Liberal lunacy from NPR questioning whether we are seeing the end of gender, a merging of the sexes if you will.
What bollocks, almost invariably one of the first things you notice about someone is their gender, the second their age.
When my boy was about three we encountered a transgendered female in the mall. "Why is that man dressed like a lady" he said loudly. We were embarrassed of course - "shh shh" we said our faces glowing reddishly. But the truth of the matter lies there, it is almost impossible to hide either your gender or your age. Sure you can disguise it a bit but the middle aged woman dressed as a teenager is instantly recognizable as such. "Mutton dressed as lamb" we used to say disparagingly in my youth.
We are acutely good at making these judgments - its inbuilt.
Driving in your car if you see a pedestrian walking along the footpath, without thinking you know both their approximate age (within a decade or less) and their gender - try it and see and your first impression is almost always correct. Ambiguity is rare.
This world is a cruel, hard place, and much as we would like to and try to make it otherwise it is so. And we have to raise our kids to negotiate it and its sorrows as best they can with what the Good Lord or natural selection (depending on your bent) has endowed them with.
Which means boys need to be raised as boys to become men and girls raised as girls to become women. Because sadly the world is not going to conform to some idealized notion dreamed up by utopianists to suit those who cannot cope with the struggles and challenges life has confronted them with.
What bollocks, almost invariably one of the first things you notice about someone is their gender, the second their age.
When my boy was about three we encountered a transgendered female in the mall. "Why is that man dressed like a lady" he said loudly. We were embarrassed of course - "shh shh" we said our faces glowing reddishly. But the truth of the matter lies there, it is almost impossible to hide either your gender or your age. Sure you can disguise it a bit but the middle aged woman dressed as a teenager is instantly recognizable as such. "Mutton dressed as lamb" we used to say disparagingly in my youth.
We are acutely good at making these judgments - its inbuilt.
Driving in your car if you see a pedestrian walking along the footpath, without thinking you know both their approximate age (within a decade or less) and their gender - try it and see and your first impression is almost always correct. Ambiguity is rare.
This world is a cruel, hard place, and much as we would like to and try to make it otherwise it is so. And we have to raise our kids to negotiate it and its sorrows as best they can with what the Good Lord or natural selection (depending on your bent) has endowed them with.
Which means boys need to be raised as boys to become men and girls raised as girls to become women. Because sadly the world is not going to conform to some idealized notion dreamed up by utopianists to suit those who cannot cope with the struggles and challenges life has confronted them with.