Trans kids and the pronoun crew are outdoing the hippies, I have to hand them that. We just smoked weed, got naked, had casual sex, dropped out, moved to the hills, grew marijuana and made babies.
I suppose we had our own “pronoun society” in a way, our own terms and lingo like when hippie men and women called their partners “my old man” and “my old lady.” When did that start, and when did it end? I don’t recall ever referring to anyone with those terms, maybe by the end of the seventies that one was a little worn out.
Yes, kids these days are weirder than the harmless hippies, taking hormones like puberty blockers instead of just smoking weed, wanting to remove their breasts and penises because they’re convinced something is wrong the way they are, that they don’t feel comfortable with the gender they were born with.
Why is any of this my business? It’s not directly, it’s just an opinion, but when it becomes a political issue which the rightwing runs with to further their agenda of taking over, also known as “the culture wars,” then it becomes everyone’s business.
Coming from the drug culture myself (weed, coke, acid) it might sound hypocritical to question whether children shouldn’t be able to make these important decisions until they’re eighteen, as they’re all addicted to mind-altering drugs, ie, their smart phones and the internet.
When trans is trending, when someone is unhappy, it’s usually something we grow out of, not try to change our gender and hope that will make us feel better about who we are. You know how the internet can be: you see one, then many, then a hundred people expressing their disillusionment and hey, let’s have a sex change, that’ll solve our problems, right? People can dress however they like, act however they want, say whatever is on their mind, but when minors feel they must get hormones and surgery it’s something to wonder about. (Sports? How can anyone think it’s fair to have a trans woman compete against biological women?)
Why is it when someone like a comedian makes a joke about trans people they’re labeled “anti-trans” or “trans-phobic?” The topic is pretty ripe for humor, along with just about any other topic, and trans standup comics joking about themselves would probably be “acceptable.” So what’s the problem? Trans people are too sensitive, they have it hard enough already? Trans jokes will encourage violence against them? It will normalize discrimination if main stream comedians are encouraged by raucous applause to make more trans jokes? (If I told my friends I had decided to go trans I’m sure they would laugh and make jokes, ridicule me behind my back, maybe organize an intervention, and some smart asses would probably say, “I knew it!”)
What made me first realize what a woke mess the “trans kids” thing might be was when I met a mother of a five-year-old boy, a psychotherapist, who had started working with his school to help him to transition to being a girl. Why did she think her little boy was trans? Because he liked the color pink and The Ice Capades, whatever that is. The boy’s father was a passive man who had probably never tossed a ball or any other “manly” activities with the little ice skater fan.
How do people like the liberal woke therapist come to be? I wondered what her story was, I only met her once about seven years ago, she seemed very nice, and I am curious what happened to her kid. (If my child said, “Daddy, I’m really a girl,” I’d answer, “No, you’re not, and you’re banned from the internet.” And if my wife said, “Oh honey, let’s take him to a therapist,” she’d probably know just the one to go to.
Are gender choices really being discussed in schools with young children or is that more rightwing propaganda, Fox-style lies to gin up the intolerant?
Can we just let let kids be kids? When I was a kid it was hard enough just growing up without having to wonder if I were gay or really a girl. A little more sex education would have been nice, we did get a movie and a lecture in a gender-segregated class in sixth grade, something about sperm meeting egg, and not many details. (I’m wondering if some of my classmates had enlightened intelligent parents who told them more about sexuality?)
Should young children be taught about suicide also? “You know class,” the teacher might say, “if you find life really difficult you could kill yourself. Let’s talk about the ways, alright? And if your parents are mean to you, like if they want to take your smart phone away, you can turn them in for child abuse! Yeah, you could have a whole new family! Isn’t that exciting”
I hope it’s just another fabricated rightwing political talking point and there’s really not an elementary school where the teacher say, “Children, you may think you’re a boy but you might actually be a girl! Think about that, and you too girls, some of you may really be a boy! Isn’t that exciting?”
“But I like being a boy,” a child might say.
“Yes, but can you imagine if you cut your nuts off and turned your penis into a vagina and it made you feel happier?” the teacher says.
“Umm, I guess so, what’s a ‘gina,” says the now-confused boy.
“Do I have to be a boy?” says an alarmed third grade girl.
“You don’t have to but some of you girls really are and don’t realize it yet. Isn’t that fascinating, class? Let’s do an experiment, all the boys will be girls and all the girls will be boys. Now trade clothes with your classmates of the opposite sex for the rest of the day.”
Okay, that’s probably an exaggeration and even if it never happens like that the problem is that people believe that it does, low-info voters who get their news from places like Fox. (And on this topic I am decidedly a low-info person, just trying to get my money’s worth from the First Amendment, and am open to being “educated” by other points of view, just spare me PC catechism.) In politics just one example of some far out teacher or event is magnified by the internet bullhorn into a “truth,” ie, an outrageous example which makes the low-info people think it’s a common occurrence.
Just as the anti-vaccine movement united far left and right (remember when human abomination Senator Ron Johnson was quoted and idolized by local antivax lefties?) common sense liberals and middle-of-the-road normies are sharing political space on this issue with conservative anti-woke politicians like Governor DeSantis, who could very well be our next president.
Politicians love to use the suffering underclass, who mostly don’t vote, as targets and “political footballs,” such as poor women with unwanted pregnancies, the homeless, immigrants, and now trying to ramp up this issue, trying to use the tiny percentage of trans people as a way to alarm the dominant masses of binary people, so when they’re in the voting booth some will think, “Jeez, at least Trump knows the difference between a cock and a pussy!”
After writing and thinking about this for awhile I’ve come around to the conclusion that we should be very compassionate toward trans kids because they’re going through a whole lot of stress, the same way we should be compassionate toward all trans people, anyone else struggling on the margins of society, and everyone else who needs our love and understanding. In other words you’re on your own, nobody cares, life is hard, and it’s about to get harder.
You’re a brave man, Paul Modic, to spout something sensible like this in this day and age.
Wait, though… you didn’t list your preferred pronouns after your name. ARE you a man? Or more importantly, do you identify as a man? After all, that’s really the first and only thing we need to know about you as a writer.
Or, I suppose if I were in the bio-essentialist (realist) camp, I might ask, “Are you a Person-with-a-Penis?” I’m going to assume that you are, since you call yourself Paul, and that name is the very first thing you’d change if you were planning on having it cut off.
Oh. Unless you are actually a Person-with-a-Vagina, who has now identified as male, and adopted that august name; perhaps you were assigned “Paula” at birth.
Well, it makes my head spin, and I imagine that’s the point of it all. I would like to say, “Just ignore it, it’s just a red herring meant to distract us from innumerable things that really matter,” but you have a good point about how it’s not only driving culture wars, but causing people to defect from the liberal identity, at least from the crazy-PC genderwoke aspect. And the way they’re pushing it in schools is not just Fox propaganda… this next generation is going to bear a lot of scars. So the fad is difficult, if not immoral, to ignore.
Thanks to a couple of shameless men, you, Paul, and Bruce for printing this. All the news that fits!