Education and Identity
There are many school-age children in Edinburgh today who are rejoicing in an extention to their Easter holidays. There are, probably, quite a few older pupils (16 and18 yos) who are getting worried. They have important exams in a few weeks' time.
Why the dichotomy? Well, the 16 and 18 yos would be getting worried anyway, looming important exams tend to do that for you. The other emotions are cause by the closing of seventeen (seventeen) Edinburgh schools due to 'structural defects', a wall collapsed at one of the schools! Apparently all seventeen schools were built by the same PPI (Public-Private Initiative).
Truly the gap between the First World and the Third World is closing. We're forever hearing about buildings and other constructions in the Third World collapsing due to duff builders and even duffer building practises (the flyover in India last week for starters.) Now the penny pinching, money grabbing, 'stuff the regulations' attitude is biting here. Wonder how many other places have been built (slung up) with the same attitudes and cavalier disregard for the safety of their 'end users'. Wonder how many of the seven thousand pupils affected are related to the apparently cowboy building contractors? It seems the schools are hoping to be at least partly open over the next week - the 16 and18 yos are probably hoping that too.
Meanwhile the number of young people being referred to England's only genter identiy clinic for under -18s has doubled in the past year to nearly 1,400. Figures also show that nearly twice as many biological girls than boys were referred to the Tavistock Clinic, in London, last year.
Now some of those referred, and, presumably, some not referred, will be have known that they are in the 'wrong body' (ie: have been assigned the 'wrong' gender) since early childhood. However I wonder how much of the current trend is because Gender Identity has become more known and Reassignment possible.
Adolescence can be a terrible time where young people end up questioning everything, especially their identity, these days including their gender identity. How many of the increasing number of referrals might otherwise have, having 'survived' adolescence, gone on to be happy in themselves as they were and successful as the males or females they were born as?
For that matter, how many of those who complete Reassignment are living happily as men or women ten or twenty years later - or haven't we had time for such data to become available. Because however much Reassignment can do to align the outward appearance of a person with the gender they are inside, it can't actually make them men or women*. But maybe that doesn't matter to them. Maybe the appearance of maleness or femaleness is sufficient?
And Finally, I was in town the other day and noticed a group of people around a display, "What Does the Bible Say?" Interesting, I thought. Who's doing this?
Turned out to be the Jehovah's Witnesses. Ah. That won't be entirely what the Bible says then. JW-ism is one of the many "Work Hard, Keep Our Rules, Do As Much Good As You Can and Hope to Be Considered Good Enough" religions in the world. One of those which suggests that if you keep The Rules and Do All The Stuff, you'll be OK in the end.
Sorry. It doesn't work like that. The gulf between people and God is too great. That's why Christ had to die. That's what Easter is really all about. Yes, Christianity does involve (a few) Rules and Stuff, but that's only as a result of being 'saved'. We act because we have been saved through faith in Christ. Not so that we might be saved. Important difference, that.
Come to think of it, people can truly become theirselves in Christ. As Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, said last week when his biological father was revealed to have been another man than the man his mother had married, "My identity is in Christ."
Y'all have a good and thoughtful day now!
*Not sure I can see male-to-female Reassignments being quite so popular if those Reassigned experience the whole gamut of Femaleness - monthly cycles, periods, period pains, PMT etc, etc. w00t for the menopause, I say!
Why the dichotomy? Well, the 16 and 18 yos would be getting worried anyway, looming important exams tend to do that for you. The other emotions are cause by the closing of seventeen (seventeen) Edinburgh schools due to 'structural defects', a wall collapsed at one of the schools! Apparently all seventeen schools were built by the same PPI (Public-Private Initiative).
Truly the gap between the First World and the Third World is closing. We're forever hearing about buildings and other constructions in the Third World collapsing due to duff builders and even duffer building practises (the flyover in India last week for starters.) Now the penny pinching, money grabbing, 'stuff the regulations' attitude is biting here. Wonder how many other places have been built (slung up) with the same attitudes and cavalier disregard for the safety of their 'end users'. Wonder how many of the seven thousand pupils affected are related to the apparently cowboy building contractors? It seems the schools are hoping to be at least partly open over the next week - the 16 and18 yos are probably hoping that too.
Meanwhile the number of young people being referred to England's only genter identiy clinic for under -18s has doubled in the past year to nearly 1,400. Figures also show that nearly twice as many biological girls than boys were referred to the Tavistock Clinic, in London, last year.
Now some of those referred, and, presumably, some not referred, will be have known that they are in the 'wrong body' (ie: have been assigned the 'wrong' gender) since early childhood. However I wonder how much of the current trend is because Gender Identity has become more known and Reassignment possible.
Adolescence can be a terrible time where young people end up questioning everything, especially their identity, these days including their gender identity. How many of the increasing number of referrals might otherwise have, having 'survived' adolescence, gone on to be happy in themselves as they were and successful as the males or females they were born as?
For that matter, how many of those who complete Reassignment are living happily as men or women ten or twenty years later - or haven't we had time for such data to become available. Because however much Reassignment can do to align the outward appearance of a person with the gender they are inside, it can't actually make them men or women*. But maybe that doesn't matter to them. Maybe the appearance of maleness or femaleness is sufficient?
And Finally, I was in town the other day and noticed a group of people around a display, "What Does the Bible Say?" Interesting, I thought. Who's doing this?
Turned out to be the Jehovah's Witnesses. Ah. That won't be entirely what the Bible says then. JW-ism is one of the many "Work Hard, Keep Our Rules, Do As Much Good As You Can and Hope to Be Considered Good Enough" religions in the world. One of those which suggests that if you keep The Rules and Do All The Stuff, you'll be OK in the end.
Sorry. It doesn't work like that. The gulf between people and God is too great. That's why Christ had to die. That's what Easter is really all about. Yes, Christianity does involve (a few) Rules and Stuff, but that's only as a result of being 'saved'. We act because we have been saved through faith in Christ. Not so that we might be saved. Important difference, that.
Come to think of it, people can truly become theirselves in Christ. As Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, said last week when his biological father was revealed to have been another man than the man his mother had married, "My identity is in Christ."
Y'all have a good and thoughtful day now!
*Not sure I can see male-to-female Reassignments being quite so popular if those Reassigned experience the whole gamut of Femaleness - monthly cycles, periods, period pains, PMT etc, etc. w00t for the menopause, I say!