This is going to amble a bit before I get to talking about gender and Gender Sexuality Awareness (GSA), Critical Race Theory and public education. They’re all connected. At some point in this post, I’m going to come out of the closet so to speak. Exciting, isn’t it?
Wayback machine entry
A couple of years prior to the 8th grade I discovered that my mom had an adult medical book that covered a lot of ground, including reproductive systems along with some psychology. It’s possible that she was trying to find out if I was hers. My parents had not quite realized how far ahead of my age I was reading. I was quite the authority.
Then in the 8th grade, (Yes, I can still remember that far can you believe it?) I was tasked with running the projector for a film presentation to some PTA women concerning a sex education video that they were previewing. In Kansas. The teacher picked me because she said that I was mature for my age. I don’t know about that; I think it may have been more about my knowing how to run the film projector and she didn’t. While it was an enlightening film, it wasn’t salacious and I didn’t learn anything new. The students did not get to see the film. It’s possible that was my fault.
My face may not have been a mask for my true emotions.
Birds and bees
What I have observed and learned in the years since is that conservatives in general are fixated on sex and not in a good way. It wasn’t to be talked about in the open anywhere and they weren’t really big on young adults knowing about what was going on in regard to sex. So, there was a lot of on-the-job training on our part. A lot of young people learned about reproduction the hard way. There were a lot of unplanned pregnancies back then for young and old alike. This was the era when birth control pills (oral contraceptives) were just getting started.[1] They weren’t readily available to teenage girls. We depended primarily on condoms. Or not, as the case often was.
The religious crowds advocated abstinence. They still do. Abstention works as well today as it ever did. It’s marginally better than the rhythm method.
Maybe not.
The more things change…
Conservatives opposed sex education then. They oppose sex education now. They opposed the availability of contraception then. They oppose the availability of contraception now. Same for abortion. Same for gays. Back then two guys holding hands in public, or OMG kissing, would have been assaulted. Interracial dating and marriage were also socially frowned upon. Gay marriage wasn’t on the horizon let alone the agenda. During those years gays were also accused of recruiting young people into their lifestyle.
Interracial marriage didn’t become legal until 1967.[2] Since a woman’s right to control her own body has been virtually abolished, the activist Trump Supremes can now revisit rulings allowing gay marriage, contraception, interracial marriage, separation of church and state, etc.[3] (Thanks conservatives!)
Fast forward to today and Trump Party Conservatives are once again trying to marginalize people of color. They use the same racist language against brown immigrants that they used against “colored people” in the past. They are dangerous! They need to be kept in their place. Teaching Critical Race Theory (CRT) makes white kids feel bad, so we need to stop teaching it to kids even though it wasn’t being taught to kids.[4]
This brings us to public education and the long running quest of conservatives to defund public education. Public education is dangerous to them. Trump loves the poorly educated demographic.[5] So now in addition to demonizing CRT they are adding GSA to their list of evils. It’s sex education so naturally they oppose it.
Now, just to be clear since Trump Conservatives would want to say that I’m advocating showing sexually explicit material to bitty children, I’m NOT. Education needs to be age appropriate.
Trump Republican Conservatives don’t celebrate our differences or uniqueness as human beings. People that think or believe differently than them just need to be stamped out.
But now according to conservatives it isn’t just gays that are recruiting children, teachers and educational institutions are doing it as well. Only they don’t say teach or taught. Teachers are “grooming” and “brainwashing” kids. Pedophiles are everywhere. Books that present different lifestyles other than what they deem normal are bad. The kind of people in Kansas that banned the kid’s book “Charlotte’s Web” for being blasphemous in 2006 have gone mainstream.[6] There isn’t anything too outrageous for these people to sell to their true believers; their election deniers. If anybody is brainwashing or indoctrinating kids it’s going to be them, by God!
Just like in the good ole days.
Gender identity.
Back in the day, people had a hard time accepting that some people are gay. Times were simpler then. We had homosexuals, lesbians and bisexuals. Then an alphabet soup of letters was added: LGBTQIA+.[7] If that wasn’t confusing enough now we have cisgender, binary and non-binary. Different letters, different pronouns. Everybody gets a letter except for straight people. No S.
I can’t begin to keep it all straight. My wife has to explain and reexplain things to me on a regular basis. I keep it simple. God created man and woman and everything in between. I’m quite certain that I have probably offended lots of letters here and offer my sincere apologies because it’s not intentional.
But being a man of a certain age undergoing various medical treatments for cancer and other things I have reached the point where I’m byesexual. I think that a lot of oldsters are in this category along with some younger ones. Do we get a letter now? No, we don’t. Straights either. We don’t need one. We were never stigmatized or marginalized for being what we are. We aren’t discriminated against. No moron groups came up with ways to “fix” us with some abominable form of conversion therapy.[8] We don’t need fixed.
Neither do LGBTQIA+ people.
Young people
It’s hard enough for young people to figure out their way through life without having people giving them a hard time when they are figuring out their identity in life and I’m not just talking about their sexual identity either. They don’t need any adults or peers laying guilt trips on them for who they believe they are. Perhaps they’re just figuring it out. They need to be able to do that in peace without fear of punishment or being bullied. The human race is a wonderfully diverse race.
Let’s celebrate that.
[2] https://www.npr.org/2021/06/12/1005848169/loving-day-interracial-marriage-legal-origin
[3] https://news.yahoo.com/samuel-l-jackson-calls-clarence-214222381.html
[4] https://news.columbia.edu/news/what-critical-race-theory-and-why-everyone-talking-about-it-0
[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxUJv3eoL5Q
[6] https://www.porkopolis.org/2015/charlottes-web-a-target-for-censorship/
[7] https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/what-is-lgbtqia-acronym-queer-community-pride-lgbtq-145544577.html
[8] https://www.glaad.org/conversiontherapy