"Any gender is a drag."
I'm late to the party, but today I learned about this. I'm feeling like death warmed over, and like my brain's a steak on the fryer, but I'm still going to make a valiant effort at addressing my feelings about it.
I myself was a kid who enjoyed playing with boys and climbing trees, and wanted to be the dad when I was made to play house (arguably not because I identified as male, but because it was the easiest role, as it only required leaving for work), and I think these desires were amply indulged by the staff at my day care. I just wish they had also indulged my desire to sit in hidden corners mumbling to myself with a book despite the fact that I most probably couldn't read, instead of thinking I was retarded...
I do think it's perverse and wrong to indoctrinate children from a young age forward into believing that there are certain things they aren't allowed to do or say or think simply because of their sex. But I tend to draw the line at pronouns. Maybe it's because in my native language there are no gendered pronouns, but I think rather than the words themselves, the attitudes behind them are the problem. I don't personally see any problem with having a child know peoples sex, including his or her own, unless it comes up in statements like "girls should wear dresses, not boyish clothes" or "boys can't become nurses/dancers/preschool teachers" or "boys don't play with dolls" or "girls should have long hair". Perhaps, in gendered languages, the pronouns themselves are so imbued with gender stereotypes that it's impossible to escape them without resorting to made up words. When I hear people described with a "he" or "sie" or "han", the only assumption I make is one concerning their sex, so I can't really imagine that a native speaker would draw wild conclusions about their vocation, values, and whatnot based on the same information. Or maybe I'm just lucky, having had my own boyish impulses indulged. Maybe my own happy childhood has made me blind to such injustices. On the other hand, precisely because of it, I can't help but feel that measures such as the ones overtaken at Egalia preschool fail to address the children as individuals. I mean, I can fully see how making a girl who wants to rough house with the boys wear a dress and French curls is detrimental to that childs development, but telling a girl who actually wants to wear the frilly dresses and curls like a princess that she can't on the basis that conforming to gender norms is detrimental seems equally detrimental.
I know these measures aren't meant to facilitate the coming to terms with gender issues of the minority of children who're transgender, but free all of the children from socially constructed gender roles that dictate how they are allowed to behave and how not. It's something I very much want, but ideally, I would want it done from an individual level, instead of treating children as a whole to automated "thon may play with model kitchen or with legos, which ever thon wants" responses. I want children to have the personal freedom to choose how they play and what they want to be when they grow up.
I myself was a kid who enjoyed playing with boys and climbing trees, and wanted to be the dad when I was made to play house (arguably not because I identified as male, but because it was the easiest role, as it only required leaving for work), and I think these desires were amply indulged by the staff at my day care. I just wish they had also indulged my desire to sit in hidden corners mumbling to myself with a book despite the fact that I most probably couldn't read, instead of thinking I was retarded...
I do think it's perverse and wrong to indoctrinate children from a young age forward into believing that there are certain things they aren't allowed to do or say or think simply because of their sex. But I tend to draw the line at pronouns. Maybe it's because in my native language there are no gendered pronouns, but I think rather than the words themselves, the attitudes behind them are the problem. I don't personally see any problem with having a child know peoples sex, including his or her own, unless it comes up in statements like "girls should wear dresses, not boyish clothes" or "boys can't become nurses/dancers/preschool teachers" or "boys don't play with dolls" or "girls should have long hair". Perhaps, in gendered languages, the pronouns themselves are so imbued with gender stereotypes that it's impossible to escape them without resorting to made up words. When I hear people described with a "he" or "sie" or "han", the only assumption I make is one concerning their sex, so I can't really imagine that a native speaker would draw wild conclusions about their vocation, values, and whatnot based on the same information. Or maybe I'm just lucky, having had my own boyish impulses indulged. Maybe my own happy childhood has made me blind to such injustices. On the other hand, precisely because of it, I can't help but feel that measures such as the ones overtaken at Egalia preschool fail to address the children as individuals. I mean, I can fully see how making a girl who wants to rough house with the boys wear a dress and French curls is detrimental to that childs development, but telling a girl who actually wants to wear the frilly dresses and curls like a princess that she can't on the basis that conforming to gender norms is detrimental seems equally detrimental.
I know these measures aren't meant to facilitate the coming to terms with gender issues of the minority of children who're transgender, but free all of the children from socially constructed gender roles that dictate how they are allowed to behave and how not. It's something I very much want, but ideally, I would want it done from an individual level, instead of treating children as a whole to automated "thon may play with model kitchen or with legos, which ever thon wants" responses. I want children to have the personal freedom to choose how they play and what they want to be when they grow up.