Boys Will Be Girls

So Michael showed me this article about little kids who like to crossdress. And by kids, I mean specifically pre-adolescent boys. Girls haven't really been studied enough. Yet again, ladies, we take the back seat. Even in issues where the professionals want to do away with biological gender, women are still behind men. So then within the realm of gender indentification and "variance" as the professionals call it, we come to the idea of "gender-identity" rights. I don't really care if some kid wants to crossdress. But I do care that their families and teachers, supported by the psychiatric/psychological industry want to enact change in schools to accomodate this behavior. For example, one school is using gender-neutral language in its classes and the LA school district is asking its schools "to provide a locker room or changing area that corresponds to a student’s chosen gender." Also, on a bigger level, this issue came up recently in New York, where they've decided to let people alter the sex listed on their birth certificates. So you can go back as an adult male and say you were born as a little girl. That's going to be a great cover for people using false identities. You can change your birth certificate. So much for concerns about identity theft.

But I digress. My main distress is the accomodation of children who don't know what they want to be when they grow up. I don't care if some little boy feels like a girl. He is not a girl. Wanting to dress like a girl doesn't make you a girl. Clothes are cultural. Men wear dresses all over the world. Move to the Middle East or Africa or the South Pacific if your boy wants long hair and wants to wear a dress. Or move to Scotland. Men wear skirts there. My point is that boys could be wanting to wear little girls clothes for so many reasons. They could grow up to be crossdressing heteros, gay men or transgenders. They can be whatever they want. But why does everyone around them have to change to accomodate their confusion as children. Why can't a girl who knows she's a girl be identified with other girls and have privacy with other girls when she changes? You're telling me that you put a boy in the same locker room as a bunch of girls is not going to infringe on the girls' rights?

Where is the luxury to be making policies in schools about feelings? Shouldn't the LA School District be figuring out ways to cut down their class size, stop school violence and raise the bar academically for their students?

If we're going to do that, then let's go all the way. Let's get rid of separate bathrooms and locker rooms all together. We can evolve beyond needing any divisions. Everyone will respect each other's bodies and just get along swimmingly!

I don't even know what it means to "feel like a girl." Everyone is confused when they're children. A boy who is 5 years old hasn't even truly learned what makes him biologically different from a girl. Some girls don't want to put on dresses and have long hair. Some girls like to play with trucks and some girls like to play with dolls and some girls like to play with each other. So what kind of a girl do you feel like? The things that they use in this article are so superficial and cultural as to what it is to be a girl or a boy. If the stores switched all the "boy" clothes to pink, would that make them "girl" clothes? Why is pink for girls? It's just like any other color. Girls wear pants, boys can wear dresses. Clothes, hairstyles, and toys don't make a girl a girl. How about a vagina? Oh, you can get that with a sex change when you're older. Oh, yeah, it's that thing they call menstruation. Take it boys, you can have it. You can feel the experience of being a girl all you want! Oh, that doesn't just happen when you change your clothes or your hairstyle?

I'm all for being more open-minded and teaching kids that everything isn't black and white. But we should teach them about the diffences between boys and girls and teach them respect for each other before we cater to all their feelings and tear down the laws and physical walls that separate the genders.