The Gender Issue

Life was so simple before.  A person was born either a boy or a girl.  As the child grows up, natural attractions toward the opposite sex develop.  In some cases the attraction is toward the same sex, thus the term homosexual, or gay, or any number of other terms used to describe them.  Life for gays hasn’t been particularly easy, and society has only slowly come to accept them as part of the culture, with the same rights as any other person.  Discrimination based on sexual preferences has been outlawed in some States, and the cause for gay rights has been slowly advanced over recent years.

If we had stopped there, life would have continued being simple and straightforward.  But no… now we have a movement regarding gender and gender identity.

It’s difficult to know where to start.  First of all we are now faced with an ever-changing vocabulary, with new words and terms being constantly added into our verbiage.  Terms like “non-binary”, “gender fluid”, “genderqueer”.  (This last one prompted a spellcheck from my computer, but that won’t be the case for long).  We are no longer “born boy or girl”.  Now we are “assigned a gender at birth.”  This phrase I have a personal problem with.  It assumes so many things.  It conjures up visions of some Machiavellian conspiracy between the doctor and the parents to unfairly categorize the poor, unsuspecting baby.  We can no longer observe the genitals on a newborn baby and say boy or girl.  Now we are unfairly “assigning a gender at birth”, with the connotation that a mistake might be in the making.  Personally, I find this preposterous and ridiculous.  Which brings me to another point.

In most topics of conversation, it is perfectly acceptable to have differing opinions and points of view.  Politics being one of them.  But disagreement with the agenda of “gender assignment” and other gender-related issues brings with it the possible label of being “homophobic”, of all things.  The problem isn’t believing different things, in this case.  The problem is the insistence of the transgender community (no spellcheck on “transgender”) on pushing a certain agenda on the rest of society. 

Passports and birth certificates are being targeted in some countries and States.  It isn’t just “M” or “F” anymore.  There must be an accommodation for those who are neither.  It may be an “X”, who knows.  Look up number of genders on Google, and you’ll get lists with as many as 63 genders.  Are we to put 63 genders to choose from, for your passport or birth certificate?  Public bathrooms are being targeted.  Male and female bathrooms are no longer enough.  Now, in some places, you must have bathrooms for the undefined or “none of the above.”  There are attempts on our vocabulary in some places.  “Him” and “her” are no longer appropriate or acceptable.  Rather, gender-neutral pronouns like “ze”, “hir”, and “hen” are preferred.  Instead of Mr. or Ms., how about Mx.?

The problem doesn’t stop with the pushiness of those who propose this agenda.  An even bigger problem is the inclusion of children in this whole gender mess.  Boys who play with dolls, and girls who play with trucks and tractors have always existed.  Many times it’s a phase they grow out of, in the process of becoming normal, heterosexual adults.  Other times they grow up as gay adults.  But the point is they continue to grow, ideally in loving households with loving parents and loving families.

Nowadays, if a child decides he/she identifies as the opposite gender, that child can be taken by the parents to a Transgender Health Clinic, where he/she will be administered puberty blockers which have the effect the name suggests.  So at the tender age of 12 years old, a child and his parents can make a life-changing decision which could foreseeably have catastrophic effects down the line.  The reasoning being that at 16 years of age it’s too late… puberty has set in.  So rather than provide loving care and maybe some professional psychological treatment for the child, until he/she is ready to make his/her own decision as an adult, we are bypassing that step altogether and providing puberty blockers.  Doing this before the age of 12 right now might not be an easy task, but rest assured efforts are being made to push this age down even further.

It used to be LGBT, where L was for lesbian, G for gay, B for bisexual, and T for transsexual.  Nowadays you look up the long version and it’s something like LGBTQIAPK.  I would go into all the definitions, but for space considerations I won’t.  The term “gender-fluid” is an interesting one.  It denotes someone who “does not identify themselves as having a fixed gender.”  How convenient.  Maybe that would explain someone like the British lawyer who has had “gender re-assignment” surgery three times.  That sounds pretty fluid to me.  Obviously a boon to the surgeons, but confusing to just about everyone else.

The issue of gender is a complex one, and there are countless studies on the subject.  People will argue on both sides of the issue, claiming they know what is best for society.  Again, resistance to change as proposed (or pushed) by the transgender population is usually met with accusations of intolerance or even homophobia.  It is also a very controversial subject due to its nature.  People will compare this struggle to the civil rights movements of the 50’s and 60’s, which of course is utterly ridiculous.  Some things don’t even have to be explained so I’ll just leave it at that.

I’ve always felt people should have the right to do whatever they choose to do with, and to themselves, as long as they don’t hurt anyone else in the process.  If people want to identify as one of 63 genders, that’s fine.  Just don’t force changes on school education, vocabulary, critical personal documents, and public bathrooms.  Also, leave children to be children, and let them come to their own conclusions when they’re old enough to decide for themselves.