A Slightly Out-Of-Sync Rant
I wrote this on a friend's wall recently, but I need to reproduce it here (in a slightly edited/expanded form) because I'm looking for input of a sort.
I struggle with calling myself an "ally" in the fight for LGBTQ+ rights and recognition, partly because I don't accept every position that seems to be coming out of the various movements (and I say "various" because, outside of the basics, there seems to be a lot of contradictory messaging coming out about certain details).
Does this make me an opponent? "If you're not for us, you're against us"? "If you're not standing up and making a difference and demanding change, then YOU are the problem!"? Is that what I am? Because I have questions, and I've asked them, and I get back, "That's a good question, you should ask somebody about that..." But who?!
But here we go: this is stemming from the recent ranting and protesting by parents regarding school curricula that seem to discuss sex/sexuality at an age that is deemed to be "inappropriate"! A friend had a pic on their wall of parents holding signs saying, "Leave our children alone!" There was a group at the Georgetown Farmer's Market a couple of weeks ago that was arguing with everyone who would stop and listen that discussing sex and sexuality with younger children was promoting pornography(!). I'm not sure at what age they feel such discussions are appropriate, though, or who should be doing it - it doesn't sound like it's being done at home!
And by the way, there was an article in the American news on Wednesday about an investigation that has been opened up in a police department down there - apparently an eleven-year-old girl had a "secret friend" on her phone, and her father had caught onto the fact that this person had been getting her to take pictures of herself in various states of undress! He reported it to the police, officers attended his residence, and one of the officers offhandedly remarked that the girl could possibly be arrested for creating content. We are this messed up right now, that an eleven-year-old girl, actually being groomed by a pedophile and playing into his desires because her mind isn't old enough to tell right from wrong, is being seen by an officer of the law as a "content creator" and potentially culpable in any investigation! I'm betting her parents hadn't had "the talk" with her yet. I'm not sure they would have felt it was appropriate for a girl her age. There are ten-year-olds making the news because they got raped and puberty had started early for them and so they need the baby aborted before it tears their body apart, but let's not have "the talk" because it's "too soon"!
I still remember the first time I read an explicit sex scene in a novel. I was nine, in grade four. A friend had found this book about a deranged grizzly bear, and two of the characters paused to get amorous somewhere in the middle - so, was it "pornographic" because of the people making love on a couple of pages? Or because of the gratuitous descriptions of evisceration on several others? Well, neither, it seems - it was a mass-market paperback, relatively popular, and I didn't understand what was on the pages anyway.
But anyway...
What I get coming out of a lot of these protests is a vision of parents who want their children to be nothing more or less than little versions of themselves. They are locked into thinking that they "know" who and what their child is, when the child has no clue about who and what they are yet! Darth Daughter went from using her middle name to her first name when she was fourteen as part of her quest for her own identity, different than who (and what) she had been before - we actually argued with her that while we had been able to cope with the girl she had been, the girl with the new name was pretty much intolerable! But looking back, we can see that she both didn't know who/what she was, nor did she know how to ask for help in finding out how to go through that process! Our boys did the same things, and are still trying to figure those things out, in some ways.
But these protesting parents, I'm thinking that they don't really want their children to "find themselves", or at least, to find themselves being anything beyond what their narrow parental view promotes and accepts (I'm thinking of the "typical Chinese parent" the one comic does, always blurting out, "Emotional damage!!"). Our children are seeking their identity, and their sexuality/orientation is only a small part of that quest. They want to know things like, Who am I? What is *my* purpose here in this world, in this life? What will I create? Where will I make a difference? Will I change the world for everyone? Or will I change how a few others see the world, and will I be able to be content with that? We are pushing our children waaaay up to the fifth tier of Abraham Mazlow's heirarchy of needs younger and younger and younger
than ever before, wanting them to be self-actualizing when they are, like, twelve! "I'm this, I'm that, I'm something else, I'm what my parents want me to be...!"
And this is where the parents lose their minds: with the thought that their children may not be what they want them to be!
Think of the subplot of Dead Poets' Society, where Neil finds such gratification on the stage, playing Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream; his father is enraged that Neil wants to pursue this, demanding that he become a doctor, end of story, and Neil is so confounded by his father's insistence on conformity to the father's vision that he takes his father's gun and blows his own brains all over the wall of his father's study.
This is what I see in this whole fight. It has nothing to do with "morals" and everything to do with power - specifically, the power to make their children conform to their ideals. They are "You *will* be..." parents. You *will* share my views on religion. You *will* conform to my understanding of sexuality. You *will* get the education that you can afford and become a vibrant and productive member of society, having only socially accepted vices (that is to say, the ones *I* participated in when I was younger). You *are* a girl and you will marry a nice boy and bring me beautiful grandchildren. You *are* a boy and you will find a pretty girl and bring me beautiful grandchildren. Your purpose in life is to make me proud IN THE MANNER AND WITHIN THE PARAMETERS OF WHAT I FIND ACCEPTABLE. And no one, NO ONE, shall be allowed to deflect you from that path!
On another side of the argument are those who rush to label everyone, including themselves. Dear Lord, the LABELS! I've taken to calling the movement "alphabet soup" because there's no way to keep up with exactly how many letters are supposed to be included - LGBTQI2S+, and forgive me for offending because I know I've left something out! A friend of mine has a daughter took on the label of "asexual homoromantic" when she was fifteen - she's still a girl, dresses "like a girl", acts how girls tend (and tended) to act (she's now seventeen), but boys are idiots (long story) and sex comes with too much emotional baggage, so let's just have fun, go on "dates", give each other gifts, and make each other happy in a variety of ways! Her younger sibling is now identifying as non-binary, using neutral pronouns, dressing masculine/neutral (a lot of slacks/vest combos).
The girl knows what she wants to do in her life, knows she's going to be hitting up against some glass ceilings, and has identified her (pardon the language) fuck-it point, the point beyond which she will no longer be bothered/emotionally traumatized by what's going on around her and will either walk away or stop taking and start unloading. She doesn't like unloading. She has her father's temper (and his vocabulary!) and I'm sure that once she starts going, she'd go from missiles to bullets to rocks without a pause in-between!
The non-binary child, though, is struggling because they don't have an "identity" of their own, really. At fifteen, they're still apparently defining themselves more by what they are not than by what they are. They've been hung with the label "non-binary", but I'm still not sure why - is it because when they were younger they liked things that were traditionally "guy" things and not so much the "girl" things? Was it because some socially-minded teacher was so eager to affirm the child in their identity that they (the teacher) hung the child with the label, and because the child felt somewhat confused about their identity, they decided to run with it because it gave them something to hold onto? I don't know, which is to say, I don't understand.
I know some things that I believe, however, and I know that some of my "beliefs" are apparently capable of causing microaggressions and triggers because they don't affirm absolutely everyone in the world! (Though, truth be told, it is utterly impossible to affirm everyone in the world, because if I affirm "both sides" in a dispute, I'll be accused of transgressing against both sides! But I digress...) But here are some of them:
- I believe birth gender is real because as far as I know, we can't implant a functioning uterus and other birth organs in a body that was born male, nor a prostate into a body that was born female. Hermaphroditic births are rare, no matter how common some want to make them seem to be.
- I believe that homosexuality is real, normal, and, in some cases, impossible to hide. Why did God make you that way? I don't know. Did God make you that way? He must have! Do I have any interest in you? No, I do not... at least, not that way! And so long as that is understood, you and I, weesa can be friends!
- I know that I am uncomfortable around drag queens, but not for the reasons you might think. I don' t like women in heavy makeup, in flashy dresses, trying so hard to be "female" that they come across as an impersonation, a caricature. I don't find them authentic. At the same time, I loved the couple that were on The Amazing Race Canada this past season, in that they were out of their outfits and racing as themselves - their authentic selves were fabulous, and I smiled at them for daring to push themselves in the race! I thought their dancing in Windsor was amazing, because they've freed themselves from so many expectations and were just trying to be who they are!
- I believe that nothing permanent should be done to alter a person's body-gender-presentation until they are at least twenty years old. Wear whatever clothes you want, be comfortable, cut your hair to signify whatever to whoever, change your pronouns if you wish (as long as you let me know what I should be using), and I will do my best to accommodate you. But having things taken off and other things implanted needs to wait until you've really, really, REALLY thought about it, and your body has reached full maturity, because once you go so far as to be having surgery, there's no going back. I've been thinking about the tattoo I'm going to get for ten years now, but I'm still not ready for it. When I give in to the impulse to get it done, it will have had *YEARS* of reflection behind it! Gender reassignment, in my opinion, should wait until the mind and the body have reached a point where self-actualization is a legitimate expectation.
- I believe that we should be able to love whomever we wish, because we were made for love by a God *of* love. But there is love and there is lust, and I don't think we start teaching that difference early enough. Lust is an itch that needs to be scratched; love is a permanent place in one's heart and one's soul, a life that is incomplete without that other person. The couple on The Last Of Us - *that* is the love that I'm talking about! "I never knew what fear was until I met you," because he'd never been afraid of *losing* anyone before. THAT is love... and, again, actual "love" comes from a place of true self-actualization, not the expectation of *anyone else* that you will come home with an approved partner! And truly self-actualizing-enabling parents will be striving to make sure their children understand this!
- I believe that there are those who will take advantage of vulnerable, confused, young people for their own selfish pleasures.
- I believe that "sex" and "power" are two different things; rape is a crime of power, not sex.
- Finally, and bringing it full circle, I believe that these parents who are protesting so vehemently against any kind of discussion regarding sexuality of *anyone* in a school setting want nothing more than control over their *children* - the control to determine their destinies for them, to keep them out of the way of "harm" of any kind, to prevent them from leading anything other than a "normal" life. "Normal" is a setting on the dryer, nothing more.
Sorry this is so long, but not all Christians are opposed to variant sexuality, and *some* Christians (maybe even *most* of them, you just can't tell from the ones jumping and screaming and drawing attention to themselves) believe that God loves us just the way we are, just the way He made us, and discovering what that is, well, that's a process that takes years to uncover! I told the story recently of the sculptor, with a block of stone on his bench, and he told a guest that he was going to carve an elephant out of the stone... well, actually, he said that the elephant was already *in* the stone, so he was going to chip away everything that was *not* the elephant to set it free!
This should be what parenting is about - guiding, loving, helping, but also helping the child get to the tier of self-actualization *in their own time*.
End of rant.