Is it okay to bring young children to gay pride? How about in drag?
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The author has a point in that the mother brings the child to gay pride in makeup, not that the child goes, as in, by himself. The parents bear responsibility for what their children see and do.
When I read these kinds of stories that are against bringing kids to Pride events they fall into two categories: There's too much sex in the air or the event normalizes (what is for your judgment).
Dressing a child in drag and taking them to Pride is new to me. I see a child getting lots of positive reinforcement at an age when the self isn't fully formed. In an age where parents are more likely to give anti-puberty drugs if their child feels they're transsexual, well, reinforcing gender-bending at a place with all that attention seems like a bad idea.
Thoughts?
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I've never met a Transexual person who changed their mind about what gender they are no matter how their parents dressed them - not to mention years of therapy for 'gender dysphoria' to convince them that they are cis.
Why would cis-gender identity be so much more fragile than trans-gender?
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The author has a point in that the mother brings the child to gay pride in makeup, not that the child goes, as in, by himself. The parents bear responsibility for what their children see and do.
When I read these kinds of stories that are against bringing kids to Pride events they fall into two categories: There's too much sex in the air or the event normalizes (what is for your judgment).
Dressing a child in drag and taking them to Pride is new to me. I see a child getting lots of positive reinforcement at an age when the self isn't fully formed. In an age where parents are more likely to give anti-puberty drugs if their child feels they're transsexual, well, reinforcing gender-bending at a place with all that attention seems like a bad idea.
Thoughts?
This reminds me of many years ago when I visited Amsterdam. For those that don't know, Amsterdam is an ultra-clean and manicured city with a population of mostly attractive, intelligent people. They have very loose laws regarding drugs and sex. I think the reason that Amsterdam is so great is that there is so much freedom.. but of course with freedom comes people who abuse the freedoms. I don't think they allow people to solicit sex ON the streets, but they do allow prostitutes to stand behind windows along the streets and bang on the windows, etc. (They tried VERY hard to get my attention). There are often prostitutes in street level windows, with sandwich boards with photos of people having sex, with a barker screaming "LIVE SEX ON STAGE!" Next to a church - sharing the same wall - with a theater that has live sex shows… next to a "coffee shop" that sells marijuana. Anyway.. everybody gets along and is tolerant of just about everything..which is fine. But.. one thing I saw was rather disturbing. On one street, I happened to walk right past actor Robert De Niro. In cities like Amsterdam, London, NYC, and Hollywood / Los Angeles - it is not unusual to spot a celebrity. On that same street, there was this woman about 25 years old walking with an 8 year old boy in broad daylight walking along the sidewalk. Both of them dressed head to toe in black leather.. with the boy in assless chaps with his hiney in full view... and the boy had a harness and collar on and the woman had him on a leash. It was just like this photo only an 8 year old instead of a 45 year old man. That stunned me!
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I've never met a Transexual person who changed their mind about what gender they are no matter how their parents dressed them - not to mention years of therapy for 'gender dysphoria' to convince them that they are cis.
Why would cis-gender identity be so much more fragile than trans-gender?
The worlds we live in have a limited orbit of people, some more varied than others. That you haven't met anyone doesn't mean that there aren't people who have changed their minds. At the same time, the satellites feeding us information tend to align that news with what's on the right side of history these days.
As to fragility, children are very sensitive to what's put in front of them. A child's identity is fluid to a certain point and the identities (note the plural) that form within have to navigate cultural, and subcultural, norms. That affects the adult they become. A good illustration is molestation. Touching the genitals feels good yet the child is told to keep it a secret; in social situations, an abused child gets different messages of what sex means; later when they make a connection between what's happened to them being molestation, they have to square their experience with what's expected. This is why the act of molestation is often less traumatic than peoples reactions to it.
So a child's idea of self is very fragile.
All I know is that a child dressing up in makeup getting a lot of positive reinforcement, and then affirmation when they come into negative reactions, is going to have a heavier burden to bear than the average child.
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PRIDE used to be something good, but for the last 20+ years it's turned into a disgusting display of everything wrong with the gay community.
If PRIDE returned to what it was back in the 1970s and 80s, then I see no problem with bringing kids to these events.
Kids are brought, and used, for hate events. There's that iconic photo of the little white kid in a klan outfit innocently touching a black cop's riot shield. Clearly the kid had no hate in his mind or heart for the black cop. He was just curious about the riot shield.
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PRIDE used to be something good, but for the last 20+ years it's turned into a disgusting display of everything wrong with the gay community.
If PRIDE returned to what it was back in the 1970s and 80s, then I see no problem with bringing kids to these events.
I have been near crucified for saying the same thing. I don't even bother going anymore, even here in Tokyo. Now it's just a big party and people are expected to overlook that people are having simulated sex on floats and wearing next to nothing.
I could rant and rant and rant about this.
Thanks for letting me know I'm not alone in thinking this way. :ghug:
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I may have made an Arguement from Ignorance (none of the Transpeople I've met - which have been hundreds) but it's not automatically a false argument.
Is there evidence suggesting that costumes will desettle gender identity? Why wouldn't they become Transvestites, or Exhibitionists, or actors?ON the separate topic or changes in Pride. I was a volunteer at or part of the committee running Pride Toronto from 1986 through to 2001. The things that changed: the event went from 2,000 to about 1,000,000 participants, businesses were originally banned but now dominate, they used to be unsanctioned but now confirm to the laws for public assembly, they used to be highly political but now focus on being celebratory, and there used to be normative hostility between police and Pride.
Due to activism by LGBT parent groups there are now areas in Pride Toronto dedicated to families. I would not have wanted to bring small children to a demonstration that stood a good risk of being attacked by police or Church groups. Paedophile organizations used to march in the Pride Parades in most places.
This seems to be the trend, at least in Europe and North America. Pride events in countries where homosexuality are illegal look more like the old school Pride events. The corporate events are safer for children.
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I may have made an Arguement from Ignorance (none of the Transpeople I've met - which have been hundreds) but it's not automatically a false argument.
Is there evidence suggesting that costumes will desettle gender identity? Why wouldn't they become Transvestites, or Exhibitionists, or actors?ON the separate topic or changes in Pride. I was a volunteer at or part of the committee running Pride Toronto from 1986 through to 2001. The things that changed:
On Pride, is NAMBLA still allowed to march? That was a huge controversy way back when.
On dressing a child up, I'm not saying it's universally bad. The example in the article is an extreme, probably an outlier. If a child is allowed (or made) to dress up and gets one set of signals during the event and a very different set of signals outside, then it could lead to confusion. Don't you think it's odd that this generation in the West has had an upsurge in gender binary, et al.? Either this declaration that there are 63 genders plus fluidity is biological or cultural, and evolution doesn't take place within one generation.
For millennia children have been raised within relatively stable social constructs. Now some are not.
When I look at the western press I see a lot of adults trying to normalize extreme behaviour by exposing young people to different things (drag queens reading books at the library) and relaxing or erasing boundaries (allowing children to chose rather than being guided).
When I was a child dinner was whatever my mother cooked. If I didn't eat it, then I ate nothing. Today, the parent takes (food) orders from the child. Today we have young people choosing vegetarian diets, juice cleanses, junk food. Parents traditionally are supposed to carve a path the child follows. When parents neglect that duty external forces including all the media a child consumes and peer pressure create that path.
It's an interesting question as to where these many varied paths will lead.
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I may have made an Arguement from Ignorance (none of the Transpeople I've met - which have been hundreds) but it's not automatically a false argument.
Is there evidence suggesting that costumes will desettle gender identity? Why wouldn't they become Transvestites, or Exhibitionists, or actors?ON the separate topic or changes in Pride. I was a volunteer at or part of the committee running Pride Toronto from 1986 through to 2001. The things that changed:
On Pride, is NAMBLA still allowed to march? That was a huge controversy way back when.
On dressing a child up, I'm not saying it's universally bad. The example in the article is an extreme, probably an outlier. If a child is allowed (or made) to dress up and gets one set of signals during the event and a very different set of signals outside, then it could lead to confusion. Don't you think it's odd that this generation in the West has had an upsurge in gender binary, et al.? Either this declaration that there are 63 genders plus fluidity is biological or cultural, and evolution doesn't take place within one generation.
For millennia children have been raised within relatively stable social constructs. Now some are not.
When I look at the western press I see a lot of adults trying to normalize extreme behaviour by exposing young people to different things (drag queens reading books at the library) and relaxing or erasing boundaries (allowing children to chose rather than being guided).
When I was a child dinner was whatever my mother cooked. If I didn't eat it, then I ate nothing. Today, the parent takes (food) orders from the child. Today we have young people choosing vegetarian diets, juice cleanses, junk food. Parents traditionally are supposed to carve a path the child follows. When parents neglect that duty external forces including all the media a child consumes and peer pressure create that path.
It's an interesting question as to where these many varied paths will lead.
My dad and his second wife bought a baby that was not yet born from a pregnant prostitute in Peru. They spoiled that girl rotten - not that it made the girl happy - it just screwed that girl up! In regards to food. EVERY NIGHT they would have to get a special meal for the girl to eat. She would NEVER eat what everybody else was eating.
As for NAMBLA, I have no problem with the National Association of Marlon Brando Look Alikes.
http://wiki.southpark.cc.com/wiki/The_National_Association_of_Marlon_Brando_Look-Alikes -
IN Toronto, NAMBLA ended up no longer coming to the Pride March in the late 80s due to counter-protesters marching around them.
I've heard the argument - "after thousands of years of the gender binary…"
The Talmud lists six genders, going back some 1,500. The majority of Native American cultures had more than two genders. Various types of non-binary genders - including Eunuchs and Hermaphrodites and Androgyns - existed in European and Asian cultures. The Balkans, particularly Albania, had a category for women who became men in a social sense. South Asia has the category of Hegira - which is being swallowed up in modern binary Transwomen culture from Europe and North America.People are claiming labels for identities that have always existed - sometimes without being named. There have always been people uninterested in sex, it's only now that they're organizing as Aces.
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The Talmud lists six genders, going back some 1,500.
People are claiming labels for identities that have always existed - sometimes without being named. There have always been people uninterested in sex, it's only now that they're organizing as Aces.
Six genders. Got it. My quota of learning something new every day.
What's missing from an argument in having more than two genders in Western (and most Asian) cultures is that our cultures formed with two distinct gender patterns, the binary male and female. That way of thinking worked so well that it's dominated the planet and most everything good that's come from it has been from a well-balanced yin and yang.
I'm going to take a guess here and say that acceptance of homosexuality in the west means sexual orientation has replaced older ideas of gender.
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I wouldn't bring my child to Pride. It's too sexual.
