Does teaching “gender fluidity” produce gender dysphoria?
The school board in Denver, Colorado recently passed a resolution requiring all district schools to provide at least one all-gender bathroom. The board also mandated speech by requiring staff to use students’ preferred names and pronouns regardless of their official names or gender.
Additionally, the Board said employees should not be disciplined for “disclosing their sexual orientation or gender identity in work-appropriate ways,” and that teachers and other staff should be allowed to hang a rainbow flag or other symbols that represent support for LGBT people.” The Denver Post reported.
In a time when “Drag-queen Story Hour” is considered appropriate, it’s hard to tell what “work-appropriate” means to these activists. I also wonder if children will be allowed to take a knee in protest of the rainbow flag.
Using laws to mandate drastic cultural changes and beliefs which destroy long-held traditions is a strategy that is hardly unique to Denver or Colorado. It’s being franchised in cities and towns across the country.
Why is there such an obsession with bathrooms, gender and sexual identity among the Left? They continue to claim, often with more than a hint of hysteria, that if we don’t force these policies on everyone, “trans kids” will die because they commit suicide at a higher rate. We are expected believe that this is our fault because we don’t accept them. We must therefore make these changes so they will feel “included.” If we don’t, we are cruel, intolerant and “trans-phobic.”
Maybe what we don’t accept is that there are “trans-kids.” You don’t? See the preceding paragraph. Except for a tiny percentage of children who are born with abnormal chromosomes or other genetic abnormalities, kids must first understand their biological gender before they can reject it in favor of the opposite one. Yet, Leftist “culture warriors” cheer trans-transitions as much as any evangelical Christian who has made a new convert.
This is not unlike how the Left rejects America itself without ever having been taught or understood the brilliant principles on which our country was founded.
WHAT IS GENDER DYSPHORIA?
Not surprisingly, the definition of Gender Dysphoria has continued to change as politics and political correctness has infiltrated the mental health field. Essentially, it means to have “anxiety about one’s biological gender.”
It may seem like decades ago, but remember when we laughed at the ridiculous notion of “gender fluidity?” I did my share of giggling in a piece for FrontPageMag.com called, 2018 Leftist Ideas Most Worthy of Mockery & Derision. “Gender Fluidity” was the first of 10 ideas on the list.
While the mockery continued, the Left was busy teaching this and a whole lot more to kids from kindergarten through college.
If you teach “gender fluidity” to kids as young as two, is it surprising that more children than ever become anxious about their gender?
Combine that with the normal challenges of learning to discern fact from fiction, and unfounded fear from reality, and you have an entire generation of anxious and confused children. Along with being told about the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus kids are also told, “By the way, you aren’t a boy.”
The radical Left dominates public education and now demands that Psychiatrists, Psychologists and Social Workers accept the idea of gender fluidity as well, and that it must be taught to young children. If they don’t believe that it’s healthy for children to watch a 49-year-old drag queen with a full beard in exploitative women’s hair and makeup read to children in a public library, they must shut up about it.
Avid supporters defend this by telling us that it’s all very innocent. Leave it to the Left to call something which is inherently sexual, innocent even though they have sexualized almost everything that is inherently innocent about childhood.
They claim they want to protect minors under the age of 18 from conversion therapy. In fact, Colorado passed a law to ban conversion therapy for minors just last year. However, LGBT activists adamantly oppose any bill that would ban puberty blockers and gender-transitioning for those same minors. So, is it about protecting minors or transitioning minors?
Why are they so desperate to do all of this?
Among the greatest threats to socialism is masculinity, Christianity, self-sufficiency, and accountability. That is, accountability to God, not to men or the state.
Many LGBT’ers aren’t Socialists and they would quite likely shrug off the suggestion that they are merely being used as a political means to an end. What attracts them is the “love” and “tolerance in which these programs and policies come wrapped. When you unwrap that package what you find is the very opposite of love and compassion.
The greatest damage in this slash-and-burn march toward cultural Marxism is to a whole generation of children.
Perhaps most heartbreaking of all is that they won’t have any memory of freedom to compare it to.
Karen Kataline (Karen@KarenKataline.com) is an author and commentator, Columbia University-trained social worker, and frequent guest host on talk radio. She is the author of the award-winning memoir, FATLASH! Food Police & the Fear of Thin. and the producer and host of Spouting Off, a live Internet call-in talk show, heard Tuesdays at 11 A.M. M.T. at www.KarenKataline.com
photo credit: torbakhopper all gender restroom door sign, scott richard via photopin (license)
