Age-appropriate
Conor Friedersdorf set off an interesting [cough] exchange of views by asking if preschool children can understand what gender-obsessed adults mean by “non-binary.”
I don’t think young children will understand a word of that. I think complicated explanations with many moving parts and unfamiliar concepts just go over their heads. What kind of “love” are we talking about here? Do we know that preschool kids understand it? I think they understand statements like “I love my cat”; “your sister loves you”; “Mommies love their children very much.” I don’t think they understand the kind of love where a boy loves a boy and so he’s called gay. I think it’s both absurd and sinister to try to coach them on Gender Ideology at age 4.
People of Twitter of course don’t agree.
Hm. No it isn’t. Kids learn 1-10 early, and they learn to count 2 things or 6 or 10 early, because it’s not complex. It’s how many fingers you have for a start. It’s not the same kind of thing as erotic love or gender dysphoria, let alone magic identity and being “non-binary.”
(How much easier all this would be if the favored label were GNC instead of non-binary. Not conforming to the rules of gender requires zero acceptance of bullshit, while non-binary requires a non-stop supply of it.)
No, see, again, that’s not a good analogy. All those examples are small discreet facts, not big woolly mysterious concepts.
The real issue of course is that a lot of people want to feed this big woolly mysterious horse shit to preschool kids so that they will absorb it and assume it’s true starting as young as possible.
Also there’s the big difference that almost everybody is gender non-conforming, and that such non-conformity is a good and natural thing. Everyone is individual and different. With “non-binary”, only certain special people get to be special and different in this way, and in order to be special and different, everyone else is condemned to confinement in sexist atereotypical gendered boxes. And only the special different people get to claim this special difference. Not only that, they get to claim that everyone else is plain, stupid, boring and trapped. If that means that the NBs get to blatantly misgender everybody else, so be it; tough cookies.
It could also backfire, too. Kids can spot unfairness and injustice. Those who aren’t recruited into the cult will feel resentment and frustration at being left out, but unable to accept the bullshit. It happens with every other religion, and so it would with this one, too. The sooner the whole fad of “gender identity” burns itself out the better.
What they mean is that it’s much better for teacher to indoctrinate the kids in gender ideology behind the parents’ back, as young as possible, because it makes it harder for them to learn the truth if the lies are good and sunk in.
The truth is that “non-binary” is nonsense. It doesn’t describe anything besides a pretense. It’s what people who hate gender nonconformists call people they think aren’t acting masculine enough, or feminine enough. Men can act however they want to, without ceasing to be men, and women can act however they want without ceasing to be women. “Non-binary” is an insidious term, because in claiming to carve out a catchall exception to the two sexes, its main function is to limit what men and women are allowed to be, without falling into that exception; in that, it’s profoundly repressive.
This is the same tactic the church uses. It took me until I was in high school to realize what they were doing, even though I no longer had a concept of god as anything other than a being much like Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy – someone I’d outgrown a long time ago.
I once sat down to write a letter to the ancient Greeks, to explain the differences in our religion and theirs. (I was fascinated by Greek mythology; still am. It’s much more interesting than Christian doctrine.) As I was writing what Christians believe, it struck me what a load of bullshit it all was. Even after not believing it for some time, I didn’t recognize it as weird, because I was fed it from a very young age. This is what the trans dogmatists are doing. Get them when they’re young, and they’ll grow up to be the same little shits that Daniel Radcilffe and Emma Watson have turned out to be.
Laughing my head off at the idea of teaching “non-binary” to 4 year olds. They would reject it utterly. They are gender fascists at that age, having been steeped in gender stereotypes since birth. I’m guessing it would be like the time my colleague read “My Princess Boy” to her group and the girls said boys can wear dresses and have long hair but they can’t be princesses.
It is utterly inappropriate to discuss sex with 4 year olds. You talk to them about families and say some people have two mummies or two daddies: that’s all that’s needed to discuss gay parents. They don’t even think about how the baby starts growing in the mother till they’re ten.
The people who want to discuss sex with young children are groomers.
I don’t think a four year old kid can understand adult sexuality yet. Being told that the love a daughter has for her mother isn’t the same thing as two lesbians loving each other is a statement a child is just confusing to them with respect to the two meanings of the word “love”. Being able to parrot it back to a teacher does not mean they get it, any more than they understand why the sky is blue except when it isn’t. I’m not sure when it’s age-appropriate to teach about Rayleigh scattering, but I’m sure it isn’t for pre-K students.
My head spins, these arguments are so bad.
I don’t think we teach four-year-olds to truly understand the quantity “four”. They learn the sequence 1-2-3-4, and they can match that to the objects they see, but it takes a while before ordinal gets understood as cardinal. But they can give the correct answer. Like all those other things, they can give the correct answer, they can parrot what the adults want them to say, but that’s not an indication that it’s truly understood. Why is there no such thing as a brontosaurus, why was there previously a thing called a brontosaurus, and what about recent research that suggests there may actually be a separate species that would appropriately be called brontosaurus? Why was Pluto’s classification changed, and who changed it? But they can parrot the answers to the basic questions.
I think these “queer” advocates really, really want gender identity to be something simple, like liking chocolate ice cream, that any four-year-old can understand. It is the opponents who are trying to say, first off, let’s talk about homosexuality, which requires talking about sexuality, which requires talking about sex and reproduction. But if we establish sex, then gender identity is revealed as so much nonsense, and we can’t have that. So no, none of this is about reproductive sex, it’s all about feelings, as any fule kno.
Perhaps everyone could pick Hogwarts houses, and we establish that most families have two parents from two different houses, but sometimes parents are from the same house, and some people belong to zero or two or three or four houses. At least that would be fantasy world that doesn’t force a conflict with reality.
Oh, great, Sackbut is a Brontosaurus truther. I might have known. Smh.
The comment from the pediatrician makes me think he doesn’t have children. Seeing kids briefly and noting they can parrot back a few things is not the same as experiencing them learning as a parent or teacher. One of our pediatricians noted to us how different her perspective was after having her own child. The rate at which they learn is impressive in many ways, but for the most part kids that age will believe anything you tell them. Probably everyone knows someone who thought it was hilarious to convince kids of outlandish “facts”. Tell them something with a straight face, and these alleged master grokkers will believe it 100%.
I’m assuming that was tongue-in-cheek. No, I take no position on the issue, I only note that articles talking about recent discoveries and raising questions (what the questions were, I don’t remember) have crossed my news feed. If that’s incorrect, if such articles did not actually cross my news feed, or if they were written by armchair dentists, I bow to your superior knowledge of dinosaurology. I thought there was something recent (less than a year old) that was deemed intriguing, and was being promoted as “maybe (emphasis on maybe) this other species could be called brontosaurus”, but if I’m wrong about that, I stand corrected.
In any event, the point was to discuss good science and questionable science with these hypothetical hyper-intelligent four-year-olds who can supposedly understand potentially confusing topics like “brontosaurus” and “Pluto demoted”.
People who look the same, people whole look different, so what, we’re talking about twins and not-twins? That already makes no sense. Plus, there’s also those kids who think they are going to grow up and marry mummy or daddy so, no, I don’t think they grasp the concept of the different kinds of love being pitched here.
Four? Nope. Eleven? Well…
Yesterdat evening, eleven-year-old grandson and I were discussing our tastes in computer games etc. and he suddenly blurted out “We’re transgender!” Now, I got the impression it was a new word he’d overheard and had worked out the likely meaning in his head; and that he couldn’t wait to impress Granny with a word which she might not know (that age group does like to get one over on the adults). After some gentle probing, I discovered that he did, indeed, think that ‘transgender’ means ‘gender non-conforming’.
Over the course of a somewhat eclectic and rambling conversation (because eleven and ADHD) I explained that everyone is either male or female, which is what sex we are, and that gender means the set of unwritten rules every society applies to each sex.
Cue side-quest to explain ‘unwritten rules’ and how they are enforced, not by courts and the law, but by other members of society banding together to express disapproval of certain behaviours which are supposed to be for the opposite sex – like being mean to him because he has long hair and likes make-up and glittery nail polish, and being mean to me because I wear men’s clothes, don’t wear make-up or nail polish, and worked in jobs which are done mostly by men.
Cue second side-quest to explain how the unwritten rules for male people are called ‘masculinity’, and how that changes from culture to culture; for example, Irish men are expected to be strong and hard-working; but, unlike men in some other parts of the world, they are also expected to be gentle and nurturing to their families, and definitely NOT aggressive or violent.
We agreed that being mean to someone who doesn’t follow rules which are stupid (since they don’t take into account individual personality) is wrong; and not following arbitrary rules in a way which doesn’t hurt anyone else is not wrong.
After a bit of back-and-forth to establish our definitions of words were the same, I was able to agree with him that the word ‘transgender’ would make perfect sense if it meant ‘someone who follows different gender rules to the ones they’re supposed to’, but that some people think it means that when you are gender non-conforming you must really be a girl in a boy’s body, or a boy in a girl’s body, and that is obvious nonsense, isn’t it, since every cell in our body is the same sex.
Cue side-quest to discuss what cells are. Cue (quite long) sub-side-quest to discuss the fact that women who have had babies usually have some cells from those babies living in them for the rest of their lives, and so blood tests can sometimes detect male cells in a woman, but that doesn’t make them male. Cue sub-sub-side-quest to explain that no, that doesn’t mean that Mammy will feel anything if he hurts himself; that’s not how cells work.
Anyway, the upshot of our nice cosy conversation was that he knows that it is perfectly acceptable for him to have waist-length hair and like make-up and nail varnish, just as it is perfectly acceptable for his granny to prefer none of those things (although we’ve been having an informal competition, from the beginning of the pandemic, to see whose hair will grow the longest. His was shoulder-length at the start; I had a buzz-cut. Mine is growing curly, though, and so he’s bound to win); that believing that someone can be the opposite sex to themselves is obvious codswallop; and there is nothing wrong with being yourself, even if the unwritten rules of your society say that your behaviour should be masculine if you’re male, and feminine if you’re female.
Just gotta say I love “these alleged master grokkers.”
Aww Tigger, your grandson sounds great!
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And exhausting ;D
I liked your story, tigger. One of the things I have to work on now is how to explain to an 11 year old how a character in a series she likes to watch, who is described as “non-binary,” and referred to as “they,” is actually a “he,” and how it’s actually better to say that.
The gender ideologues are sprinkling their dogma into all the children’s shows now.
It may be kind not to bring up reality around people who are suffering, and are deep in denial, but this is a character in a TV show. He can’t hear us, or be upset that we’re telling the truth. The important part is that the person who made this up, by doing so, is sending the message to children that unless they conform to societal gender roles, there’s something wrong with them, and so they have to be “trans,” or “non-binary,” instead of accepting their sex and their peculiarity. The character, who is indeed androgynous, is a perfectly fine fellow, and if he were real, it would be the work of his true friends (and his therapist) to help him understand that there’s no need to set himself the impossible task of escaping his sex just in order to express himself the way he wants to.
My job, as a parent, is to make sure my children understand that.
Papito, I think there is a difference between being kind and affirming someone’s delusion. When I was a young woman, I suffered from anorexia. People were often kind but never told me, of course you’re fat, dear, of course you don’t need to eat dear. They were kind, not stupid.
Wait. Some of them were stupid, while imaging themselves being helpful and kind. Those were the ones who said “I wish I had your problem.” Ordinary sized to slightly over the weight chart weight older women who were healthy and strong, but wanted to lose weight so badly they wished to have anorexia! No, dear, you don’t wish you had my problem.
I will be kind to those who show in my classrooms or other walks of life that are convinced they are the opposite sex; I will not admit to them being the opposite sex. But I won’t be unkind in saying it (which is indeed an effort for me; I am by nature snarky and sarcastic).
Kind is not the same as affirming.
Having been peaked some time ago, I’d rather be rude than kind now.
[…] a comment by Tigger the Wing on Age […]
My 4 yo regularly ask me about dinosaurs. He’s fascinated and somewhat understands dinosaurs don’t really exist any more (unless of the bird kinds), but it’s not a belief that’s firm enough I think, he asked several times already.
On the other hand, he fully understands there are two sexes in most species, and that he’s feeling a special attraction that is different from friendship to one member of the opposite sex at school. He doesn’t understand genders though, possibly because it doesn’t match our own family politics and is not exposed to expectations inside its realm (which probably doesn’t stop broader social exposition to stereotypes), even if dad is strong and is symbolically a pillar of stability against the insecurities of the world (I did not ask to, this is how it organizes in his development).
4 is the age of learning group-think, group identity and social norms –lasting probably until early adulthood, and it’s probably the best age to implement false beliefs in such flexible brains. On the other hand humankind has been trying to play on this level for millennia and it doesn’t work well enough.
They’re surprising Francis Xavier fans, aren’t they? “Give me the child until he is seven and I’ll give you the man.”
Of course, that observation preceded FX for a very long time, which is why all cults and religions have wanted to get their hands on the children as early as possible.
Papito, I of course discussed with my daughter what line she would like me to take on a lot of subjects before they come up in conversation with my grandson. If she and I were to disagree on any subject, I would tell my grandson “That subject is better discussed with your parents.”
She’s happy that I’m going to take the fact-based line on things, and expect him to be kind too. I don’t mention anything which is irrelevant to the discussion we’re having; sex (other than the fact we are one or the other) and sexuality haven’t been raised as topics by him yet. He’s just not that interested at the moment. I expect, though, that (just like his older brother) he’ll want to ask me questions when puberty hits properly; questions he finds too embarrassing to ask his parents. Fortunately, his parents agree with me (or, rather, I agree with them) on just about everything, and they’re happy to leave it to me to answer the endless questions on myriad topics!
Yes, he’s exhausting. He’s also kind, and will happily leave when I tell him I’m feeling too tired to carry on, and we can pick up where we left off another day.
Related to Papito #13 talking about the cartoon series with a ‘non-binary’ ‘they’*
I have been following a web-comic “Skin Horse” that has a major character who is very definitely male but who very definitely prefers to wear feminine clothing. There is enough mention of sexual activity that it is probably not really suitable for children, but a similar character in child appropriate fiction would be a good thing.
* wouldn’t ‘they’ be at least binary or maybe even trinary? ;)