Gender Transitioning, and Parents

I have written before about why I strongly dislike gender changing surgery for minors, and certainly for pre-pubescent children.  Many people who become parents don't seem to have the maturity to make life-changing decisions for their kids.  There's presently a case of a broken family, where one parent—who is transgender—has abducted their child, and taken it to Cuba, and it is suspected that the objective is to perform gender-altering surgery on the child.  OK, draw your own conclusions. 

Most of the difficulty with gender, in my view, it's because our society expects all of us to express our gender.  I mean that guys are expected to wear pants.  Girls, old enough to have breasts, are expected to wear bras.  In short, you're expected to dress according to whatever gender you "are".

In Catholic schools, for instance, the nuns are often severe on kids who prefer to cross dress.  If a guy is permitted to dress girly, and act girly, much of the psychological pressure for a little guy to want to be a girl will dissipate. 

Meanwhile, of course, young guys with hormonal urges tend to express their needs by bullying, shows of strength, picking on girls, and effeminate boys, all with a view to showing off how tough they are.  So a little boy who wants to dress in a skirt and pick daisies is going to be relentlessly persecuted.  And there are going to be girls who would rather die than dress like girls are expected to, and prefer to play boy sports, and beat people up just like the boys.  If the kids just left each other alone (without interacting with each other in gender- related ways), they could easily express themselves in anyway they wished, without wishing for gender-altering surgery.  I could easily imagine a time when little kids under the age of 9, say, could share common toilets, boys and girls, once our culture has proceeded beyond the taboos that are common today.  So it could very well be cultural imperatives that fuel much of dysphoria among little kids. 

A little second-grader girl who wants to dress like a boy can easily do so.  It's a little harder for a little boy to dress like a girl, and wear a ribbon in his hair, for instance.  And in Pennsylvania, I suppose, if that happens in a catholic school, the older nuns will freak out, because obviously God would not like his gender statistics ruined.  But the time can come, surely, where we could separate a person's preferred way of expressing their gender, from the morphology of their genitals?

Kay

Miscellaneous

Well.  I slept over at my friend's last night, after having attended Governor Josh Shapiro's meeting at the local college!  I was trying to meet him and say hello, but I could not get close enough 😞!  He holds our state on a steady course, despite all the shenanigans of the maga component of our state house.

This morning, we were drooling over some photographs of my friend's Irish family!  The nieces were so incredibly cute!  There's something to be said for raising a family and having children!  But I love tiny kids too much to inflict silly GOP nonsense on them.  Imagine sending your child to a classroom where vaccination isn't required?

The little critters were just painfully cute this morning!

My friend is going nuts over the nice weather, and she wants to go work on her garden!  That's what she's doing now. 

And then she's going to watch golf.  I could never see the point of that sport; miniature golf I enjoy.  But real golf: count me out. 

Kay

Clair Ashton: Oxford Romances

I have been reading Clare Ashton's sort-of trilogy of romances, centered on two friends, Charlotte and Millie, who get into the university the same year, and really hit it off beautifully.

Charlotte is an upper-middle-class child of Oxford-educated parents, while Millie is the only child of a single mother.  Charlotte is reserved and naïve; Millie is blunt and brash and outspoken and loud.

The author is quite clear-eyed about the snobbery of the place, and the annoying attitudes of Oxford boys ("men"), actually not very different from those of guys on any university or college campus.

I have noticed that those who have gone to Oxford tend to love the place to pieces; the stories are replete with descriptions of the environs, though Clare Ashton, the author, is considerably more restrained than most oxfordian authors.  Even in this story, many of the characters leave Oxford, but then return.

The characters Clare Ashton delineates over the four volumes of the 'trilogy' are very three- dimensional, including the grandparents of Charlotte and one of her friends, and some young children.  All this goes to underscore what I have tried to say, namely that an interesting author is a careful observer of everything!  Of course, we can only infer how much õf an observer an author is by reading their work, and naturally there's a lot of selection there, in what he or she chooses to record.  I just love what CA chooses to comment on, though I could use a lot less Oxford information.  (In fact, Oxford is effectively an additional character in these stories.  It is so in other stories as well, e.g. The Golden Compass.)

However, the author occasionally goes haywire, and drops one or more words in her excitement.  The language is beautiful (a long as she's aware, and keeps track of her mechanics), and she drops into colloquial lingo as and when necessary, sometimes totally cracking me up!  In these horrible days, it is just fabulous to know that there are sane, imaginative people writing fiction. 

Another author I have been enjoying is Caren Werlinger.  She writes stories that are deeply religious, and about people who are religious—in fact a community of nuns in a convent.  Now, I'm not in the least religious, and certainly not Roman Catholic, like Caren Werlinger's characters (I was an Episcopalian, and very low-church), but I can say that her stories (actually, mainly just one long story) is mainly about values.  The values of our society are splitting in two, in the Trump era, to coin a phrase—or actually, into three.  A large number, of quite articulate people, continue to be strongly grounded in values that drove the political leadership of the last fifty years.  Then there is an enormous number of people who are quite cynical.  Robber-baron wannabees.  And then, unfortunately, there are religious militants, who seek power and wealth, and are totally intolerant.  Reading Caren Werlinger, Ì'm transported to the idea-world of my childhood and youth, filled with idealism.  Popular media is full of a sort of fake, performative idealism (Theater), and the fiction of both these authors are very refreshing, for their values.

Kay

 

Babies

Somehow, the Facebook fairies have discovered that I like baby animals; my Facebook feed is now full of videos of newborn baby animals, being cuddled by their dams, and the dams' humans!  I can barely restrain myself from squeeing at the sights; you have to do something to respond to them!

Most commonly they're horses, or cats, giraffes, or cattle—cows, anyway; the word 'cattle' seems so derogatory—especially woolly highland cows and calves.  (It seems so horrible to learn that some livestock farmers specialize in veal, breeding baby calves expressly to slaughter them before they're yet a year old.)  It's no more cruel than slaughtering an adult animal, but it does seem more cruel.  I'm depressed that I continue to eat beef and pork; though in very small quantities.  Do not feel that I'm judging you, readers, we're descended from carnivores, so it's natural. 

These days, there's plenty of news to feel horrified about, not least the war atrocities perpetrated by the US government.  The only things that matter to the members of this administration are to remain in power at any cost.  And for what?  To treat those suspected of being immigrants with great cruelty and violence. 

Many citizens who voted for Trump did so because they were alarmed at the huge increase of non-white members of the population.  Those who did not go away to college, often never encountered anyone with a complexion that wasn't pale.  So it's only natural that they're uncomfortable with brown-skinned people, with their accented speech, which leads them to vote for a (failed) real-estate developer, with a very limited quiver of skills*. 

But many of these bigoted people are far from being cruel.  The administration has tried to persuade them that the cruelty is necessary.  The administration knows that these people are not persuaded.  So now they have gone on to try to sell to the electorate that violence and death in Iran is necessary.  From all I know, Iran is the home for one of the most ancient civilizations on the planet.  Yet it's all targets for bombs now, and they're trying to find yet more bombs to carry on the destruction.  Meanwhile, it is emerging that there is evidence that numerous members of the political leadership of the last few decades were involved with pedophilia with Jeffrey E., and that our dear president was one of the primary organizers of the systematic raping of underage children. 

The readers who visit my pages are, I fervently hope, not sympathizers with those who hope to participate in these travesties.  We will remember; we will not allow all this to be swept under the rugs of foreign wars.

I seem to have wandered far from relating stories of baby animal videos, but I want to make it clear that many of us have seen and noted these things, and our patience is running out.

Kay

*Namely Trump.