Originally posted at David Horowitz’s Newsreal:
In times past, if a person exhibited persistent delusions, doctors and scientists would try to cure the person of their delusions. A person who saw themselves as an animal or a different gender or a different person needed to be cured of their delusions and made to accept reality: that a human is not really a rabbit, that a boy is not really a girl, and that Joe Smith down the street is not really the president of the United States. In our more tolerant, enlightened world though, we choose to indulge delusions. After all, who are we to tell someone what their reality is? Transgendered people say that they are, in reality, not the gender they were born. This is their reality, and we choose to accept and tolerate their perversion of the truth. Of course, an adult can also choose to do whatever they want with their own life. But should we still look the other way when a parent encourages a child to cross-dress?
Dyson Kilodavis is a five-year-old boy. His favorite colors are pink and red, and he enjoys dressing up in dresses and skirts, and wearing pink lip gloss. His mother, Cheryl, initially resisted. But then, she decided she just wanted to make him happy, and let him be “a princess boy”.
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As author Ken Corbett, who wrote Boyhoods: Rethinking Masculinities, noted in the video, this is about parents reshaping the social world our children grow up in. Is it for the better?
Dyson apparently started showing a preference for girly things at the age of two. He’s been dressing up like this for three years now, because instead of stepping in and telling their son no, his parents just want to let him be happy. Obviously, this must be the new job of a parent: give your child whatever they want as long as it makes them happy, no matter how wrong it is. A child of two or three or four or five does not understand what transgender or cross-dressing is. A two-year-old certainly doesn’t have any deep feelings about it. Instead of refusing to indulge the phase Dyson went through at two, his parents chose to go along with it, letting their son become a princess boy and showcasing it for the world to see.
Do they ever think about the life they are setting their son up for? The teasing, the bullying? How about the confusion when Dyson wonders why no other little boys at school wear dresses and lip gloss? What kind of psychological effect will this have on Dyson in the long run? None of these things matter, apparently — the Kilodavis’s are making their son happy in the short-term, and that’s all that matters.
There have been cross-dressers for hundreds of years, but they have always been the minority. Gender roles have existed for centuries, and now in our more enlightened age we’re just going to toss them out of the window on the whim of a child. It’s one thing for an adult male to decide to live his life as a female. It’s quite another for a parent to let a child do the same — you don’t play social engineer with your children.
On top of all of this, what does it say about parenting today when we are expected to give in to whatever our children want, just because it will make them “happy”? As parents, the job is not to give our children whatever they want. Sometimes, we have to say no. Sometimes, we have to make a choice that will make our kids unhappy, simply because it is the right thing to do. In Dyson’s case, he’s been robbed of a normal childhood, and potentially a happy childhood at that, simply because his parents would not tell him no. As the adult in the family, it is your responsibility to say no when your child makes ridiculous demands. Just because your son or daughter says they want something doesn’t mean they should get it.
What’s sad is that this isn’t a decision Dyson is old enough to make for himself. At eighteen, he’s old enough to understand the implications of dressing like a girl. At five, he has no idea what any of this means, which is why actual parenting would be necessary, and why letting him go through with this kind of behavior is potentially dangerous. He doesn’t know what this could do to his childhood. His parents do, and they apparently do not care. That’s not exactly responsible parenting.
But then, parenting would mean not indulging little Dyson’s delusions, which could make him unhappy, even though it’s the right thing to do. And we can’t ever have an unhappy child, can we?
Lugo says: He’s not going to be a “princess boy”. He’s going to be a homo. I doubt this is a “phase”. Undoubtedly he will be bullied, but if they refused to let him dress like a girl he’d probably still be bullied.
Kids are not happy when you let them do whatever they want. They are happy when you set rules and enforce them.
Chris in NC says: Interesting. As the father of a gay child, I can tell you that we knew our son was gay before he did. The story above was very similar to ours except that we resisted the reality until he was into high school. They can fight their son’s want to wear dresses and they should, but if he’s wanting dresses already I can tell you as a been there done that parent, the gay genes are set and he’ll be out of the closet sooner or later.
Robert says: “Transgendered people say that they are, in reality, not the gender they were born. This is their reality, and we choose to accept and tolerate their perversion of the truth.”
This must be the third or fourth time I’ve read this on your blog, and I continue to be disappointed in your medical ignorance in pursuit of your political agenda (full disclosure: I’m about as conservative as you are). As a clinical psychologist, however, I strongly recommend you read up on intersex issues.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex
These are serious biochemical and physical conditions that don’t lend themselves to easy definition nor remedy– as you correctly note in your first paragraph, when you say that in years past these people would be cured of their delusions. Sadly, these delusions are no less amenable to “cures” than curing heterosexuality, of curing left-handedness.
It gets even more challenging when you introduce physical intersex characteristics into the equation. I have seen teenage patients who clearly shared all the outward physical attributes of a young boy or girl, all the while internally they possessed a mix of incomplete male and female organs, their brains awash in a bath of both male and female hormones. I beg to know what your easy remedy is for that situation, and how merely choosing to be a boy or a girl based on their outward appearance and mannerisms is the de facto best (or only) choice in this situation.
It is indeed an embarrassment to my profession, but it is the honest truth: the more we learn about the human brain, the less we understand how it works, or what is best for it. The “correct” cultural choices may be obvious to some, either conservative or liberal, but my voting behavior aside, I’m far more interested in the correct *medical* choices, which are sadly far from obvious.
Sexuality has a cultural component. Yet, it also has a biochemical and physical component, hardwired in our genes, in the hormone baths in our mother’s wombs, in the myriad psychological influences experienced in the earliest months and years of our lives. All things being equal, I agree: boys should act like boys, and girls should act like girls. But guess what? Thanks to biology, most boys act like boys without our teaching, examples or intervention, and most girls act like girls just the same. Equally, however, there are boys and girls who don’t behave the way we expect them to, for many reasons– some known, many yet unknown.
Perhaps one day we can “cure” these children. Perhaps, we won’t waste our energy on curing that which doesn’t necessarily require curing. The bottom line is, we are still much too naive to insist that the easiest solution is to choose between buying action figures or dress-up dolls. Not every child– nor every parent– is so fortunate as those who have those choices made for them. I’ve seen enough tears from both to know that for the vast majority of us, we won the biological lottery, but not everyone did.
Robert — I’m sorry if what I wrote was not clear. I didn’t mean for it to come across that people would literally be cured (clumsy writing on my part obviously!), but that these kinds of delusions were not looked at as normal or acceptable, but seen for what they are — something wrong with that person. Whether it is psychologically or chemically or whatever is not clear even to this day of course. But the point was just that this wasn’t something that used to be indulged, as opposed to today. I hope that makes more sense, and I’m sorry if that didn’t come across the way I intended it to. Pregnancy brain really does exist, I swear!! đ
the dragon says: What about the delusions that people have that there is am omnipotent, invisible sky daddy that is there just for their purposes, that communicates with them and listens to their prayers? When are people in the medical profession going to start dealing with that insanity? That seems to be a lot more pervasive and deadly to people at large.
Professor Hale says: 1. They have no girl children. Why do they even have “princess” clothes in the house? I have a daughter and she had jeans and t-shirts for climbing trees. I am guessing that the kid doesn’t buy these himself from his allowance. Obvious parental encouragement link.
2. I see this less as a gay/trans child issue and more of an attention whore parent issue. She intentionally pimps her son so she can sell her book, which she just happens to have written about her son. Chicken or egg? You choose.
3. As for gender dysmorphia, there is a related problem where the person believes that their healthy limbs are not their own and they maim themselves to remove the limbs and make their internal perception of their bodies match the external. Except for a small handfull of psychos, everyone agrees these people need treatment, not surgery. Same symptoms for transgendered people get 180 degree different approach. Drug therapies have been successful in both cases, but when the ill become a political group and make it illegal to call them sick… then I guess you just sell books about your princess child.
Sara says: I think you missed Robert’s point Cas. These examples that he points out are not delusions, but real issues for real people and do not in any way deserve the tag ‘wrong’. They just are.
And some things are indeed very clear, others not so much. And we, those of us who did not win the “biological lottery” as Robert so aptly put it, do the best we can in a world where political bloggers, on both the left and the right, use our biological conditions as fodder for ideological warfare.
And how I hate that.
Sara …
Michm says: These are not delusions. They are not psychotic disorders and they do not respond to anti-psychotic medications. We know that not everyone’s gender is clear cut. What about hermaphrodites? What is the reality for them? Which gender are they? If you answer one or the other, you’d be missing half the picture. If you answer both, then you should consider that gender is not merely the genitals one has. It’s that, it’s chromosomal, it’s brain development. Critical period, in-utero androgenization appears to be an important factor in the formation of sexual identity and orientation. The attributes, external and internal, that define gender, match up in most people, but for a part of the human population they don’t. The “reality” is that one can have a female mind and male genitals.
Robert says: Thank you Cassy, I appreciate that! I write to (barely!) educate, not to criticize. It’s a hard issue to grapple with, both as a society and as parents (not to mention as children, who when young don’t understand one way or the other).
I’ll add that there’s plenty of fascinating emerging research out there that ties together the genetic, prenatal and post-birth environmental effects on sexuality. I believe that post-birth sexuality research will pose many challenges to both the Right and the Left in coming years, seeing as how it re-opens what was thought to be a settled debate about nature vs. nurture. The fact is, the human brain does not arrive outside the womb fully-formed, completely matured into a miniature adult. It grows, just as surely as limbs do, and it is affected by all manner of stimuli. We understand and appreciate the significance of many of these stimuli– nutrition, parental physical contact, physical abuse– but we don’t know the relative weights of that stimuli, nor whether there is a temporal or compounding aspect to it all (i.e., one event may not matter, two events may matter but only if in close proximity, etc.).
Twin studies, birth order studies, adoption studies– all of it shows a lot of variance and unpredictability, both between traditionally understood heterosexual vs. homosexual debates, and the significantly more complex transgender/bisexual/”Kinsey continuum” debates.
In short, our adult sexuality may be hard-wired in our DNA, crafted in the womb, or influenced in early (sub-3 years) childhood. Or, most likely, all three. Again, that last bit might end up being the most controversial, as it may reintroduce the question of how influential parenting choices are to the question of sexual development (and what those choices even *are*– at the risk of being crude, the most revealing research in this area tends to be in the more extreme, and thus more easily studied, areas of sexuality, such as the development of sexual interests and fetishes, where very early experiences, not all of them even explicitly sexual, can later result in persistent lifelong desires otherwise inexplicable by DNA, hormones or personal choices).
Many of your concerns regarding the future safety of the boy are well-founded. If he continues to dress this way, he will undoubtedly become the target of bullies (both male and female). That said, I do not see anything “wrong” or pathological in allowing him to dress in the clothes he would like to wear. Dressing like a girl will not make him homosexual, nor will it make him a girl. He will remain a boy unless he already is homosexual or transgendered. As he begins to go to school and has the opportunity for increased social interaction, he may decide to change his manner of dress. He may not.
There is a difference between “sex,” “sexual preference,” and “gender.” Sex is biologicaland is determined by genetics. Gender is socially constructed, though loosely based on sex. Sexual preference is the preferred sex of the person’s sexual partner.
One of the problems with masculinity (a social construct based on sex) is that it is extremely restrictive as opposed to femininity which has become almost entirely unrestricted. The female is free to act as she pleases and still be considered “a woman.” A male must conform to specific behaviors and mannerisms to be considered “a man.” The pressure to conform can be quite damaging emotionally and psychologically, particularly in this era of mixed messages on acceptable and unacceptable male behavior.
I am not a feminist. In fact most folks would consider me to be a rather vocal MRA. But I do believe that the one benefit of feminism was to open up new gender roles for women. Unfortunately, this has made it more confusing and difficult for men to define themselves, as much of traditional masculinity has become demonized and criminalised and fathers have been forced out of their children’s lives. Acceptable expressions of masculinity are now more resticted than ever before. The promise of feminism was that it would break down gender roles. Instead, for men anyways, it has confined them into the center of an ever-narrowing spiral. It is time to break out of that spiral and for men to be permitted to be who and what they actually are.
TDOM
In the insane world of the chromosomally confused, we now have LGBTQA:
Lesbian – a woman who is sexually attracted to women, one or both of whom try to dress or act like men. Gender stereotypes are the product of oppressive socialization, but lesbian women who wear buzz cuts, flannel shirts, and ride Harley Davidsons were born to do those things.
Gay – a man who is sexually attracted to men, one or both of whom try to dress or act like women. Gender stereotypes are the product of oppressive socialization, but gay men who like pastel colors, carry Prada purses, and work in pink-collar professions were born to do those things.
Bisexual – a man or woman who is sexually attracted to either men or women. These people exist somewhere on the continuum between gay/lesbian and straight. To most gays/lesbians, though, they’re are “Bi now, gay later.” So whatever they are, they are not being their genuine selves. They’ll just give them more time to figure it out.
Transgender – a man or a woman who has had or is in the process or receiving surgery to change the physical appearance of their gender to the opposite sex. They are a man/woman trapped in a woman’s/man’s body. Although the surgery does not alter their chromosomes, they can still apply for a drivers license for the opposite sex. Upon completion of the surgery, they instantly become heterosexual and convert to Ally (see below).
Questioning – people are born either gay or straight (or somewhere in between). Questioning people just haven’t figured out they’re gay yet. So they must experiment with various sexual partners until they get their head straight…I mean, gay.
Ally – a heterosexual who supports gay rights. Despite the fact that allies are known to be heterosexual, it won’t stop gays or lesbians from awakening their true gayness. It’s not “conversion.” They’ve always been gay, but just don’t know it yet. Any experimentation is just proof of gayness, or drunkenness, which is also gayness.
Straight – someone who is not gay, lesbian, transgender, bisexual, or questioning, but there’s no harm in trying to straighten them out…I mean, gay them out.
I find it funny when people “knew” they or their children were gay at an early age. Straight toddlers only think about Sesame Street. Gay toddlers think Bert looks pretty hot in stripes and envy the person with a hand up his rear end.
repsac3 says: As I said at another post on the subject: American Niiiiihilist: Donald Douglas’ Fear of “Feminization” Revisited (and as Cassy and Robert both kinda said here), the issue is often more complex than just forcing the kid to dress and act a certain way, whether it be according to body features or the gender the child is reaching toward. For those interested, there was a great Atlantic article from Nov. 2008 that discussed the issue in much greater depth: A Boy’s Life – Magazine – The Atlantic
I don’t know that there is any one right answer, but I’m hard pressed to condemn the actions of too many parents dealing with kids like this, no matter what way they choose to address it. While I’m sure there are a few exceptions on both sides, most parents are doing the best they can to help their children through it, whether by demanding strict adherence to gender roles or by allowing the child to dictate who they are (within reason, of course.) I can’t imagine how difficult it must be…
Second attempt, on the off chance that the failure of the first one (12 hours or so ago) was somehow unintentional… Fingers crossed.
Sonja says: TDOM: I’m a woman, but I make a very strong point that I’m NOT a lady.
Ladies (in my mind) are graceful, elegant, and refined.
I’m none of those things. Riding a motorbike is not feminine to me, it still has the masculine attachment of yesteryear, when women tended not to ride (which has changed rapidly!). I’m a geek, and not like Paris Hilton is – I have a degree in IT and work in that industry along with a lot of guys and few women. IT is still considered male-dominated, and for good reason (guys are more interested in the area, thus more enter it). I burp and fart almost with abandon while at home and rarely wear heels (though that has been gradually changing), finding myself far more comfortable in a trusty pair of motorcycle boots.
I actually do have a point here. It’s that we define Feminine and Masculine as individuals, not as a society. What is Feminine for one woman might not be for another. Same goes for Masculinity. And we should be encouraging people to find their own definition, rather than trying to tell them how it should be.
F.B. says: I am a firm believer that every person is born a certain way, however, as a PARENT, you should be required to raise your children as if you are RESPONSIBLE for every aspect of their life until they are 18. If after 18 years of being disciplined and told NO OVER AND OVER AGAIN…you still want to wear dresses then there is no question you were born that way!!!!! These parents should be thrown in jail because now this kid has already been exposed to the lifestyle and once you tell a kid yes you cant turn back. Sad.
Here’s a little food for thought.
When I was a little girl, I was a tomboy. I would let my Mom dress me in frilly dresses and patent leather Mary Janes but I was happiest with my hair safely in pigtails so it didn’t get in my face, flying down a 45 degree hill on my bike. Or playing football with the neighborhood boys. Or playing war games that raged all over our street and featured lots of shoot-em-up action and exaggerated death scenes.
Was I sick? Did I need counseling?
We tolerate and even encourage our daughters to try out traditionally male clothing, behaviors, and pursuits because we like and admire traditional masculinity. If a girl learns to shoot a gun or hammer a nail, if she’s good at math and science or football, are we ashamed of her?
Of course not. Why, then, do we freak out when little boys explore their feminine side? (and every boy has one, to some extent)
I suspect part of the reason is that a boy needs to toughen up if he isn’t going to be pushed around by other men. But I also suspect it has a lot to do with our feelings about masculinity and femininity. We conservatives tend to celebrate all things male, but our attitudes towards femininity sometimes often leave me shaking my head.
Would I let my son dress like that in public? No way, because he would be too small to soberly assess the consequences. I would teach him that getting along with people entails a certain amount of outward conformity and that kids need to learn that lesson because being a rampaging individualist means exposing yourself to bullying, ridicule and aggression a small child is incapable of understanding or handling well.
But I would also teach him to seek out and befriend kids who
If one of my sons had displayed a persistent desire to act like a girl, I would try to teach him to be as well rounded a person as he could without trying to change his basic personality. If being a tomboy isn’t a sickness that requires medical intervention, I’m not sure exactly why a boy should be labeled mentally ill for displaying the same tendencies in reverse? Isn’t this sexism at its worst?
The hardest thing in raising children is to convey your own standards while accepting that will going to grow up into adults we can influence, but never control. Certain aspects of the personality can be modified or channeled, but I’m reluctant to declare everything that makes me uncomfortable (or that I don’t understand) sick or perverted.
Let the kid play dress up at home or in the company of understanding friends, but teach him to fit in in public until he’s old enough to make his own choices.
Well that will teach me to type while I’m on the phone! Pls excuse the editing errata!
Sara says: Thanks Cassandra for a well thought out and pertinent comment, regardless of the errors! Parenting is very difficult, even when everything about our kids is within what greater society has deemed normal. Your kids are in good hands IMHO.
POWinCA, thanks for the comedy routine. Now go back to your cave.
Sara …
repsac3 says: Cassandra…
Just saw that you disconnected your blog back in November (Sorry… I’ve been busy…) I hope you keep commenting on occasion (or better, miss blogging and reconnect your own) because there just isn’t enough nuance and “thinking through” in the political blogosphere (as your 11:48 AM comment here once again shows.)
While I assume this to be a more serious internal issue than just a kid who wants to explore his feminine side — Given the prevailing attitudes about gender roles, especially for boys (as you say), I just don’t see too many boys doing this for several years straight, with the parent writing a book and going on national TV, without it being more than just exploration or a simple preference for colors and frills — your comments about the difference between how our society treats boys vs girls as regards taking on the opposite roles is spot on, and for some, it persists into adulthood. (I’m willing to bet that every person reading this knows at least one person like POW, above, who questions the sexuality of men who work as nurses or teachers, or who knit or dance “too” well. And unfortunately, too many of us let them get away with it, unchallenged — I’ve let it go unquestioned, myself.)
I hope you’re right, and this is just a story about a kid who’s willing to explore his feminine side, and not a boy who believes he should’ve been born a girl, like the ones in the Atlantic article I linked to in my first comment. While both circumstances require some deft parenting, most of ’em don’t grow out of gender dysmorphia, and it has to be resolved, one way, or another…
—
(Seems my comments don’t post if I include my blog address in the “Website” header field… Is that a bug or a feature? — Guessing some might think it the latter… 8>)
Jess says: The biggest problem that boy is going to have is awful people like you who spend your life judging how he wants to live his life.
melle1228 says: I am sorry I don’t buy that this kid is gay or has gender issues. Despite the “being born gay” crowd- sexuality is an evolving process that doesn’t fully start to evolve until puberty.
Toddlers go through issues all the time. It is how the parents handle it. My three year old daughter wanted boobs. I mean she was adamant that she wanted to wear a bra and have boobs. She didn’t understand why. She would cry. We did not know why this was important to her other than she did not match her mommy and her aunts. I could have given in to her and “stuffed” a bra as to not “traumatize” her, because apparently something was “programmed” to make her want boobs earlier, but I didn’t. Why? Because my child was not developmentally ready to deal with boobs and everything that went along with it. The same thing goes with gender bending and sexuality. It is up to the parent to protect the child. In a perfect world, everyone would accept everyone’s differences. This isn’t a perfect world. There is a certain amount of conformity, especially as a child. A parent’s job is to teach a child to survive. This mother is doing this child a disservice. It is the mother’s job to find a way to do this with love and acceptance, but it is still ultimately her job. She is not doing it. She has made the child media fodder.
Dawn Dickinson says: “Kids are not happy when you let them do whatever they want. They are happy when you set rules and enforce them.”
Spoken like a true bully!
“Twin studies, birth order studies, adoption studiesâ all of it shows a lot of variance and unpredictability, both between traditionally understood heterosexual vs. homosexual debates, and the significantly more complex transgender/bisexual/âKinsey continuumâ debates.
In short, our adult sexuality may be hard-wired in our DNA, crafted in the womb, or influenced in early (sub-3 years) childhood. Or, most likely, all three. Again, that last bit might end up being the most controversial, as it may reintroduce the question of how influential parenting choices are to the question of sexual development (and what those choices even *are*â at the risk of being crude, the most revealing research in this area tends to be in the more extreme, and thus more easily studied, areas of sexuality, such as the development of sexual interests and fetishes, where very early experiences, not all of them even explicitly sexual, can later result in persistent lifelong desires otherwise inexplicable by DNA, hormones or personal choices).”
This sounds an awful lot like the debunked theories of Ken Zucker, J. Michael Bailey and Ray Blanchard. any possibility that’s where you arrived at your conclusions from?
People, this child may under no circumstances; in any provable form be pre-destined to grow up as a gay child. Especially, just because he wears feminine clothing! Instead, he likely will grow out of it as some have proclaimed. Or, he may grow up and let you and everybody else know that he is in fact she, or transexual. But, that is still to soon to say. How this set of parents are raising their OWN child is their business. I doubt seriously anyone amongst those present truly wish to see some ‘authority’ try to tell this parent set or any other parent(s)who is not (physically) harming their child, how to raise them. Are we? Remember what’s good for the goose is applicable to the gander!
Chris in NC says: “I find it funny when people âknewâ they or their children were gay at an early age. ”
“Despite the âbeing born gayâ crowd- sexuality is an evolving process that doesnât fully start to evolve until puberty.”
Spoken like those who don’t know. I used to say the same things. When my son was cutting up his mom’s panty hose and sneaking them to his room to wear them, I did everything I could to discourage the gayness. I put him in sports, put girlie calendars up, I did everything I could to hint that he was straight to him. Didn’t help. At the age of 16, he came out of the closet. Sexuality in the sense of getting sex, maybe. But I can say without hesitation, that reality is different from what you (and I used to) think.
kirroth says: “âKids are not happy when you let them do whatever they want. They are happy when you set rules and enforce them.â
Spoken like a true bully!”
Being a good parent = bully ?
@Chris in NC:
What did gay Cro Magnon men wear before there were panty hose?
Let’s say for the sake of argument I buy all these “born gay” arguments.
Why does it seem so terribly necessary for a homosexual to adopt exaggerated stereotypes of the opposite sex?
Sure, there are some stealth gays, but living in San Francisco I’m well-accustomed to typical gay behavior. It goes FAR beyond just a signalling mechanism.
I can recognize some obvious physical characteristics of homosexuals (especially in the face) that lead me to believe there is some credence to the nature argument. But I am also familiar with many late-in-life converts who just tried it and seemed to like it. They certainly weren’t born gay or lesbian.
And living in San Francisco, I’ve also seen their attempts to convert or awaken the “true gayness” or curiosity of plainly heterosexual people. If they say people are born gay or heterosexual, their actions betray their true beliefs.
Jess says: I think it’s incredibly sad that no one cares if a little girl wants to wear jeans or cut her hair short but for a boy to dress like a girl is going to ruin his life. That there is no great insult to a little boy than to call him a sissy because obviously being a girl is degrading.
Dawn Dickinson says: “Being a good parent = bully ?”
Bully = ignorance. No matter your intent!
melle1228 says: >the most revealing research in this area tends to be in the more extreme, and thus more easily studied, areas of sexuality, such as the development of sexual interests and fetishes, where very early experiences, not all of them even explicitly sexual, can later result in persistent lifelong desires otherwise inexplicable by DNA, hormones or personal choices).â
Listen to your own research… EARLY EXPERIENCES. Does a mother who encourages and publicizes her son dressing up as a little girl constitute an EARLY EXPERIENCE? Don’t you think this mother may be manufacturing early experiences based on our ADULT sensibility of sexuality? Experiences is nuture and not nature.. not DNA.
melle1228 says: @ Chris you said “Spoken like those who donât know. ”
Yes, I do know. I have two children. One is three(a girl) and one is 12(a boy). I couldn’t honestly tell you if the three year old will turn out to be gay or straight. She doesn’t have a sexuality and thinks boys have cooties. My son was the same way with girls until a year ago when suddenly they didn’t. My children were ASEXUAL. They had definite genders, but did not have sexual preferences-because they were not sexual. Apparently you are saying that only gay children exhibit their sexuality at an early age. If that is true-I wonder why that is? And you are also saying that as a parent of a gay child you are in a unique position to understand sexuality of children. Simply not true.
You son cutting up pantyhouse didn’t indicate gayness either. It indicated gender issues. There are a lot of crossdressers who are not gay etc. At 16, a child coming out at gay is a far cry from what we are talking about though. A 16 years old has the knowledge to know what they are in for. Your job as a parent is almost complete. A four year old does not.
Judy says: I have just discovered this old post and noticed in the comments discussion no mention of modesty. There was mention of lip gloss being used. Well my three girls, in our conservative and religious home, were not allowed to use make up or have their ears pierced before 12. The over sexualizing of children at a young age is in itself damaging to identity’s struggling to emerge. Good parenting consists of compassionately guiding and restricting, weeding and pruning, as you nurture and “grow” your children. We adults are stewards of the next generation and need to accept that responsibility. That may include limiting TV (or prohibiting as in Waldorf circles), eating dinners around the table, creating strong cohesive family memories, and enforcing standards of decency and charity. Until they are 18 we need to teach them correct principles and (hopefully) when they are older they will not depart from them. In other words, better to be raised in SOME form of righteous culture than not any at all!
This family has allowed the youngest child to take over the family identity in an embarrassing way, such as when parents allow kids to tantrum in public. I hope this lad will be allowed/able to roll back from what has been very publically condoned if that becomes his choice.
Submitted by mother of Isaac who used to have an alter ego Isabelle who dressed in his sisters play gowns – IN PRIVATE in the home only!!!
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