Tag: gender identity

Gender Identity Anarchy

~ jbwatson ~ Leave a comment

The January 2017 issue of National Geographic was “the Gender Issue.” The cover featured the title “Special Issue: Gender Revolution” over the picture of Avery Jackson, a transgender girl from Missouri who does yet appear to have reached teenage years. The issue’s main story was titled “Rethinking Gender” and it led with a page-and-a-half photo of twins Caleb and Emmie Smith. Emmie said, “When we were 12, I didn’t feel like a boy, but I didn’t know it was possible to be a girl.” She came out as transgender at 17 and has now undergone gender-confirmation surgery. But, she says, “I was no less of a woman before it, and I’m no more of one today.”

In other words, Emmie is saying that her gender is really all about how she feels about herself, what she thinks and how she chooses to identify. If having surgery did not make her more female then it must be the case that the surgery was purely for the purposes of providing her a body—an external appearance—to match the way she thinks and feels inside. This is a recurring factor in the entire transgender debacle. Not to be outdone by National Geographic, TIME used the cover of its March 27, 2017 issue to focus on the gender issue. The cover headline reads, “Beyond He or She” over a picture of Marie, an individual who appears to be a girl but, according to the caption, “identifies as queer and gender nonconforming.”

The feature story inside the magazine is titled “Infinite Identities,” and it quotes 18-year-old Rowan Little, who identifies as gender fluid, as saying, “Some days I feel like my gender could be like what I was assigned at birth, but there are some days when I feel the opposite way.” There is that issue of “feelings” again. Later, the article quotes Kyle Scotten, who identifies as a gay man, as saying that he sees sexuality as a spectrum. “I totally believe there are 100, 200 shades in the middle,” Scotten said, and even if he does not understand all of the nuances, “it makes sense to them in their own head and that’s enough.”

Really? If it is enough for something to make sense to someone in their own head then we are all in trouble. That is the very basis of anarchy—people being able to do whatever they want without rule, order or authority, based solely on what makes sense or feels good to them. In fact, Will Durant said, “As soon as liberty is complete it dies in anarchy.” The argument being made by many these days is that individuals have the liberty to decide for themselves what gender they will identify as—even if that changes from day to day. And when they decide, everyone else is supposed to accept it and accommodate it, even to the point of using their preferred pronouns lest we offend them by referring to them in a manner other than that which they prefer. Is it not interesting that their liberty then becomes constraining on the rest of us? English philosopher Jeremy Bentham knew that of which he spoke then, when he said, “Tyranny and anarchy are never far apart.” The anarchy of self-identification, and its resulting preferences and prescriptions, shall soon be the tyranny by which we shall all be ruled.

Further evidence of this liberty-to-anarchy progression comes later in the TIME article. It references a 2016 survey in which respondents were asked to provide the term that most accurately fit their gender—which produced more than 500 unique responses. Ritch Savin-Williams, professor emeritus at Cornell, said of the pure volume of labels being used, “It says, ‘Your terms do not reflect my reality or the reality of my friends.’” How many of us have not, at least one time or another, wished we could simply define our own reality? If we could, we would either be in a state of total anarchy or a state of total insanity, of course, because defining our own reality is simply not possible. Reality is, by definition, real.

Dictionary.com defines “reality” as “the state or quality of being real; something that is real; something that exists independently of ideas concerning it; something that constitutes a real or actual thing, as distinguished from something that is merely apparent.” Those definitions, of course, eliminate the possibility of anyone defining their own reality. Too, we recognize in almost every other area of life that we do not get to define our own reality. I would like to be a professional baseball player but I cannot simply say that is my reality, show up on the field and be allowed to play—or to collect a really big pay check. Try defining your own reality for your employer next time you are asked to do something at work. Even better, behold your own reaction when your next paycheck is a miniscule percentage of that which you expected (and earned) and when you ask the boss about it he says the paycheck you were given reflects his reality.

The TIME article ends with a perfect concluding statement to wrap up this absurdity, quoting Grace Mason, the president of the Gay-Straight Alliance in her high school. “I’d rather be who I am and be authentically me than try to fit in one of those crappy little boxes. I have a great box that I have made for myself.”

Of course all the rest of us have to accept and embrace that box—and everyone else’s boxes too—or else we will be labeled intolerant (at best).

The National Geographic story leads with a description of E, a 14-year-old girl who feels more like a boy. E still uses her birth name (choosing to go by E for the story) and still prefers the pronoun “she.” E does not think “transgender” fits her gender identity and she does not feel like she was born in the wrong body. “I just think I need to make alterations in the body I have, to make it feel like the body I need it to be,” she said. And what might that be exactly? Well, “a body that doesn’t menstruate and has no breasts, with more defined facial contours and ‘a ginger beard.’”

The article goes on to state that the XX and XY chromosomes that determine a baby’s sex do not always tell “the whole story.” Interestingly, though, the article says that that is true “on occasion.” It does not state how rare that occasion is, but is does provide an example of an individual with CAIS, complete androgen insensitivity syndrome, and describes a “small group of children born in the Dominican Republic with an enzyme deficiency” that causes genitalia to appear female at birth and male once puberty sets in. These are unusual situations to be sure, but there are, as the article states, occasional and small in number.

Also small in number are the individuals involved in scientific studies purporting to indicate that the brains of transgender individuals may be more like the brains of their self-identified gender than their biological gender. According to the article, some such studies include “as few as half a dozen transgender individuals.” That is an incredibly small number and rarely if ever would such a finite sample be considered sufficient for scientific conclusions. The article highlights another problem as well—that these studies sometimes include individuals already taking hormones for the opposite gender, “meaning that observed brain differences might be the result of, rather than the explanation for, a subject’s transgender identity.”

More interesting still though is that the article goes on to state that there has been a “robust” finding that there is a connection between gender nonconformity and autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The article cites a pediatric neuropsychologist at Children’s National Health System in Washington, D.C. indicating that “children and adolescents on the autism spectrum are seven times more likely than other young people to be gender nonconforming. And, conversely, children and adolescents at gender clinics are six to 15 times more likely than other young people to have ASD.”

The reason this connection between gender nonconformity and ASD is so interesting is that ASD is—as its name states—a disorder. It is a spectrum, yes, because it includes a range of symptoms but and disabilities, but ASD is the catch-all label for an expansive range of developmental disorders. Might gender nonconformity be a disorder then? Indeed it is, though I doubt you will see National Geographic or TIME or any other mainstream publication state that anytime soon.

The National Geographic article includes a photo of a child named Henry, along with a caption stating that Henry considers himself to be “gender creative” and, at the age of six, “he is already very sure of who he is.” That, of course, is nonsense, as no six-year-old is very sure of much of anything, much less anything that could potentially have life-altering ramifications.  WORLD magazine ran a rebuttal of sorts to the National Geographic and TIME features with its April 15, 2017 issue. Its cover featured a boy looking into a mirror and seeing a girl, which the headline “Forgotten Victims.” Not surprisingly that feature article took a different approach to the story than the other two. In fact, that article actually cited the six year old quoted in National Geographic that I led this paragraph with, along with a response from Michelle Cretella, president of the American College of Pediatricians. “You don’t treat medical confusion by putting people, especially children, on toxic hormones and cutting off healthy body parts,” Cretella said. “Just because a person thinks and feels something does not make it true.”

In fact, the Bible makes it clear that doing what one thinks and feels, when not consistent with Scripture, is not only not true but is quite dangerous. Both Proverbs 14:12 and 16:25 state that the way that seems right to a man will end in death. No doubt all of this gender nonconformity seems right to the people who are creating these great boxes for themselves. Proverbs 12:15a says, “The way of a fool is right in his own eyes.” Proverbs 21:2 says that every man’s way is right in his own eyes.

By the way, there is a term for everyone doing what is right in their own eyes. It is anarchy.

Another Double Standard

~ jbwatson ~ Leave a comment

Last time I commented on the ridiculousness of the double standards that exist in our country, thanks in no small part to our elected officials and (often unelected) judges. Here’s another excellent example for you. New Jersey, California and Washington, D.C. all have laws which ban state-licensed counselors from talking to minors about changing their sexual orientation. In New Jersey and California the law also states that counselors cannot talk to minors about changing their sexual behavior or trying to minimize feelings of attraction toward members of the same sex. This means, according to reporter Jamie Dean in an article published in the May 16 issue of WORLD, that the laws prohibit “any counseling that suggests it’s possible for a person to change–or even reduce–same-sex attractions.” Furthermore, Dean reports, at least eighteen other states have considered such bans. Worse, the Obama administration has indicated that it would support federal legislation on this matter if Congress were to act.

Why is this so problematic? Consider, please, what these bans do not prevent–namely, counselors talking to minors about changing their bodies if they want to switch to another gender (like Bruce Jenner). If a young person feels a sexual attraction to someone of the same gender, and does not like it, counseling would be a logical next step in most people’s minds. Yet, according to these laws, the counselor could not discuss this with the young person. Apparently it is not okay for a young person to want to change the fact that he or she feels a sexual attraction to someone of the same sex, but it is perfectly fine to discuss with that young person changing their body and almost every other aspect of their life in order to assume an identity as a member of the other gender. In other words, state legislatures are giving their seal of approval on what kinds of feelings are perfectly acceptable (such as changing one’s gender) and those which are not (such as trying to overcome unwanted sexual attraction).

What we are seeing here is not only a horrible double standard but a frightening invasion by government into the most private and personal areas of personal lives. Here the media and many in our nation have been celebrating Bruce Jenner’s decision to abandon his life as a male and switch to a female, and counselors are more than welcome to assist young people in exploring these feelings and desires, but when a young man does not like the fact that he sometimes feels attracted to other men (or a young women does not like that she sometimes feels attracted to other women), young people cannot discuss those feelings with the very people who, theoretically, should be most equipped to help them deal with these feelings. The government, then, is deciding what feelings are okay and what feelings are not okay. It is perfectly okay to want to switch genders and it is perfectly okay to be attracted to people of the same gender, but it is not okay to not like it when those same-sex feelings pop up. The pendulum has swung far in the other direction! Not too long ago there was considerable debate over whether or not a person who felt same-sex attractions was mentally stable. It was even less long ago that someone who felt same-sex attractions would have been extremely reluctant to speak about, much less act on, those feelings. There has been a shift toward accepting those who feel that same-sex attraction, embracing them, and helping them accept those feelings. Now, instead, a person who feels a same-sex attraction and does not like it is not allowed to talk about it, is discouraged from feeling that way, and is told that trying to deny that feeling is wrong. When you see how far we have come in this area it is not really all that difficult to envision the lunacy I described in the last post that will come from giving human-like rights to chimpanzees. The government cannot tell anyone what to think, and it ought not try.

Funny, isn’t it, that our culture seems to encourage people to think whatever they want, to eschew any ideas of right and wrong and pursue whatever makes them feel good–yet when something is making them feel bad, that the culture thinks is just fine and should make them feel good, all of a sudden there is a wrong! This is just the kind of foolishness that stems from man messing with what God has already decided; we just make a big mess of everything.

Promoting a Mental Disorder

~ jbwatson ~ Leave a comment

Not unlike the issue of Common Core not too long ago, the transgender issue is taking entirely too much of my time and effort these days. Wait, who am I kidding? Common Core has not gone on away, is not going away, and could still be a source of topics for this blog every day if I let it. Since I have decided to move on from Common Core I probably need to do the same with the transgender mess, because I think I have made my position pretty clear by this point. Before I move on, though, I want to bring in one additional perspective, one that does not get much attention in the mainstream media. The reason for that, of course, is that it is not a popular position. But one mainstream media outlet did give voice to this position a few months ago–the Wall Street Journal, on June 12, published an opinion piece by Dr. Paul McHugh, the former psychiatrist in chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital. The piece was entitled “Transgender Surgery Isn’t the Solution,” with the subtitle “A drastic physical change doesn’t address underlying psycho-social troubles.” You need read no further to identify why this position is not a popular one. After all, any suggestion that gender identity confusion is related to psycho-social troubles will quickly get you relegated to the status of right wing extremist or intolerant wacko. (Some people would consider those two terms redundant). But McHugh was able to give voice to the facts about the transgender issue in a respected national publication, due no doubt to his credentials and experience.

He wasted no time getting to the point, either. After setting the stage in an introductory paragraph that referenced the decision that Medicare could pay for gender reassignment surgery, Chuck Hagel’s statement about being open to the idea of transgendered individuals serving in the military, and the issue of TIME devoted to the transgender issue, McHugh writes the following:

Yet policy makers and the media are doing no favors either to the public or the transgendered by treating their confusions as a right in need of defending rather than as a mental disorder that deserves understanding, treatment and prevention. This intensely felt sense of being transgendered constitutes a mental disorder in two respects. The first is that the idea of sex misalignment is simply mistaken—it does not correspond with physical reality. The second is that it can lead to grim psychological outcomes.

Clear, unequivocal language stating the reality of the situation! The feelings and confusion faced by transgendered individuals that are leading to policy changes and laws across the country are in fact the result, McHugh says, of a mental disorder. McHugh offers a comparison to anorexia and bulimia nervosa, calling all three “disordered assumptions” wherein the afflicted individual holds an assumption that is different from the physical reality. “For the transgendered, this argument holds that one’s feeling of ‘gender’ is a conscious, subjective sense that, being in one’s mind, cannot be questioned by others,” McHugh writes. “The individual often seeks not just society’s tolerance of this ‘personal truth’ but affirmation of it.” As I have written before, we can never allow rights to be granted on the basis of what someone feels or even has convinced themselves of. If someone wants to insist that they “feel” female when they are, in fact, male, there is nothing we can (or maybe even should) do to change that, but that individual cannot insist that everyone else recognize him as female and allow him to demand that he be treated as a female. That is because there is a reality that contradicts those feelings. Just as I said in yesterday’s post, there is an actual distinction between boy and girl! If anyone can demand anything based solely on the certainty of their feelings we will have to grant anything–we will have eliminated the possibility of saying that anything is wrong or unnatural and, soon, that anything is illegal.

Another very dangerous side effect of the transgender movement that McHugh highlights is the violation of parental rights. He explains that several states have passed laws “barring psychiatrists, even with parental permission, from striving to restore natural gender feelings to a transgender minor.” He further explains, “That government can intrude into parents’ rights to seek help in guiding their children indicates how powerful these advocates have become.” It is more than that, though. It indicates that those who have decided they know better are successfully removing the rights of those they have determined are wrong. Removing the right of a parent to seek counsel and treatment that they believe is in the best interest of their child(ren) is a serious and incredibly dangerous step to take. Historically speaking, it was not all that long ago that those who were determined to be right were allowed to restrict who could marry or who could reproduce, even going so far as forced sterilization of those not deemed good enough to procreate. Who would have thought we would be heading back in that direction early in the twenty-first century?

McHugh also highlights the fact that life-altering decisions are being made for and by young people who claim to be transgendered when, in reality, many of them will “outgrow” that feeling. “When children who reported transgender feelings were tracked without medical or surgical treatment at both Vanderbilt University and London’s Portman Clinic, 70%-80% of them spontaneously lost those feelings,” McHugh writes. Yes, that means some maintained those feelings, but clearly that was a distinct minority. Yet, young people are being given hormones and even having gender reassignment surgery when we are all well aware that teenagers go through many phases and change their minds on many matters as they grow and mature.

[T]here is the subgroup of very young, often prepubescent children who notice distinct sex roles in the culture and, exploring how they fit in, begin imitating the opposite sex. Misguided doctors at medical centers including Boston’s Children’s Hospital have begun trying to treat this behavior by administering puberty-delaying hormones to render later sex-change surgeries less onerous—even though the drugs stunt the children’s growth and risk causing sterility. Given that close to 80% of such children would abandon their confusion and grow naturally into adult life if untreated, these medical interventions come close to child abuse. A better way to help these children: with devoted parenting.

No one would allow a teenager, or a pre-teen, to make a permanent, binding decision about their political party, career path, hair color or anything else, let alone allow their parents to make such decisions for them, so why would we allow such decisions to be made when it comes to gender identity? McHugh reports that the findings of a 2011 study at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden indicate that individuals who have sex-reassignment surgery begin, around ten years after the surgery, to have a severely heightened risk of suicide (“20-fold above the comparable nontransgender population) as well as other mental difficulties.

McHugh boldly asserts that one of the biggest problems young people are faced with is a culture which encourages them to do whatever they want, to resist those who challenge or caution their feelings or choices and even to move away from the advice and counsel of their families if that advice and counsel does anything other than support the feelings they have. “‘Diversity’ counselors in their schools, rather like cult leaders, may encourage these young people to distance themselves from their families and offer advice on rebutting arguments against having transgender surgery. Treatments here must begin with removing the young person from the suggestive environment and offering a counter-message in family therapy,” McHugh writes. School personnel and counselors used to teach students to respect their parents and seek out their advice and guidance. Now they are more likely to teach students that mom and dad are wrong and should be ignored because they do not understand and are just trying to prevent the child from being him/herself. Yet again, we see those who have been deemed to be the wise ones being given authority that exceeds the God-given authority of the parents.

We need to encourage and support Paul McHugh and others who are bold enough to take this stand against the insanity that the anything-goes crowd is trying to force on the rest of us. The future of our children, our families and, therefore, our nation is literally at stake. We are seeing, all across the country, states lining up to grant “civil rights” for what is nothing more than a feeling at best, a mental disorder at worst. McHugh closes his opinion piece with a point-blank reality check, and I’ll close with it, too:

At the heart of the problem is confusion over the nature of the transgendered. “Sex change” is biologically impossible. People who undergo sex-reassignment surgery do not change from men to women or vice versa. Rather, they become feminized men or masculinized women. Claiming that this is civil-rights matter and encouraging surgical intervention is in reality to collaborate with and promote a mental disorder.

More insanity

~ jbwatson ~ 1 Comment

I do not mean this to be a dig at Nebraska at all, but the Cornhusker State is not where I would have expected to see a big push toward gender inclusiveness. Then again, the Nebraska motto is “Equality before the law,” so maybe some fine Nebraskans are confusing equality with insanity when it comes to this issue. On October 1 the Lincoln Journal Star ran an article entitled, “LPS staff’s transgender training concerns parents.” That story was picked up by Todd Starnes of Fox News, who published his thoughts on the subject on October 9. I have addressed the foolishness that is proliferating from the “gender inclusive” movement in this space before, so I will not rehash all of the previous points I have made. I will, however, provide you with a few examples of the idiocy that is infiltrating the public school system in Lincoln, Nebraska and will, no doubt, soon be making its way to a school system near you.

The Journal Star article’s lead paragraph states that Lincoln Public School leadership is addressing transgender issues with staff “so they can better help students.” The second paragraph is a quote from Brenda Leggiardo, the district’s coordinator of social workers and counselors: “The agenda we’re promoting is to help all kids succeed. We have kids who come to us with a whole variety of circumstances, and we need to equitably serve all kids.”

What does that look like, then? Well, apparently it includes not using the terms “boys” and “girls”. According to Rachel Terry, a parent with students in middle and high school in Lincoln and who intends to address to school board at their meeting on October 14, the school district’s personnel were given three handouts to assist them in “equitably serv[ing] all kids,” including one from GenderSpectrum.org entitled “12 easy steps on the way to gender inclusiveness.” Step one reads like this:

Avoid asking kids to line up as boys or girls or separating them by gender. Instead, use things like “odd and even birth date,” or “Which would you choose: skateboards or bikes/milk or juice/dogs or cats/summer or winter/talking or listening.” Invite students to come up with choices themselves. Consider using tools like the “appointment schedule” to form pairs or groups. Always ask yourself, “Will this configuration create a gendered space?”

Having been in education for a number of years now, I can tell you that educators have far more important things to worry about than whether or not a configuration of students will create a gendered space. In fact, there would be many situations in which a gendered space would be entirely appropriate. The second step instructs teachers not to say things like “boys and girls,” “you guys” or “ladies and gentlemen” but to instead say things like “calling all readers,” “hey campers” or “could all of the athletes come here.” In other words, do not classify students by their gender, but feel free to classify them by their behaviors, talents or interests. And if that does not work, then create some goofy labels to use within the classroom such as the recommended “purple penguins” included on the handout.

Think that sounds crazy? It gets exponentially worse. Step 3 goes like this: “Provide an opportunity for every student to identify a preferred name or pronoun. At the beginning of the year or at Back- to-School Night, invite students and parents to let you know if they have a preferred name and/or pronoun by which they wish to be referred.” So not only do teachers in this scenario have to remember not to address students as boys and girls, they must also ask students what name and pronoun they would prefer and then remember those all year, too. And of course when we begin allowing people to choose whatever name or pronoun they want we eliminate any semblance of reality or fact. Instead, everything becomes based on whatever someone feels like or prefers at any given time. Oh, unless you feel like being in an academic environment wherein boys are boys, girls are girls and pronouns are the old stand-bys “he, she, him and her.” If that is what you prefer you’re just out of luck. And out of touch with what is politically correct these days, too.

Step 5 of the GenderSpectrum worksheet instructs teachers to avoid using references to gender but, if such references are unavoidable, to say “boy, girl, both or neither” and then, “when asked why, use this as a teachable moment.” Just for fun, try this next time you’re out to eat and placing your drink order. Tell your server you’d like “Coke, Pepsi, both or neither” and see what you get. Tell the fast food employee on the other end of the intercom at the drive-thru that you’d like “a hamburger, a chicken sandwich, both or neither.” When you see your doctor next time tell him that you seem to be having “trouble hearing, upset stomach, both or neither.” Better yet, when you go to the ballot box next month, try indicating that you’d like to vote for “candidate A, candidate B, both or neither.” See what they do with your ballot. These examples are ridiculous, of course, and that is because there are actual distinctions and it is not possible for it to be both things. Gender is no different, try as anyone may to change that. It matters not how someone feels or chooses to identify, their gender is their gender.

Now, that makes me intolerant and openly hostile, and I realize and accept that. I wear that label with pride, actually. Ryan Dobson wrote a book a few years ago entitled Be Intolerant: Because Some Things Are Just Stupid. I could not have said it better myself. What it really comes down to, of course, is the relativism that those who promote this kind of gender inclusiveness want to see infiltrate every area of society. Indeed, number 10 on the GenderSpectrum sheet says, “Teach them phrases like ‘That may be true for some people, but not all people.'”

Feel free to look for the articles on this subject online–you will find plenty more to fuel your aggravation. But I’ll close with this gem from Todd Starnes: “While we’re on the subject, what’s a gender-neutral term for morons?”

How do you feel?

~ jbwatson ~ Leave a comment

Several posts ago, in an entry titled “The biggest obstacle”, I made several statements and assertions that I said I would come back to and elaborate on later. I will do that now. One of the statements I made in that post was that special rights based on gender identity is ridiculous. The reason that it is ridiculous is that there is no other area in life that I can think of where anyone is able to obtain any kind of rights based solely on how they identify themselves. The only possible exception that comes to mind would be religious affiliation, as there are sometimes rights that are associated with religious affiliation and practice. That is necessary, though, because there are no genetic connections to religion, to physical identifiers upon which anyone can be associated with a particular religion. That is because religion is necessarily a choice. That certain rights have been granted on the basis of religion is a testament to the importance that humankind as historically placed on religion and the very personal nature of religious belief. Gender is not that way, however–or at least never has been until now.

As I stated before, from the beginning of time it has been possible to determine the gender of a child within moments of birth. Indeed, for the past several decades it has been possible, thanks to advances in medical technology, to identify the gender of a child in utero. Can you imagine the way conversations may go in the future once all of this transgender mumbo jumbo takes hold? Someone will ask their pregnant acquaintance, “So are you having a boy or a girl?” “Well, the sonogram shows the baby’s sex will be female, so I am sure that is the gender that will be assigned on the birth certificate. But, of course, we will have a to wait a little while to see how she acts, what she prefers, and how she wants to identify herself before we will really know. After all, sex is purely biological but gender is really a choice.”

Since the transgender movement insists that gender is in fact the product of cultural influences and behaviors learned through human interaction the conversation above could even be more along these lines: “Well, the sonogram shows the baby’s sex will be female, so I am sure that is the gender that will be assigned on the birth certificate. But my husband and I really want a boy, so we are going to raise this child as a boy. We will give the baby a male name, decorate the room with a masculine theme, dress the baby in boy’s clothing and raise the baby to be a male. As soon as ‘he’ is old enough we will jump through all of the hoops to have ‘his’ real gender identified accordingly.”

The one opponent of the transgender movement that was actually given any print in Katy Steinmetz’s TIME article was Frank Schubert, a political organizer from California. Steinmetz quoted Schubert saying, “We introduce this concept called gender identity, and I don’t have any idea what that is. Can you claim a racial identity based on how you feel or the community that you’re growing up in? Can I claim to be African American if I feel African American?” That is a legitimate question, silly though it may sound. Just as gender has always been consist with one’s anatomy, so race has always been consist with one’s genetic make up (often visible through skin tone). If an individual wants to, for whatever reason, “identify” as a race other than that which he or she is how can we stop that from occurring if we are saying that gender is so fluid? If gender is the product of cultural influences and learned behaviors, could not race be, too?

Now, I know I am taking this to an extreme, but I think it is necessary in order to make a point. Once we begin allowing people to claim or identify anything based solely on feelings we are obliterating any possibility of maintaining boundaries of any kind based on facts. Just as the redefinition of marriage to include male-male and female-female unions necessarily flings open the door to allow any combination to be defined as marriage, so the allowance of gender to be based solely on feelings means that, necessarily, we will have to allow anyone who feels anything to claim that they are that thing. If someone feels rich can they take items they cannot really afford from the store by writing checks that will never clear because they “feel like” they have money? That’s ridiculous, you say. Whether or not someone has money is easy to determine, easily verifiable. Well, guess what? So is whether or not someone was born male or female.

This gets to the heart of what I was getting at when I wrote in “The biggest obstacle” that transgender individuals do not really want an equal place but instead want a special place based on their personal choices. Someone using the name “Eyeontheuniverse” was kind enough to comment on that post and ask me to provide an example of such a special place or unique and privileged treatment that I am asserting transgender individuals want. Sure; I’d be happy to. The right to compete on an athletic team based on one’s chosen gender, the right to use a restroom based on one’s chosen gender, or any other example of insisting on treatment based on how one feels or identifies rather than what one is is a pursuit of special and privileged treatment. If someone wants to engage in homosexual sex, that’s fine, that is his or her choice. Demanding that marriage be redefined to include homosexual unions is insisting on special and privileged treatment. If a male wants to dress and act like a female, even assume a female name or identity, then I suppose he can do that, that is his choice. But to insist that “she” be allowed to play sports based on that choice, or use a restroom based on that choice, or be referred to using pronouns based on that choice, is to demand special and privileged treatment. If transgender individuals can make up their own pronouns like “xyr” why cannot I make up my own pronouns? Henceforth, I do not wish to be referred to as “he” but rather as “ilb.” That is my choice, and I am demanding that everyone else refer to me accordingly. Those who do not shall be sued so that courts will order them to refer to me as such. And while I’m at it, I’m tired of the title “Mr.” too, so from now on it will be “Great.” Yes…instead of Mr. Watson, I shall be Great Watson. I like that much better…I think I will feel much better when addressed that way.

Pretty stupid, huh? My point exactly….

Whoever “Eyeontheuniverse” is, their comment on “The biggest obstacle” included this statement: “In all we are probably looking at 2-6% of the population who in some way have a conflict between some combination of genes, body and brain. There’s not very much you are going to do to alter this (at least historically) after a person is born. The goal is to make life for people who are outside the simple binary system as easy as possible.” Again, I do not know who this person is, but he or she apparently has greater knowledge of this situation that any other study I have been able to find, since all reports seem to indicate that 0.2% to 0.5% of the population fits into the transgender category. “Eyeontheuniverse” apparently believes it to be ten times that number. Notice the end of the comment, though. The goal is to make life for those individuals as easy as possible. Never mind the fact that in so doing we will be making life as uncomfortable and difficult as possible for the majority of the population!

Katy Steinmetz wrote in her article, “No matter their anatomy, transgender people want to live–and be identified–according to how they feel: to be able to dress and be treated like a woman or a man regardless of what their parents or delivering nurses may have assumed at birth.” This is really what is comes down to–demanding rights and treatment based solely on how one feels. I explained above what the problems are associated with that approach, but I do have to appreciate the candor of Steinmetz. At the end of the day, the homosexual movement, the transgender movement, and many other movements now in existence and yet to come, want all notions of right and wrong, black and white, left and right–in other words, any concept of absolute truth–to be eliminated and everything to be based on feelings.

Watch out anarchy…here we come.

Fair to All

~ jbwatson ~ 1 Comment

In this post I would like to address some of the ways in which the “rights” being sought through the transgender movement both interfere with the rights of other individuals and violate long-standing rules and policies in various organizations.

Perhaps the first place to look should be at the impact the transgender movement is having, and will continue to have, in schools. The South Dakota High School Activities Association’s transgender policy references in an earlier post includes this statement at the end of the introductory paragraph: “This policy creates a framework in which this participation may occur in a safe and healthy manner that is fair to all competitors.” Really? Fair to all competitors? How is it fair to the females in high school sports for a male who identifies as a female to be allowed to play on a girls sports team? (Or vice versa).

There are numerous ways in which such participation is inherently unfair to everyone involved. It is unfair to the transgender individual because it allows him or her to assume an identity other than that which he or she actually possesses. I could elaborate on that one, but transgender individuals and activists would deny that one so there is not much point in belaboring it; after all, the assumption of that identity is exactly what they are trying to accomplish.

The participation of the transgender individual is unfair to the other competitors. Regardless of how much we may want to deny it or pretend it does not matter, males and females are not physically identical. Males tend to be taller and stronger than females. Therefore, there are inherent problems in allowing males to compete as females or females to compete as males in sports where physical fitness is relevant (and, frankly, there are very few high school sports where it is not). The matter of transgender athletes competing has been an issue in arenas far beyond high school sports and will no doubt continue to be an issue.

The Olympics has long dealt with the issue of athletes trying to complete in events other than those for which they would qualify according to their gender. The IOC has long used gender testing in order to prevent such individuals from competing in the Olympics. In 2004, however, the IOC did adopt “the Stockholm Consensus” which would allow transgender athletes to compete according to their gender identity so long as three conditions were met: the individual must have had gender reassignment surgery, must have obtained legal recognition of their newly assumed gender, and must have had at least two years of hormone treatments/therapy. While even allowing these individuals to compete warrants legitimate debate, at least these guidelines establish very specific parameters that both prevent someone from competing based purely on the gender with which they identify and also require some efforts to diminish the advantages that are inherent based on gender differences. The SDHSAA policy allows students to participate based on their gender identity. It does require documentation of “consistent gender identification and expression” and does state that once a student is identified as transgender that student must compete in that gender category for the remainder of his or her high school years. That will, presumably, eliminate any possibility of someone claiming a certain gender identity for one sport and then switching to another identity for the next sport, trying to gain some kind of competitive advantage. Rest assured, however, that the ability of athletes to compete based solely on the gender identity they claim on any given day will be on the transgender agenda before long. After all, if the idea is that gender is fluid and based on how one feels and identifies rather than on how one was born it will not be possible to insist that one can really be a gender other than the one they were born but that once that decision is made it is permanent.

A few months ago CrossFit was in the news because its governing body told a transgender female athlete that she could not compete as a woman. Why? An article on HuffingtonPost described the following as “the most disturbing part” of the letter sent to individual in question:

We have simply ruled that based upon [Chloie] being born as a male, she will need to compete in the Men’s Division. … The fundamental, ineluctable fact is that a male competitor who has a sex reassignment procedure still has a genetic makeup that confers a physical and physiological advantage over women. … Our decision has nothing to do with “ignorance” or being bigots — it has to do with a very real understanding of the human genome, of fundamental biology, that you are either intentionally ignoring or missed in high school.

Was the CrossFit response rude? I suppose you could argue that it was. The main points of their explanation are entirely accurate, however; no matter how you slice it, a male who identifies as a female–even a male who has gender reassignment surgery–does and will always have a physical advantage. One could debate the physiological advantage but I think it is safe to assume that the fact that the woman on the court/track/field used to be a man will be in the mind of the other women involved in the competition.

There is plenty more that could be said on this matter but the issue goes well beyond athletics. I believe it should be sufficient for this particular aspect of the issue to say that it simply is not possible to both allow transgender individuals to compete according to their gender identity and to, as the SDHSAA policy asserts, be “fair to all competitors.” It certainly interferes with the right of a female to compete solely against other females in her sport of choice when men who decide to become females are also allowed to compete.

Another area in which the transgender movement is trampling the rights of others is the insistence that everyone else refer to transgender individuals by the gender pronouns aligned with their gender identity. The SDHSAA policy includes a statement that schools must “[u]se correct names/pronouns according to the student’s self–identification.” I see no recognition of the rights of an individual who is uncomfortable referring to a “he” as a “she” in that wording. Public schools in Vancouver, Canada have gone even further. Last month the school board approved a policy that will require teachers to use transgender pronouns when referring to transgender individuals. What are transgender pronouns? They are made-up words, no doubt created by some person or group of people within the transgender movement so that they can have their own pronouns and not have to use those that belong to males and females. The Vancouver policy instructs teachers to use “xe, xem and xyr” instead of “he, him and his.” Never mind the rights of teachers and others to refer to individuals as what they are rather than what they feel like, apparently the transgender movement is also entitled to create its own words now, too.

Perhaps most disconcerting is the movement for transgender individuals to be permitted to use restrooms based on their gender identity. California approved a bill last year that allows school children to select which bathroom they will use based on their gender identity. What about the rights of the boys not to have a girl who says she feels like a boy come into their bathroom, or the girls to have a boy who feels like a girl come into theirs? Again, the rights of the vast majority of individuals are being trampled on in order to accommodate the preferences of a very small few. The SDHSAA policy includes “locker room accessibility” as one of the things that schools must accommodate when there is a transgender athlete. What if there is no locker room available? Not many schools have extra locker rooms sitting around, meaning either the transgender athlete will have to be permitted to use the locker room of the gender he/she claims, will have to use the locker room on his/her own when the rest of the team is out of the room, or will have to be given a separate room somewhere to change, etc. Mark my words, if we continue down this path it will not be long before any newly-constructed public building will have to include gender-neutral restrooms. The transgender movement will insist that this is a civil rights issue, they will demand equality of facilities, and they will obtain a transgender version of the Americans with Disabilities Act that requires handicapped accessibility in public buildings. No doubt most of them will be used rarely if ever, given that less than half of one percent of the population identifies as transgender, but at least they’ll be there should the need arise.

That is, of course, because we must be “fair to all.”

Word Games

~ jbwatson ~ Leave a comment

The TIME article by Katy Steinmetz provides an overview of the history of the transgender issue in the United States. “Modern America’s journey” with this issue, she writes, “begins after World War II with a woman named Christine Jorgensen.” Christine Jorgensen was born George, and after completing service as a soldier and being honorably discharged George sailed for Denmark with the plan of finding a surgeon who would transform George into Christine. The story became news, and Jorgensen wrote a letter that was published by the New York Daily News after it ran a story under the headline EX-GI BECOMES BLONDE BEAUTY. In the letter Jorgensen asserted, “Nature made a mistake, which I have had corrected.”

That statement contains a clear allusion to the fact that there is a denial among many in the transgender movement, and its supporters, that humans are created by God. It was “nature,” Jorgensen said, that made the mistake. When nature makes a mistake man is entitled to correct it, the reasoning goes. Interestingly, one of the arguments most often used by homosexuals and activists who support the homosexual rights movement is that homosexual individuals were “born that way” and that human laws preventing homosexual marriage or beliefs that homosexual behavior is immoral are contradicting nature (or even, some would say, the way God made them). Now transgender individuals are suggesting that they way they were born–in other words, their gender at birth–was a mistake that they need to fix. So we have one group of people arguing that they should have special rights because they were born “that way” and another group arguing that they should have special rights because the way they were born was wrong.

This is not the only instance of transgender individuals wanting to have it both ways. In 1980, seven years after the DSM removed homosexuality as a disorder, transsexualism was added. That was later given the label of gender identity disorder and then, in 2013, renamed yet again to gender dysphoria. The president of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (yes, there is such an organization) celebrated the change, saying, “‘Gender identity disorder’ [implied] that your identity was wrong, that you are wrong.” Yet, according to Steinmetz, some were not in favor of removing the disorder label because without it it will likely be harder for individuals to access treatment such as hormone therapy without having to pay the entire cost themselves. After all, if it is not a disorder, it is an elective procedure.

Despite the change in the DSM, there is going to be increasing pressure for insurance companies and even government insurance to pay for sex change operations and hormone therapy. At the end of May a board within the Department of Health and Human Services ruled that sex change surgeries will be covered by Medicare. This decision came after Denee Mallon, age 74, filed a law suit to have Medicare pay for an operation changing him from male to female. Once such procedures are considered covered by Medicare it is only a matter of time before the government will also push for insurance companies to cover them, as well.

If you are not yet confused or disgusted, it gets more complicated. According to the TIME article, it is necessary, in order to really understand this issue, to see “sex and gender as two separate concepts–sex is biological, determined by a baby’s birth anatomy; gender is cultural, a set of behaviors learned through human interaction.” Oh really? That is nothing more than another attempt at redefining terms. Dictionary.com provides, as the second definition of gender, one word: sex. (The first definition refers to the various genders of nouns in many languages). If you look at Merriam-Webster.com the definition of gender is “the state of being male or female.” If you read on to the full definition of gender you find that the first definition is, again, concerned with grammar. The second definition? Again, one word: sex.

Even if we wanted to grant the notion that sex and gender are two different things, it gets even more complicated. Steinmetz goes on to write, “Sexual preferences, meanwhile, are a separate matter altogether. There is no concrete correlation between a person’s gender identity and sexual interests; a heterosexual woman, for instance, might start living as a man and still be attracted to men. One oft-cited explanation is that sexual orientation determines who you want to go to bed with and gender identity determines who you want to go to bed as.” So, just to make sure you’re keeping up, that would mean–in the scenario presented by Steinmetz–that a person born as a woman could become a transgender man and then engage in homosexual sex with a man.

Since that is so confusing, Steinmetz goes on to explain that “some trans people reject all labels, seeing gender as a spectrum rather than a two-option multiple-choice question. The word transgender, which came into wider use in the 1990s after public health officials adopted it, is often used as an umbrella term for all rejections of the norm, from cross-dressers who are generally happy in their assigned gender to transsexuals like Jorgensen.” The idea of the gender spectrum is already gaining acceptance; in February Facebook changed its male and female options for gender to include more than fifty choices. The day before Valentine’s Day ABC News reported that Facebook would not be releasing a comprehensive list of options but that ABC had identified fifty-eight options. Among the options are ten varieties of “cis.” What in the world is that? Apparently, cisgender or cissexual, which are often abbreviated as simply cis, is defined by sociologists Kristen Schilt and Laurel Westbrook as a label for “individuals who have a match between the gender they were assigned at birth, their bodies, and their personal identity.” According to Wikipedia this is to be a complement to transgender. So I suppose (assuming I understand this definition correctly) I could now identify myself as cis if I am not satisfied with just simply being male. After all, male apparently no longer tells you that I was born male, identify as male and have a male body. So how does Facebook come up with ten varieties of cis? I could choose to identify myself as cis, cis male, cis man, cisgender male or cisgender man.

Other Facebook options include gender fluid, gender nonconforming and gender variant, as well as two-spirit. I am not even going to get into what some of those mean. Just in case you cannot find your chosen gender identity in the fifty-plus options ABC identified, though, there is also the option of “other.”

As I said yesterday, this entire situation just gets messier and messier the more you try to make sense of it. And so far I’m just talking about terminology! Just wait until next time when I begin exploring what the implications of this are when actually put into day to day living.

“Social Indoctrination”

~ jbwatson ~ Leave a comment

No small part of the reason that public schooling has, in my mind, all but ceased to be an option for Christian parents is the increasing desire on the part of public schools to make everyone feel welcome and comfortable–which is, in fact, doing exactly the opposite.

California should almost never be used as an example for anything since it tends to be such a unique entity all on its own, but the foolishness going on there with the gender identity issue is a good example of the kind of thing I am talking about. As you have likely heard, and as I have addressed here before, California enacted legislation that permits transgender students to choose which restroom they want to use and whether to play boys or girls sports. Writing just this morning on this issue CBN Chief Political Correspondent David Brody said, “Critics say it’s all cloaked under the guise of fairness. But supporters say it’s important that transgender students feel comfortable and not isolated.”

That “cloak of fairness” is where the problem comes in. In this instance it pertains to gender identity. In other instances it pertains to sexual preference or religious belief or almost anything you may want to put in the blank other than conservative Christian beliefs. Somehow, the “cloak of fairness” does not seem to extend to evangelical Christians–no doubt because they are considered to be intolerant.

We all know life is not fair. Never has been, and never will be. That does not mean that public schools (or non-public schools, for that matter) should abandon any effort to be fair and equitable in decision making and policy enforcement. The reality, though, is that the “fairness” public schools seem to scrambling for is anything but fair. The first part of dictionary.com’s definition of “fair” reads like this: “free from bias, dishonesty, or injustice.” What the schools in California are doing with their gender identity policies is hardly free from bias. What it is, in fact, is biased in favor of any student who claims to feel like the gender he or she was not born.

The CBN article quotes California Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, defending the legislation, as saying, “No student can learn if they feel like they have to hide who they are at school or [are] singled out for unequal treatment.” Absent from that silliness is the reality that no student can learn if they feel like they have to hide at school. I have no doubt that some young girls in California are quite concerned–scared, even–of using the bathrooms at their public schools for fear that a boy will come in to that bathroom. I doubt seriously that their fears are alleviated by the fact that any boy who does so supposedly identifies himself as being a girl. I am certain there are girls who will not join sports teams, or will join and have their play impacted, because there are biological boys who feel like girls playing on the team. I am sure there are boys who will not join sports teams, or will play differently than they would if only boys were playing, because girls who self-identify as boys are permitted to play on the team, too. In order to avoid having what are undoubtedly a very small number of students who claim that they were born with the wrong plumbing feel like they are treated unfairly every other student in the California public school system is treated unfairly instead.

Interestingly, the CBN article also includes a statement from a transgender student named Ashton Lee. I am not sure if Ashton is a biological boy or girl, but here is the statement Ashton made (notice I cannot even use a pronoun because of the ambiguity): “It’s going to take away that extra pressure of not knowing where to go and not knowing what classes you’re going to be in and not being treated the same as all the other boys and girls in your school.” Do you see the irony in that statement? Ashton favors this legislation because as a result of it Ashton will not have to worry about being treated the same as all of the other boys and girls! Translation: Ashton will be treated differently. More specifically, Ashton will have greater privileges and “rights” than the “other boys and girls.” So much for fair and unbiased, huh?

California Republican Tim Donnelly, a member of the state legislature, has taken his 13-year-old son out of the California public school system. Why? “The public schools are no longer interested in education,” he said. He continued that his son is “not going back to the junior high school for more of this social indoctrination. To me, they ought to be talking about reading, writing and arithmetic, not sexual identity politics.” Can I get an Amen?

This is the kind of thing that has, more than anything else, made public schooling a non-option for Christian parents. Once the truth of God’s Word has been abandoned there is no longer any guide for right and wrong. When there is no absolute standard for right and wrong those things become defined by whoever is in power. When those in power decide that what is right is for the whims of a miniscule few to override the rights of the overwhelming majority the only thing for the majority to do is take back control. That is what Donnelly hopes to see happen in California; if a half million signatures can be collected, the issue will go before voters next November in a referendum. I hope that happens, and that the law is overturned, but unfortunately, even if that does happen, public schools are not going to be much better for Christian children any time soon, if ever again.

Some people, though argue that leaving the public schools in response is exactly what Christian parents and students should not be doing because they need to be ambassadors for Christ, to be salt and light in their public schools. Why this is a flawed argument will be the subject next time….

How do you feel?

~ jbwatson ~ 2 Comments

Another element of that slippery slope I seem to talk about here so frequently is the matter of “gender identity.” It used to be that we would hear occasionally about individuals who had had sex change operations, or about crossdressers. I think the first time I ever heard of any such thing was when I saw the movie Crocodile Dundee II, and there is a scene in which someone who appears to be a woman is actually a man. I was a teenager by the time I saw that movie. Granted, I grew up in a Christian home and may have lived a somewhat sheltered life, but the entire concept was foreign to me. Now, just 25 years after Crocodile Dundee came out, the issue has gone far beyond crossdressing and sex change surgeries.

So what is gender identity anyway? Dictionary.com defines it this way: “a person’s inner sense of being male or female, usually developed during early childhood as a result of parental rearing practices and societal influences and strengthened during puberty by hormonal changes.” Notice that this definition says nothing about anatomy; gender identity has to do with whether one feels make or female.

The Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago has a not-as-yet-officially-launched entity under its umbrella called the Center for Gender, Sexuality, and HIV Prevention, led by Dr. Rob Garofalo. According to a March 23 article in WORLD Magazine the clinic has already “treated about 25 patients.” One of those patients was a child younger than nine who began “wearing dresses, identifying as a girl, and struggling with anxiety.” According to the article, the clinic is “one of a handful of children’s gender identity clinics to spring up in the United States over the past six years. These clinics provide psychological counseling intended to help children choose whatever gender they feel is best, and offer hormonal treatments to delay the onset of puberty.”

A couple of things jump out from those sentences.

First, recall the uproar in recent months in California and other places where there are efforts underway to ban counseling for individuals who want to overcome homosexual thoughts. Reparative therapy, as it is called, is just about guaranteed to fail, according to the powers that be in California, and also to cause stress and depression in those undergoing such counseling, despite the fact that it is only done at the request of the individual being treated. So while California has passed a law banning “anyone under the age of 18 from receiving licensed counseling that in any way steers them away from same-sex attraction, including away from sexual acts,” (according to an article in the Washington Times), it is perfectly fine to provide counseling and even hormone treatment for children who just are not sure whether they want to be boys or girls? And no one sees any contradiction here? There is plenty of debate over the idea that some people are “born” homosexual. There is, however, no debate over the fact that people are born male or female; it is obvious at birth (often even before birth with today’s sonogram technology) and the sex of every child is on their birth certificate! So, just to be sure we are clear, it is not acceptable–and indeed California wants to make it illegal–for a professional counselor, upon request of the counselee, to provide treatment to help someone who is struggling with homosexual thoughts to overcome those thoughts, yet it is perfectly fine for a therapist to help a child decide whether he/she feels like being a boy/girl, and even for a doctor to provide hormone treatment to prevent the child’s body from doing what it was designed to do.

Second, notice the important word “feels.” The counseling in these gender identity clinics is designed to help children determine which gender feels the best. So if someone is born a boy but feels like being a girl, we should both encourage and allow that. (But if someone feels homosexual tendencies and does not want to, we must not discourage them or help them overcome those desires!) We must be extremely careful of creating a world where we both encourage and allow people to do what they “feel is best.” If we remove absolutes and standards and facts and leave it all up to whatever anyone feels is best we will soon have complete and utter chaos. Notice, though, too, that those who encourage this “whatever feels best” attitude toward gender identity are the same ones who want to shut up anyone who takes the opposition position, presumably even when that “feels best” to them.

The WORLD article goes on to point out that the website for the Gender Management Service Clinic at Boston Children’s Hospital says that its doctors “help children cope with the disconnect they may feel between the body and gender they were born with. … Therefore, we try to help them develop a body that is consistent with their identity.” For the record, there can not be many things more absolutely clear than whether someone is born male or female. we are in trouble when we start encouraging and allowing that disconnect between anatomy and gender identity.

The WORLD article concludes with the statement that “children’s feelings aren’t a reliable guide for deciding on life-altering treatments, though: studies show many kids who question their gender stop doing so after puberty.” Quite frankly children’s feelings are not a reliable guide for much of anything; that is part of the growing up process–the development of preferences and likes/dislikes and so on. I cannot think of any other area in which children are permitted to voluntarily make permanent or life-altering decisions; why in the world would we allow it with something so significant as one’s body?

This is not just an academic discussion, either. A colleague in another Christian school (in California, as it happens) recently shared this: “Our middle school is part of a sports league for small private schools–some Christian, some secular. One of these secular schools has just announced that they have an eleven year boy who believes that he is a girl. The parents and the school have decided to support the child’s feelings by allowing him to dress in girls’ clothes and use the girls’ bathrooms.” This creates all kinds of challenges for this school. Surely the Christian school has policies preventing boys from dressing in girls clothes or from wearing make up. Surely boys are not allowed to use a girls restroom–and I am confident the girls and the parents of the girls very much prefer it that way! But this boy has decided that being a girl “feels best.” I do not know what the outcome in that situation will be, but I hope that school stands its ground, even if it means leaving the sports league as a result. We cannot allow the whims and feelings of a few people to alter the Truth of God’s Word or to dictate our obedience to His Word. The rights of a very small minority cannot trample the rights of a vast majority.

What we need is someone with a backbone to look this boy in the eye, or anyone else who feels as he does, and say, “You are a boy. You were born a boy, God made you a boy, and whether you feel like it or not, you are a boy. When you become an adult, if you want to wear a skirt or put on make up, you go right ahead. Until then, you will dress like a boy and be treated like a boy. And when you’re an adult, we’re still going to call you a male and treat you like a male whether you feel like one or dress like one or not. You can call yourself a girl, you can dress like a girl, you can act like a girl, you can even claim to be a girl. But guess what? You’re a boy.”

One last thought…. We must, as always, be careful where this road will take us. If gender identity becomes a choice, why not species identity? Suppose someone says they feel best as a dog or a monkey or a platypus? Shall we allow that? What about national identity? Suppose someone says they feel like their Egyptian despite the fact that they’re Canadian, or they feel Australian even though they’re Chinese? Racial identity? If I feel black does that mean I am, even though I am obviously white? What about age identity? I hear people all the time say they don’t feel their age. Suppose a 38 year old says she feels 16. Do we let her enroll in high school, play on the school volleyball team, be claimed as a dependent on her parent’s tax returns? Silly examples all, but they are the logical conclusions of letting people make decisions that have always been determined by birth based on how they feel.