wonder he gravitated toward volleyball). Parents at his school would refer to him as a mini-David Bowie. I didn't see anything wrong with that (I still don't.)
Over the years I have had many many conversations about gender with him. The very first time I did talk with him, at age 7, when we met our first trans person, I asked him about how he felt. He said he was "60% boy, 40% girl...but it doesn't matter, people should just be happy being who they are." Unlike many, he doesn't talk about feeling wrong in his body (though he doesn't like his body hair), wanting to change it, and it's more of a "I feel that I have both feminine and masculine, and some days I feel more one way than the other." He did mention recently that he decided to hold off on hormones and surgical transitioning until he was in his 20's (the age of medical consent in Oregon where he lives is 15.)
Here's what I think: it's not a phase, it's not manipulative, and he's not trying to make himself special. Rather, he has tapped into the part of ourselves that recognizes that gender roles are in some ways, theater, and that one can choose which role to play. I do think that because he's a teen, he's on the woke bandwagon, and right now there's no logical conversation to be had about it because he is empathetic to his friends who, in my observation, are falling into the trending category (they are mostly teen girls, who are now trans) and because he also identifies with that crowd himself, so anything I say is a rejection of him. I think he's adopted the terminology because it best fits him and it's nice to feel like he belongs to a group. I think one of the biggest downfalls of our culture was coining toxic masculinity/male privilege and making being male/man into something to be ashamed of. Now teen boys are adrift in a sea of man-hating culture, so of course, why not become a woman?
That's all very interesting to hear, and I don't see anything in it to criticize you for. I might have done similar things with a son. But I do see the idea that transitioning is an easy and doable thing as a very dangerous idea. Hammering the male body into the female form, and vice versa, isn't a simple task. As I'm sure you've heard before, transitioning just makes you a life-long medical patient (certainly, more so than you would otherwise be). There's a lot of truth in the old hippie idea to love yourself as you are. Hopefully, your son will make good choices as he gets older.
It sounds like he doesn't listen to you that much, which is unfortunate. He doesn't realize the benefit he has in having a thoughtful mother.
Actually, as a gay man, I see a lot of masculinity as toxic. Look at what Putin is doing to Ukraine, and it's all to make himself feel like a man (though it's the soldiers and civilians who are dying).
I will say, even though it doesn't seem that he listens to me much, we used to be quite close until the pandemic + puberty, and he listened to me a lot, and I think he still does, even if he rejects what I say. I think he's just immature when it comes to civil debate, like a lot of youngsters are. Even my emotions get the best of me sometimes, and I remember what it was like as a teen. You think you know things. you think your parents are stupid. that part IS just a phase. At least, that's what I'm telling myself. ;)
I think I've touched a sensitive spot for you, and I'm sorry. I never had kids, so I never went through this. I just knew that I didn't have the patience -- and besides, I never found a soul mate . However, I've heard or read similar things from many parents, about how things go awry when puberty hits. I think it's normal. Who knows, by the time he is 22 or 25, you may be his best friend.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts about your son. I am so dead set against transgender ideology and its potential for harming people, that I forget that there are individual stories behind everything that's going on.
Oh! I didn't feel that you were being in any way inappropriate or insensitive, so no apology is necessary. Just answering your questions as well as adding what our dialogue brings up for me. I appreciate this conversation; I don't get to have it with many people.