School Told to Call Kids ‘Purple Penguins’ Because ‘Boys and Girls’ Is Not Inclusive

[Sumac13]

A mental disorder or a societal disorder? Because the larger society may not approve, does that make it 'mental'? What exactly is wrong with it other than it not jibing with your worldview? Again, it seems an attempt to pigeon hole someone into a false dichotomy of gender being either male or female.

 

[supergoat52]

Why wouldn't it work?



WHen people say they feel like a man in a woman's body, what do they mean? Do they mean that they wish they had a vagina and breasts? Does it mean they're attracted to men? Or does it mean that they feel and think the way they believe women feel and think?

My bottom line question is...if we move into a gender neutral society, how is this going to stop a male that wants to be a woman from wanting to be a woman or from feeling bad about wanting to be a woman?

There's some cognitive dissonance there that I can only assume is going to lend to confusion before the person even encounters someone that picks on them for wanting to be the opposite sex. If they have traits that are common to women...why can't we just say that they have traits that are common to women? Or just teach kids that these traits can be common to both genders even if they're not instinctive and just require some learning. And above all, just teach kids (as Max said) not to fucking pick on each other for being different!!!

Exactly what are we trying to prevent from happening by not referring to kids as male and female and acknowledging that they are LARGELY going to be physically and psychologically different from one another without any assistance from outside forces?

1. I suppose it could work if you structured your league like that, but that is not how the WNBA has been structured during it's existence so changing that would be fundamentally changing the league, that's all.

2. I think you have some good points but they are largely taken care of by the sex/gender differentiation. The sex part is unchangeable, and when you describe a kid having thoughts typical of the other sex, you just explain to them that that is their own unique gender identity at play, which they can define however you want. To address your bottom line question, this would prevent the boy who wants to be a woman from feeling bad about his feelings because his feelings would have an accepted place in society. It would NOT prevent him from having these feelings because that's not the point.

People and parents who really want to emphasize binary characteristics could do so on the basis of sex, while others would be free to play around with the more fluid gender identity. All we are trying to do is create a space in society for people with "odd" genders to exist, and having names for their feelings goes a long way towards doing that.

The movement is here, it's unavoidable. Best thing is, it really doesn't affect you and how you want to raise your children. The MOST it affects any of us is that you have to call a kid with a penis "she" or something like that, and if that rustles your jimmies too much just pretend the kid wanted you to call them "Spiderman", because all of us would do that to make a child feel happy. If you really want to stubbornly resist calling people what they want to be called you can, but it's way more effort and it just makes them unhappy so what's the point?

 

[Maximus]

What do you do about the lockerrooms/showers at school?

2. Whatever makes your son and his/her classmates comfortable.

I dont see any way whatsoever to make everyone comfortable.

What about rec centers or public pool locker rooms? Quicken Loans Arena bathrooms? How do you ensure everyone is comfortable?

 

[The Human Q-Tip]

I think this is a vast oversimplification of how the body works.

It's not a question of how the body works. It's definitional. If you are a male, you have a male's brain. It might be a male's brain that displays a lot of characteristics usually found in a female's brain, but it is still the brain of a male.

You are absolutely right about the ranges, that's exactly how it would look. Is it so preposterous to say that someone has feminine characteristics in a male brain though?

It's not preposterous, but I don't think it's the best way to refer to it because it isn't a "feminine" brain. It's a male brain that displays characteristics more often found in female brains, but that are found in other male brains as well. And I think referring to it as a "feminine brain", as you did in your initial post, is engaging in the type of "gender norming" that some people fight against. "Well, if you're good in math, that's a man thing." Biologically, it may be true that men have an advantage in math, but that's one step closer to "math is a man thing", which is the problem. Why can't it just be a male brain on a different part of the bell curve? Is a woman who has a larger amygdala than most women less "feminine"? Don't you see how completely loaded that word is in this context?

It seems you are just stubbornly denying calling anything in an XY body feminine because "by definition it's male".

I think "feminine" is a loaded term that includes all sorts of non-biologically based social constructs and baggage. Therefore, I'm sticking to male/female, which are terms that exist independent of social constructs. So, using male and female, would you say that a brain taken from a male that falls on the part of the male bell curve in which brains taken from females are usually found is a "male" brain, or a "female" brain?

If a guy has a hormone disorder and develops breasts is that not a typically feminine characteristic?

It's a typically female physical characteristic. Doesn't make him a woman, though, even if he decides he wants to be called one by the rest of society. Which is the ultimate issue being discussed.

If a hormonal exposure happens in a prenatal stage that causes the brain to develop as an average female brain despite being in a male body, is it so preposterous that the person would feel like a woman trapped in a man's body?

No.

Who are you to tell them "no you're a man cuz dicks", when everything else about their daily life feels like that of a woman? It is a real condition and a terrible one where you have to live a confusing life filled with other people telling you who you are.

Well, I'm not the guy walking up to trannies and saying "you know, you're really still a dude", if that's what you mean. But neither should I be the guy forced to adopt their definition of gender if I think another works better.

Look, for treatment/therapy purposes, I could care less how such a person chooses to view himself. Whatever floats his boat is fine by me. Nor do I care about which gender pronouns are used within his circle of friends, etc.. And if he wants to wear a miniskirt and call himself Loretta, it's not skin off my ass.

BUT, when it comes to how the rest of society determines gender, that's different. Because society, including me, has a perfectly legitimate interest in using objective criteria to determine/refer to gender.

So, to answer "who are you", I'm the guy who relies on the male/female distinction for a huge range of reasons, from ordering clothes and knowing whether to ask where the men's department is, or which restroom to enter or to send my kids too, or for sports, or to track employment data to see if there is discrimination, or any number of other reasons relating to privacy or daily living. It is a very useful distinction which is precisely why it is so common, and that's why I think using objective and immutable criteria that can't change from day to day depending upon individual whim are preferable to the purely subjective "I am what I say I am, at least for the rest of today" alternative.

So, to flip this around, who are you to tell me that I can't tell my kid that just because that man is wearing a dress and calling himself Shirley doesn't make him a woman?

 

[The Human Q-Tip]

I dont see any way whatsoever to make everyone comfortable.

This issue always comes down to making that tiny minority feel comfortable even if it makes everyone else uncomfortable.

 

[Sumac13]

Will throw this out there: How tiny is that minority? It may only seem tiny because they have never been given a voice. Attaching labels of 'mental' disorders to their choice really doesn't make one want to step forward. You might be surprised how many 'weirdos' there are out there. Strap on a pair of heels and go for a walk. You might just find it liberating. He-he. Take pictures and post them here, too. I am sure we will all embrace you.

 

[The Human Q-Tip]

Strap on a pair of heels and go for a walk. You might just find it liberating. He-he. Take pictures and post them here, too. I am sure we will all embrace you.

Dream on, you damn prevert!

(must be said in Archie Bunker voice)

 

[Randolphkeys]

I've practiced employment law for more than 20 years, which included lots of stuff regarding the meaning of "sex" and "gender" as they appear in various statutes, regulations, and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (commonly referred to as the "DSM"), which address mental health. I've had to go through several updated versions of the DSM because they issue new ones periodically.

I will try to respond with the quality this well-thought out post deserves, but I don't have a ton of time today or this weekend.

I was a social worker before I entered the classroom, so I too have studied the DSM in two forms: IV and IV-TR. I was surprised that someone well read on this subject was still lacking in an understanding in the differences between "sex" and "gender." Again, the distinctions were made in the early 50's.

There is absolutely zero doubt that there has been a deliberate, if not necessarily coordinated, campaign to redefine those words so as to be more compliant with the interests of the GLBT interests groups. Same has been done to Wikipedia. You can check the various versions of the DSM, dictionaries, etc., and see the changes. Go check a written dictionary published 20 years ago and compare it with what you may find online to see how the definitions have changed. Actually had to do that for a case where someone who was trans was trying to get that covered based on discrimination against "gender", and won by showing what the meaning of the word was at the time the statute was passed, versus the meaning the plaintiff was trying to give it currently.

There is no evidence that a political lobby, LGBT, that began in the early 1970s coordinated the original scientific studies of gender issues. I believe science is leading society in a different understanding of the human body and human sexuality. For example, our understanding of autism and Asperger's syndrome have become much more enriched than our understanding just 20 years ago. I don't believe the movement for classrooms to change for these conditions was political as much as it was a deeper understanding of how the human mind works.

Funny you should mentioned that. Yes, "Gender Identify Disorder" has been recognized for a long time by mental health professionals, and was defined in the DSM's. I still have the DSM III-R that was the bible when I started practicing. And you could find Gender Identity Disorder going back all the way to the original DSM (1952), up to the DSM III-R (1987), DSM IV (1994), and DSM IV-TR (2000).

Now, one way we will agree is that gender identity dysphoria is a condition that has been around for a long time and it is different entirely from some families are choosing to raise their kids without gender assignment. As a teacher and a professional, I am comfortable adjusting my style to any actual condition identified in the DSM, but families following a trend and demanding special treatment is just as annoying to me as the families who had a child temporarily receive and IEP / special needs designation, outgrow that designation, and still demand their child get arbitrary special treatment in a classroom.

So I'm not too far in agreement with this new movement. I think there is certainly some disingenuous use of gender identity dysphoria going on under the guise of a societal need. But, as a teacher, it is not my place to decide if a kid has a diagnosed mental condition or their parent is just a flake.

But a funny thing happened with the DSM-V (2013). The condition was now referred to as Gender Identity Dysphoria, instead of "Disorder." Why? Well, because advcoates didn't like the term "disorder". And it's not just right-wing paranoia saying that's why the change was made:

And if you read the article, the political/interest group factors driving that language change is very clear. The tap-dance gets more humorous when you did a bit deeper and find that the real problem they're having is trying to get it considered some sort of defect for purposes of getting insurance (or the taxpayers via Medicare/Medicaid) to pay for reassignment surgery/hormone treatments, while at the same time not wanting to be considered as having something "wrong" with them. Essentially, the shrinks and GLBT lobby are trying to come up with something that will force the rest of us to pay for those treatments.

And again, you keep viewing this solely from the perspective of what is easiest for teachers/schools, whereas parents may care much more about the content of what is actually being taught/imparted to students. And frankly, I'm not too keen on having what was considered a "disorder" until two years ago being taught as just another equally valid "choice".

I am again not condoning the practice of just raising your kid without a gender designation. I am a parent and if my wife suggested it, I'd go behind her back and tell my son he is a boy anyway. Your legal background I'm sure hates this Pandora's Box of perfectly healthy kids getting screwed up by a parent's whims. I compared it before to the parents who decided not to vaccinate their infants on some crazy whim. It puts other families in a more clear path of potential danger than a statement about gender, but there are some parallels.

Here are two things I keep going back to:

1. What are the limits and boundaries of my influence on another parent? If there is evidence that failing to assign gender to your kid is abusive and damaging, we as a society can tell these parents to stop or Child Protective Services will be involved. But, that data doesn't exist yet. So basically, whatever opinions we have of someone else's parenting aren't worth a crap. I think parents who don't let their kid eat a hot dog because of nitrates are dumbasses. I can't stop them from doing it though.

2. Since there clearly ARE kids with this gender identity issue, I can't randomly pick who gets the educational environment they need and who will have their parent's desires undermined. I'm especially not doing it in a school where many staff members are on the range of GLBT or gender issues themselves... and that exists in Midwestern schools as well. Plenty of private, conservative Catholic schools in Cleveland have GLBT staff... that isn't just a San Francisco liberal thing.

 

[jlj3184]

So much outrage over an issue that doesn't really have any impact on people's lives.

Always found this Ted Talk to be pretty interesting. Nothing earth-shattering, but does provide some perspective from "the other side". If you have 18 spare minutes, it's worth the time.

https://www.ted.com/talks/io_tillett_wright_fifty_shades_of_gay

 

[supergoat52]

It's not a question of how the body works. It's definitional. If you are a male, you have a male's brain. It might be a male's brain that displays a lot of characteristics usually found in a female's brain, but it is still the brain of a male.



It's not preposterous, but I don't think it's the best way to refer to it because it isn't a "feminine" brain. It's a male brain that displays characteristics more often found in female brains, but that are found in other male brains as well. And I think referring to it as a "feminine brain", as you did in your initial post, is engaging in the type of "gender norming" that some people fight against. "Well, if you're good in math, that's a man thing." Biologically, it may be true that men have an advantage in math, but that's one step closer to "math is a man thing", which is the problem. Why can't it just be a male brain on a different part of the bell curve? Is a woman who has a larger amygdala than most women less "feminine"? Don't you see how completely loaded that word is in this context?



I think "feminine" is a loaded term that includes all sorts of non-biologically based social constructs and baggage. Therefore, I'm sticking to male/female, which are terms that exist independent of social constructs. So, using male and female, would you say that a brain taken from a male that falls on the part of the male bell curve in which brains taken from females are usually found is a "male" brain, or a "female" brain?

I think we are at odds over the terminology here. I agree that it is a male brain, but i don't think saying a male brain has feminine characteristics is a contradiction. I am using masculine and feminine as scientific terms here, with no regards to dresses, trucks, or any of that shit. When I say a masculine brain characteristic i mean stuff like increased dendritic spikes in the preoptic area, which is associated with a flood of estradiol that occurs when the body undergoes defeminization followed by masculinization, which are actually two separate biological processes. The features of the brain that are introduced during the masculinization of the brain are what i am referring to when i say "masculine" traits. When looking at this from a biological perspective there is no way to avoid these kind of terms, and they have an objective basis.

Yes, the brain is male, and the person is a male sex. Their gender is in their mind, and is less relevant to their sex than one might think. All i am trying to say with the biological stuff is that these people aren't making up these conditions, and they are not things that can be "cured". I know you aren't suggesting that at all, just trying to get across my point for bringing the biology in, which is that it's not made up.

Well, I'm not the guy walking up to trannies and saying "you know, you're really still a dude", if that's what you mean. But neither should I be the guy forced to adopt their definition of gender if I think another works better.

Look, for treatment/therapy purposes, I could care less how such a person chooses to view himself. Whatever floats his boat is fine by me. Nor do I care about which gender pronouns are used within his circle of friends, etc.. And if he wants to wear a miniskirt and call himself Loretta, it's not skin off my ass.

BUT, when it comes to how the rest of society determines gender, that's different. Because society, including me, has a perfectly legitimate interest in using objective criteria to determine/refer to gender.

So, to answer "who are you", I'm the guy who relies on the male/female distinction for a huge range of reasons, from ordering clothes and knowing whether to ask where the men's department is, or which restroom to enter or to send my kids too, or for sports, or to track employment data to see if there is discrimination, or any number of other reasons relating to privacy or daily living. It is a very useful distinction which is precisely why it is so common, and that's why I think using objective and immutable criteria that can't change from day to day depending upon individual whim are preferable to the purely subjective "I am what I say I am, at least for the rest of today" alternative.

So, to flip this around, who are you to tell me that I can't tell my kid that just because that man is wearing a dress and calling himself Shirley doesn't make him a woman?

First, i'm glad you aren't saying that to people, and you seems to be pretty chill with people doing what they want.

I also see the value in the immutable criteria, and would argue that describing the person's sex serves just that purpose. You can tell your kid that the person is a man, that is an objective truth in some ways. But calling the person a man does not describe their state of mind like it would for most men, which is where the mutable gender identity serves it's purpose. I feel this would be less of an issue if the word "gender" wasn't being changed for you and others, and instead they just used "identity". The movement isn't trying to say that a person's sex doesn't matter, and nobody is ignoring penises and vaginas altogether. The movement is about recognizing that people's brains don't fit into categories as neatly as their bodies do, so rather than group them together it makes sense to have 2 separate categories for the body (sex) and the mind (gender). If you want to emphasize one of those categories more to your kid, that's totally fine. As Keys has pointed out, we don't really know what is best yet, and it surely varies from child to child.

I have no problem with you telling your kid that Shirley is actually a man, but i do think that you should tell him about how Shirley prefers to be called "she", because that's the kind and humane thing to do.

 

[Randolphkeys]

So if my son identifies himself as a girl, should he be able to go to an all girls school?
What do you do about the lockerrooms/showers at school?
Should he be able to play in the WNBA?

A private entity like an all boys school or an all girls school can make stronger decisions on this type of thing than a public school. My guess is that they can act like golf courses and use any determining factors they want... but they will have to ride out any bad press with a decision either way. Eventually I think we will see more "family bathrooms" that are one stall all over the country. Transgenders and people changing poopy diapers will share it. No honestly, that's what I think we will see.

He's gay, but he is still a boy. I see nothing wrong with you referring to him as one 10 times...makes more sense than calling him a purple penguin or monkey. Creating a zero tolerance environment for bullying seems like a better solution than taking the kids and giving them special treatment...i think that only spotlights them and can make them a bigger target.

He didn't identify outwardly as a girl. My co-worker clearly wants to live her life as a woman eventhough I figured it out a week ago. I will continue to call her Ms. ____________. And bullying will not stop because they use private bathrooms... they will allow me to not patrol the boys room as an adult for bullying. I don't want that job.

 

[Andrew]

One if some kid identifies himself as a purple penguin and you just screwed them up.

 

[Tornicade]

if isaac asimov were around he would write a book about how a mathematician and a sociologist teams up to create gay society that would be less likely to procreate as part of the social norm thereby reducing stemming the tide towards overpopulation

 

[The Oi]

The more I think about this the more ridiculous I think it is. It's usually the opposite for me.

It all boils down to this in my mind...we've got groups of people wanting to make us all the same so that a miniscule handful of kids can feel safe being different.

We can't just teach these kids to accept each other being different. We actually have to all raise the same fuckin kid!

Is it going to take a lot of time out of my day to acquiesce to these kids and their parents? No. Is it going to hurt my feelings if a 7 year old boy wants to call himself Mary? No.

But I'm just not one to live in a fantasy land.

Teach the kids to respect the kid that wants to be a girl because he's a human being. Don't make the kids refuse to acknowledge that he's different.

Frankly, it's far more valuable and meaningful to raise kids who can recognize diversity and accept it than kids who live in denial.

It's like fucking 1984 out here anymore. I may homeschool this kid we're having in a few days to keep him away from these crazy ass administrators and teachers moreso than the poorly raised kids.

 

[Randolphkeys]

Whoa... how is this the teachers and admin? This is tax payers demanding their community school welcome their needs. The school set no agenda on this.