Irish writer Louise O'Neill writes regularly for the Sunday Times, though it's not obvious why: it's certainly not for the clarity of her thought. Last week she was telling us that, according to science, sex isn't binary, and that "transgender identity" should be taught in school.
Here's her latest:
When a friend of mine was heavily pregnant, I asked whether she was going to find out the sex of the baby. She said no, but she didn’t give the usual reason that expectant parents do, that it’s the one surprise left in life. My friend said she didn’t want to know because those nine months in the womb would be the only time in her child’s entire life when they weren’t stereotyped because of their gender.
I thought about that conversation last week when Paul Murphy, the People Before Profit TD, announced that he and his partner, Jess Spear, would be raising their first child, Juniper, in a gender-neutral way.
The couple would be using the pronoun they so Juniper could “discover their own gender identity”, adding: “We’re not going to fight against society. But to the extent that we can, in our home, in our relationship with Juniper, we don’t want to limit the kind of future they will foresee for themselves.”...
So much of what we believe to be true about gender is not because of biology, it is not a predetermined destiny; rather it is a social construct. We are conditioned from birth to behave in ways that are seen as socially acceptable for our given gender — and the impact of that can be very damaging.
Girls are taught to be nice, to suppress their own needs and desires, to be caretakers. Meanwhile, boys are too often taught that the only emotion they’re allowed to express is anger. They’re told to toughen up if they cry, told to be a big, brave boy if they’re scared. When you look at the suicide rates in young men — it was the number one cause of death in Irish men aged under 25 in 2019 — it is clear that gender stereotypes are not only limiting and constrictive, they’re also quite possibly killing people.
Is it any wonder that Murphy and Spear want to protect their child from this? I’m sure Juniper will be loved and cared for, and that is far more important than knowing what colour balloons to send as a present.
There's such confusion here between sex and gender that it makes your head spin. The child has a sex: male or female. Yes, there are gender stereotypes associated with sex, but they needn't be reinforced by parents. If a boy plays with dolls, fine. If a girl starts taking model cars to bits and re-assembling them, fine. Most people now are perfectly well aware of this. It's the gender ideologues - the ones who call their children "they" in the belief that the child will "find their own gender identity" - who are the ones trapped in the stereotypes. If you think that saying "you're a boy" restricts your child's choice of toys, or the way he can behave, then you're the one with the stereotype issues.
So, if this child is male but plays with dolls, will they be taking him off to the doctors to turn him into a girl - like Mermaids Susie Green with her effeminate son?
The readers' comments are uniformly negative...
Traditionalists: 'Girls play with dolls.'
Feminists: 'Any child can play with dolls.'
Gender ideology: 'A child who plays with dolls is a girl.'
The way to reduce the impact of restrictive gender roles and stereotypes is by challenging those stereotypes, not by pretending biological sex doesn't exist or is irrelevant.
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