Biggest Gay Lobby Group in America Urges Schools to Ban Words ‘Boy’ and ‘Girl’

originally posted by: pfishy
a reply to: CharlieSpeirs

Facts and logic, yes, but don't forget sweeping generalities...

Generalities?

Maybe you could quote them, I've been reading his thread from scratch and only just caught up with this final page, and I may have overlooked or missed something.

I didn't notice any generalities...

Except the "give them a voice" outburst.
That was worth a chuckle.

Someone lets Christians live rent-free in their heads.

I wasn't aware non-Christians treated each other like genderless drones, or had zero biological background as part of their upbringing. Is that why there are 72 virgins waiting in paradise? Most pantheons had male and female dieties, and were joined in male/female pairings. Granted, this didn't stop them from hooking up with whoever or whatever they wanted...

For those of you blaming Christians for all the problems in your life, grow up. It's gone past 'getting old' into 'dead horse' territory. I think we can safely say that the concept of boy/girl predates mankind circa 0 AD.

a reply to: CharlieSpeirs

I was just ribbing you a bit. You know, assigning facts and logic to only one segment of the commentors. All in good fun.

originally posted by: pfishy
a reply to: CharlieSpeirs

I was just ribbing you a bit. You know, assigning facts and logic to only one segment of the commentors. All in good fun.

Haha you know I had an inclination that was the case when I proof read my post...
Touché pfishy!

a reply to: jude11

That's a bit too far. We can all be boys and girls and still have homosexual equality and rights.

You know how it is, if you can't poke a little fun at yourself, you can never truly appreciate humor.

originally posted by: MountainLaurel
I hope my questions aren't too personal...

Not too personal. FWIW, I am not "out" in real life and my transsexual medical history and childhood experience is not something known outside of family and one or two very close long term friends. It took some convincing but I've decided to be open and honest about my life here so that others may gain some awareness and understanding about people like me.

I appreciate your insight, and am happy to hear you made it through a difficult childhood. I read that you said separating kids into groups of girls and boys was painful for you as a child. What do you think would have made things better for you and other transgender kids?

Things are so much different and there is so much more understanding these days than there was in the 1960's and early '70's. What would have been helpful goes along with the simple suggestions about not dividing things along gender lines as either boy or girl. Certainly, there are some situations where anatomy does force segregation such as PE showers and locker rooms, etc., but in general, making a distinction by boy or girl can be difficult and uncomfortable for TG kids. Accommodations of some sort or another would be helpful.

In my case, in junior high (7th grade) when PC class also meant taking showers, I had a meltdown and totally refused to step foot in the boys locker room. We're talking 1967 here and I was immediately hauled off for psychological evaluation. Of course, transsesuality in children wasn't exactly a recognized or treated thing then but I still got a medical exemption excusing me from what would have been a traumatic experience.

Would you have preferred to be identified as a female sooner in life ? At what age did you KNOW for sure your soul was a female ?

I'll answer your second question first - my clearest childhood memories go back to being five. I knew then and didn't have any doubts even though everything in my life said otherwise. I would have preferred to have been a girl then instead of going through the next ten or eleven years of my parents trying to make me into something else. I have little doubt that my mom knew what was going on but still, out of love and for her not wanting me to marginalized and ridiculed, letting a boy live as a girl was out of the question and not something that would have been accepted by society as it has begun to be in the last twenty years.

Probably on the advice of psychologists that I had been taken too multiple more times and realizing their efforts to make me a "normal" boy were doing more harm than good and after sucking up their own embarrassment, after my junior year in high school, they just let me be whoever I was going to be. In 1971, "transitioning" was still out of the question but I had very long hair, pierced ears, shaved legs and dressed as androgynously as I could get away with. By the time I graduated, I was sexually ambiguous and people couldn't tell what I was.

I left home within a week of high school being over. At 5' 7 and a half inches tall, slightly built and 130 pounds with blonde hair almost to my waist, it didn't take too long with only slight visual cues before my androgyny was abandoned and I began to socialize and be known as a girl. By the end of that same year and shortly before my 19th birthday, I came out to my parents that I would be living the rest of my life as a girl. Since I had been merging that direction for several years, this came as no big surprise or shock and it just made everything in my life so much better and easier and a lot more normal and natural.

In my experience as a child once and now a mother, is that kids do enjoy hanging out with their own gender a lot...sure all kids can have fun playing together...it just seems to be "natural" for many kids....so I can imagine that could be very painful for a transgender kid.

Most transgender/transsexual kids hang out who they are comfortable with or at least try to. As a young kid, I hung out with girls, playing house, playing with dolls and having tea parties. I hated to be forced into boys activities. Naturally, my parents were concerned about this but couldn't stop it and unquestionably, boys teased and hassled me a lot. As a teen, I was socially withdrawn and considered to be some kind of queer freak but still most comfortable in the company of girls especially since boys wanted to beat me up and be as mean as possible.

Like you said, times have changed and I think by the time kids become teenagers they are more opened minded these days. I would think that even more important then school would be how the kids family treats them...Yes / No ?

Kids these days don't care so much about this stuff but a lot of that is dependent on regional culture. Trans kids and adults are still marginalized, denied housing and employment, discriminated against and beaten and murdered on a regular basis and why those of us that can, remain hidden in society. The most important thing for kids like I was is that their parents love them, educate themselves about these issues and be supportive as possible while kids work this stuff out.

a reply to: jude11

Im going to keep it simple. The gay lobby can **** off. I will not tolerate this abandonment of reality. I will not let anyone tell me what i can and cant say. I will not be bullied into being a sniveling little pansy ***** bending over for some insane neo-liberal brainswashing agenda.

I say this as a freedom loving non-religious individual. You wanta be gay, thats your business. You want to brainwash kids and force us all into some twisted cult society, i got a problem with it.

This obviously is a right off to our demise....

Lobby it hard enough in Washington and it may actually happen LOL

I am afraid our future will leave us heartless, and lost... Leaving us not know what or who we are....

Children never understanding who they are only becoming who they are told to be...

And a life of fear...

What in the hell happened to freedom??

We are going to lose it really quick... By the time we figure out we lost it, the laws will be there...

Then all you will have is anger and trembling hands... Regretting we never had the nerve...

I think it is time for america to grow up...

The article you linked to does not want to ban the words "boy" and "girl," but was giving advice on how to be gender inclusive in the classroom. This is a far different thing.

My personal belief is that there should be no gender segregation in our society. I think we would all enjoy ourselves a lot better if we got to do what we wanted rather than what society expects us to do as a guy or girl. I also think that it would end up making guys and girls have a lot more in common - they would be able to relate to each other as fellow human beings.

originally posted by: beezzer
I think we should assign numbers for gender, gender identity, sexual preference.

So someone could be a 3, 5, 6 and use the bathrooms for 3,5,6.

But if a 1, 2, 5 tried to use the bathroom, they'd have to use the 8, 9, 7 or the 3, 2, 9.

But not the 1, 7, 4.

That would be gross.

That looked like the lyrics to a Slipknot song transcribed from
playin' it backwards, Beez. ! ciiiiit-i-reH . If this keeps up it'll
be our new national anthem too.
But for all of us slowly homogenizing yet very special snowflakes, I
believe what they'll approve more than not for a handle is COMRADE.

For God's sake we're stuck on a tube train to Bizzaria with the doors
welded shut.

originally posted by: imod02
If this is true the whole thing is just getting silly

It has been getting silly a long time ago, and I am not just talking about this, but many other things that have nothing to do with LGBT groups.

First off, I apologize if I am stepping on anybody's toes by saying the same thing several posts later that he/she said. I am replying after reading the OP alone so if it seems as if I am stealing your ideas, I just have yet to read them.

I wanted to respond right away to the thread 's starting post since I strongly disagree with parts of it. The only discussion about banning the words boy and girl is provided by the OP in the title of the thread. Right off the bat, people are responding with the, "you gotta be kidding me," and, "what's this world come to," type posts. Of course that's the reaction you're going to get out of people when you Nancy Grace the story up so it's much more entertaining than the true article which is pretty drab, albeit informative to those who have a professional interest in the study. I am not in any way a real supporter of the HRC (nor am I an opponent) since I can't argue its official goal is fantastic but I steer clear of non-profits who are so publicly intertwined with political affiliation and candidate backing.

What you have done is taken a chunk out of a piece discussing division of students as boys or girls and inferred than somehow the same people responsible for this literature is on a crusade to make some law or peducational policy in which even allowing children to see themselves as or be addressed as boys or girls would be illegal or breaking a rule. This is not at all what is even being said and to take it so far as to concoct a false agenda to illegalize boy and girl, though again I don't care much about the HRC, is still unfair to them and someone has gotta come out swinging in defense of a group who, unlike a group like PETA, has the LBGT (LGBT?) community's best interests at heart (I don't think anyone could argue they're not sincere about it).

Finally, one of my graduate degrees is directly related to the field in discussion and believe it or not, if you want to go attacking anyone over it, the HRC is hardly the first to publish something like this. I remember reading about twelve years ago when I was finishing said degree that studies had shown that groups pertaining to religion, race, and in this case simple gender had a negative impact when it came to educational performance and psychological well-being. And although you who are in different professions and followed different academic paths may not be able without further research to reconcile this idea in your heads, I found it both quite interesting and when later applied, quite useful as it turned out (if the huge reputable scholars and studies done weren't credible enough) quite true. And it's not such a big damn deal so why make it? If what the data says is for example making elementary PE time hula hoop teams arrange themselves in twelve teams decided by "what month is your birthday in" creates an environment which can be determined by assessment and quantitative data is more comfortable, conducive to learning, self-esteem building, and overall positive than if teacher went with one of the old favorites, boys and girls, then why cause a stink when data shows the same results vis a vis emotional and psychological positivity from being seen as, categorized by, or addressed as boy or girl? I assure you it's little things like this that may seem ridiculous but in reality are revolutionary and have potential to influence more than the non education/child psychology/child development academic crowd would imagine.

a reply to: jude11

I can't wait till ever book I read refers to he/her as protagonist; He/her rode jesus on a wave and he/her told the Jews (man and women or undecided) to cast he/ or her upon the throne of his/her domain and lay to rest the paternal/maternal/transinferanl fire that lay wicked in him/her/ transbeaver. That was a stretch and fictionalized, but please see the point to the idiocracy.

a reply to: AlexandrosTheGreat
Thank you for your reasonable and intelligent post, Alexandros. A star for you, friend.

You mention others following "different academic paths" but you've got to wonder if some of the commenters in this thread have any education at all?