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SCHOOLS HAVE BEEN PUT ON THE SPOT

What is gender? It is our tendencies to attribute certain behaviors and traits to one gender or the other. That is learned, but our traits, such as gentleness or roughness, loving or distant, may not be learned but may be genetic. Even if learned it may not be associated with gender, that is, until the schools have to define gender to children. What traits go with what gender? Psychologists and Sociologists can’t answer that question. How can the schools answer that? It will only add confusion to the subject. Children are not old enough to understand these complex concepts to tell the difference between gender, personality traits, and genetics. Why add to the confusion by telling them they can be a boy or a girl or both?

The problem with teaching children they can be a girl, a boy, or both is that Gender is not easy to define, and it is not the job of the school to help children do that. All humans have within them all human traits such as gentle, bully, intelligence, etc. but in various degrees, a little to a lot. This is what makes up our Personalities, not our gender. What traits or personality traits we want to define as male or female is cultural and learned from family and others who care about us. It should not be determined by others who do not care, or by other children who tease and tantalize each other, or by bullies. A graceful boy is not part girl. A tomboy girl is not part boy. To call our differences gender can be very confusing, especially to children. Any one human trait or group of traits does not belong to one gender or the other or any gender in-between, even if there were more than two genders.

We can believe we are one gender or the other or both but Why? Most boys want to be boys, and most girls want to be girls, not some combination. Boys compete to be tough and create a hierarchy of toughness from kindergarten and is at its height by fourth grade. Boys also feel awkward with girls until they hit puberty, unless they are family members. To tell boys they are also girls is to cause lots of confusion and competition to prove you are a boy and not a girl. Most boys want to grow up to be real men, not part man, part women.

Girls tend to be more emotional, more wanting to get and give love. This is not learned. Fifty to Eighty percent of our behavior is inborn. We are not born an unprogrammed computer. If life forms were, we could program our cats and dogs to do amazing things but probably not the right things for nature.

 

Children get comfort knowing they are like other children of their own sex. Not because they have learned to be but because they have a lot in common. To tell them they are not girls or boys but a combination is to cause confusion and anxiety.

 

If boys think being nice makes them girls they will have to act out more boyish, what they think is boy only behaviors, to try to be one of the guys. They have to be tougher or they will be told they are girls by other boys. As ‘part girls’ they are unable to compete to be a man’s man without the wrong connotations.

 

When I said human traits tend to go from mild to strong, that means about half the boys will be more mischievous and deceptive than the other half. Some boys pride themselves of being meaner. This may be learned from abuse, it is not a gender thing. Boys just act out with more physical strength, not because they learned it but because they have stronger muscles and more testosterone then most girls. Boys who rebel tend to be at the bottom of the boys hierarchy because bad behavior is not really considered by most boys as being tough. These boys may fight even harder with their bad behavior to try to go up the ladder. They can call the boys above them sissies not only because they are being nice like girls but that they are part girl to do so.

 

Once schools try to tell children what gender they are, or to what degree they are each gender by telling them what traits are girls’ gender and what are boys’ gender, it leaves certain children very vulnerable. Some children really identify with a certain gender role that fits them and their family. Why confuse them with someone else’s ideas?

 

To be a girl gender does a girl have to be more girly, and a boy more boyish or bullish so they do not have to be humiliated and teased by other kids when they fail the test for ideal gender?

To help a few students who have issues with their gender definition, or feel like both genders, we should not disturb a lot of other children. The gender definition is too complex for adults, we should not burden children with these issues. Let them be kids.

When people are confused as to their gender the industry of sexual addictions can more easily talk them into trying different sexual combinations of sexual encounters. This sets up people to allow sexual commerce to legalize various sexual activities that are not too popular or are illegal. The sexual addiction industry can grow and incorporate your youth as they experiment with various sexual expressions and get confused, addicted, and or distracted from other endeavors that may have led to better careers, relationships, and families. At the base of a healthy society is stable families that can meet the needs of children so the children do not look for love in all the wrong places.

School have no business teaching or be expected to teach children what gender they are. Schools should not try to save children from parents or their family or community culture. They can not determine the culture of all people nor should they be burdened with that task. They should not be defining culture for Christians, Moslems, Buddhist, Native Americans, Jewish, or any group. Determining which traits or personalities should make up a gender is neither scientific nor clear. Culture belongs to the people, not to the schools. To expect them to police culture is not fair to the schools or the students.