Category Archives: NEA and gender identity

Do I really wish I was three again knowing what I know now?

Posted on by
1

It’s a question I have asked myself often lately. The news today is rife with stories of teachers, well-meaning or not, encouraging children as young as five or six years old to express a gender identity different from their biological sex. To begin with, I don’t for a minute believe that any teacher should be making those decisions for any child. That is for the parents and the parents alone to address.

But just how do I feel when I consider what my life would have been like if the knowledge, I have today was available when I was five years old?

To begin with, that is virtually impossible for me to imagine, but I can be reasonably certain that I would have been totally confused and bewildered. I simply did not have the mental capacity to even begin to navigate the emotional minefield that one is confronted with, when the mere thought that one’s emotional configuration does not match the physical configuration of one’s body. I had trouble enough as a young adult trying to understand all the implications of what I was feeling. There was no way that I could have dealt with the confusion at the age of five.

So, what age is the right age to begin to deal with gender dysphoria? Short answer … there is no universal answer to that question. The simple fact is that for me, the right age was somewhere in my mid-fifties. Do I think that is the right age for everyone? Of course not. Are there periods of my life that I would like to re-live as Georgia; periods I would like to switch places with George? Absolutely!

But I need to ask this question: would I be better off today if Mrs. Baldwin, my first-grade teacher had taken it upon herself to decide that Georgie would be happier as Georgia and proceeded to implant that idea in my undeveloped brain without my parents’ knowledge? Oh, hell no!! She would have robbed me of experiences and memories that I have of George’s life that no amount of therapy could replace. She would have robbed me of experiences that could only have been available to George but that I can benefit from.

She would have made uneducated assumptions about me, about Georgie that she had no right to make. I don’t even think a lot of parents today have the background or the knowledge to make those decisions for their children. But that is exactly what way too many teachers, who are being goaded by the teachers’ unions (aka NEA and affiliates), are doing without parents’ knowledge much less their approval.

In my presentations to college classes, I preface everything with the statement that when I discuss gender identity there are very few and far between facts and that what I have to say in that regard is strictly my personal opinion. I have been saying that for twenty years and I say it still today. It’s for that reason that I find it terribly wrong for any teacher to take it on themselves to encourage any child to take on a persona that does not match their birth gender.

In a study done in the late 1990s it was discovered that the suicide rate among gender variant individuals was nearly eleven times that of normal individuals. There have been numerous studies done in recent years which points to possibly higher rates than previously thought. A quick review of the subject on Google lists a considerable number of studies on the subject but none address the actual number of actual completed suicides.

Obviously gender identity is becoming a more common topic of discussion, but it seems that it is being affected by a failure to address the need for extreme caution in guiding the young people in our education system toward irreversible actions. I have addressed the irreversible issue in my own life by referencing that decision to Caesar’s decision to cross the Rubicon. It cannot not be undone.

And if I have not made myself clear … No teacher has the right to encourage at the least or to facilitate at most, any gender variant behavior in any child with or without a parent’s approval. Teachers simply do not have the training nor the experience to involve themselves in such a critical issue in a child’s life. That is an irreversible procedure.

So, do I really wish I was three again, knowing what I know now? Nope! Not a bit! The joy I find in life now is the result of a life lived in two genders … two worlds, and guided by God’s impeccable timing.

How Do We Fit in?

Posted on by
Reply

In the last two years, our world has been turned upside down. On that, I’m sure most would agree. Attention has been turned toward the pandemic and all the ills that have befallen people from every imaginable walk of life. The number of people who have been unaffected by disease continues to shrink with each passing day. Issues that used to be important to us seem to have moved to the back burner … that is, until something occurs to vividly remind us of an issue that used to be important.

Case in point: The alphabet soup that has become the designation for every single sexual or gender self-identification imaginable. When I first became involved in the transgendered community the designation was fairly simple … L (for lesbian) G (for gay) B (for heterosexual and either lesbian or gay…in other words, have your cake and eat it too) T (for transgendered or transexual). Then someone added a Q (for questioning). A few days ago I saw an article that referred to the LFBTQ??? Community. LFBTQ???  I inserted the question marks because I don’t remember all the letters of the alphabet that followed, but there were at least 3 or 4 more.

Have people become so desperate for recognition as being different from everyone else that they will search until they find a designation that doesn’t fit anyone but themselves, and then create a persona to fit that newly defined category? It would seem to be the case. To make matters worse, those in superfluous positions of authority, i.e. the NEA and its state affiliates around the country have been actively promoting gender identity modifications in children as young as nine and ten years old without, I might add, the parents knowledge or permission.

Why? I cannot imagine why any person with even a modicum of integrity or respect for the self-image of a young person would want to influence their natural emotional development in a way that could adversely affect them for the rest of their lives. When I think of the kind of person that would do that I am drawn to and image of the wicked witch in the original version of “Alice in Wonderland.”

Yesterday, on the radio I heard a letter written by a high school student that related her experience with looking for a group to be a part of. Athletics were not an option for her, and neither were the more common groups such as chess or debate clubs. Her counselor steered her into the LFBTQ??? Club. There she was encouraged to “explore” her gender and sexual identity. Luckily for this young girl she was intelligent enough to eventually realize that what they were encouraging was not natural for her.

I grew up in a totally different world. It was a world where the worst that could happen to me was that, had I been self-aware enough to question why I didn’t feel “normal”, was to have been told to grow up. Had I approached my high school counselor with anything resembling sexual or gender identity I’m not sure she would have had a clue what to say to me or my parents. That was probably a good thing considering the guidance that I may have received under the circumstances.

The basic issue of what role does public education have in the development of adolescents has been brought front and center in recent events in North Carolina as a result of two issues … Mask mandates and Critical Race Theory. Although these two issues are seemingly unrelated to the gender identity influence in elementary and secondary schools, they are part and parcel indicators of what our educations system has become … a petri dish for state control of what our children are taught and how their life choices are being influenced without parental knowledge or input.

I don’t want to sound like an “I told you so” but the fact is that even as long ago as my sophomore year in high school I be came aware of the dangers of the state having six to eight hours a day five days a week to influence the way the way the youth of our country think and process information. I even went so far as to suggest in one of my debate topics that all teachers be required to pass a stringent psychiatric evaluation before being allowed in the classroom. This is most critical when it deals with influencing how young people perceive themselves, their sexuality and their gender identity. The majority of educators in this country, I believe, do not sign onto these absurd policies but enough of them do subscribe to them to be a danger to our society.

It’s bad enough for public education attempting to make skin color an issue in young people who don’t see their fellow classmates in terms of their skin color. But gender identity is such a complex issue that no elementary or high school teacher has any business attempting to advise or influence a student on actions that will have lifelong effects on their future happiness or ability to live a productive satisfying life.

Wanting to fit in is a normal thing, but not being “normal” makes “fitting in” difficult at best and impossible at worst. We don’t need people with a political agenda making it more difficult with absurd notions of their idea of what’s best for another person’s child.

Are they old enough to know

Posted on by
Reply

The last sentence of the first chapter of Dear Mom and Dad and the last sentence of the book end with a quote from a Hank Ketchum’s classic comic strip character Dennis the Menace. “I wish I was three again knowing what I know now”. The idea being that I would have made different decisions about my life’s direction. I don’t think there are many of us in this world who wouldn’t agree with that statement. We all wish from time to time that life had a rewind button. I bring this up because of an article I read recently in Hillsdale College’s publication Imprimis.

The article was written by journalist and author Abigail Shrier and titled Gender Ideology Run Amok. Naturally, when I saw the title, I felt compelled to read the article in its entirety, something I don’t often do with any article in any publication. But this one I did read all the way through and I’m glad I did because it raised some serious questions about the way decisions are being made on how gender identity is being addressed in our country’s mental health community today.

Shrier points out that in 2007 there was only one pediatric gender clinic in our country. Today there are hundreds. Her question is: How did we get to this point? It’s an important question. The fact that she says gender issues have become a big issue in our schools doesn’t really address how and why it has become a big issue, just that it has become a big and destructive issue which it is. I have my own theory and ideas about it which you can, no doubt, imagine.

Let’s get to the root of the problem, which in my opinion is our educational system and the group that has the biggest influence in in it … the teacher’s unions in general and the National Education Association in particular. The last year and a half of the Corona Virus epidemic has brought that groups true colors into focus. It’s my belief that while a large number of teachers really did want to be teachers with the best interest of the children they teach at heart, there are just as many, if not more who have become teachers with ulterior motives at heart.

A teacher who is not mentally or emotionally capable of addressing the mental or emotional issues they are confronted with in the classroom will inevitably look for a scapegoat to deflect attention away from themselves. Enter into the classroom a child that is struggling with their personal identity. Instead of taking the time to really help the child and the family it is far easier to pin the problem on the current hot button issue … gender identity. That way the problem for the child becomes a way for the teacher to avoid looking incompetent and instead look like a pioneer in childhood gender identity  solutions, which of course the teacher is not.

The fact that I refer to wishing I was three again does not imply that I wish I could have lived my entire life as Georgia. It does imply that I wish could have understood why I didn’t feel “normal” much earlier than I did. The fact that I struggled with feelings of unease in being who I was does mean that in many was I going through what most adolescents go through. I feel for the children today because they are not being allowed to be children. They are not being allowed to develop their own self-image. At the first sign of an identity issue, it’s not being treated as part of the normal growing up process. No, it’s immediately identified as a gender issue that must be treated with the current fad treatment. They and their parents are instantly steered into mostly irreversible decisions.

When I made that decision to transition it was with an adult mind and after more than a few years of self-examination. I could never have made that decision intelligently or with a clear understanding of self as a teenager and I sincerely belief that scant few, if any at all, teenagers today are any different.

In my presentations to college classes about gender identity I try to make a point of saying that gender identity is a matter of learning to know who you are at your core and that transitioning isn’t going to solve any problem that isn’t solved beforehand. I liken it to something I heard repeatedly in AA. Alcoholics have a phrase for people who think that if they just change their location, move from New York to Los Angeles, it will solve the problem that caused them to drink. It’s called “a geographical”. It never works and it doesn’t work because the problem is not external… it’s internal. All you do is drag the issue along with you to a different location. Fix it where you are before moving on.

I think the same principle applies to gender identity. Adolescents are historically known for emotional issues. Encouraging them to believe that it’s because they were born in the wrong body is like a geographical. Psychologists and educators need to understand that they must quit looking to gender identity as the root of the problem. That solution will ultimately create even worse problems in the years ahead. All the gender identity solution is, is today’s way to deflect from a problem as old as mankind … adolescence.