The parents should sue the district. Society needs to be forced to confront this issue and learn to incorporate gender creative individuals.

Can the world get crazier?

#2 | Posted by patron at 2013-02-27 11:20 AM | Reply | Flag:

This is literally what people asked when black slaves demanded freedom in and when women and religious minorities demanded suffrage.

a first grader who has a passport identifying him as female, wears a dress, etc.... Have the parents tried reality? I hope so.

#9 | Posted by eberly at 2013-02-27 11:39 AM | Reply | Flag:

What "reality" is that? Why does it give you, the parents, or anyone else the right to crush a human being's developing sense of personal identity until it conforms to some arbitrary standard of social normality (regardless of the cost to said human being)?

how many people asked that at that time?

oh, you don't know?

#10 | Posted by eberly at 2013-02-27 11:41 AM | Reply | Flag:

Why does that matter? People asked it. That is a matter of record. Blacks who wanted freedom and women who wanted the vote were diagnosed as mentally ill and institutionalized or worse.

"what reality? that Coy really is a boy"

That is not reality. That is an interpretation.

"and his genitals aren't really going to fall off or change naturally."

And? The sense that they will is merely the sense that they do not belong, that she is not supposed to have them, that they should be changed in keeping with her view of herself.

"I'm not saying we "crush" anybody."

That is exactly what you are saying. I wonder how you would like being sent to some institution some place and tortured and brainwashed until your self-conception was changed (with, of course, plenty of accompanying trauma and neurosis).

I would think the bigot is the one comparing being black or being a woman to having a mental disorder.

#27 | Posted by sully at 2013-02-27 12:00 PM | Reply | Flag:

Who would that be? Certainly not me. I was merely pointing out that there was a time when a slave who wanted to be free "had a mental disorder," when a woman who wanted the vote "had a mental disorder," when being gay "was a mental disorder." Surely even a creature such as yourself can see the obvious comparison here.

#18 | Posted by eberly at 2013-02-27 11:50 AM | Reply | Flag:

Do you really believe your own child is as simple as all that? I pity him for having a parent who thinks so little of him. And I cannot help but wonder how much of your "programing" merely paves over your child's own efforts to develop his sense of identity.

"let's just stop right here. The rest of your post can wait until we first "diagnose" your disorder."

Thank you for proving my point. If you do not understand something, you merely label it a disorder and thereby absolve yourself of any responsibility, of any need to understand. Such has been the refuge of the closed minded and intellectually cowardly for centuries.

"You are claiming that Coy is not really a boy because he doesn't believe he is?"

I am claiming that gender identity is a social construct and, more, that it is fluid and (wait for it....) performative. It cannot be "refuted" by simply pointing to which sex organs a person happens to have.

"No, it isn't and you can't point to anything of the sort."

Sure I can. You are claiming that this person is "disordered," that they do not understand "reality." What do we do with people who fit that description, pray?

"when did I suggest anything like that? Jesus Christ, you might as well accuse me of wanting to kill him."

Yes, yes. You are like the person who nodded approvingly as suffragettes were dragged off the streets and put in Sanitariums, silently thankful all the while that it was not YOU who had to force the feeding tubes down their throats when they went on hunger strikes or force hysterectomies on them to cure their "hysterical" need to vote and be acknowledged by society. The fact that you turn away from the implications of your claims and the historical consequences of them does not make those implications any less real or serious or you any less culpable.

You can't reasonably advocate for making 200 kids uncomfortable to accomodate one.

#63 | Posted by Sully at 2013-02-27 03:44 PM | Reply | Flag:...said the segregationist in the 1950s.

"So wanting to vote or wanting to not be a slave is the same as believing something that is demonstrably untrue?"

At the time, thinking that a woman or a slave could be a full and enfranchised part of society was considered "demonstrably untrue" as well.

"Save the faux intellectual garbage."

I know that a lot of what I say probably goes over your head. Try not to feel bad. Ask questions instead.

"Just because some things that are not mental disorders were once call mental disorders does not mean that mental disorders do not exist."

Is there an argument in there somewhere?

Let's assume that this unsubstantiated assertion is true. The issue then becomes how we go about defining a mental disorder. Over time, psychology has moved away from declaring things disorders merely because they violate social norms, focusing instead on disorders that produce "maladaptive" behaviors. So, let us look at this case of the gender creative girl in the article: Her gender identity is not maladaptive. It will not keep her from feeding or clothing herself or functioning in society or engaging productively with the world. The only difficulties that it poses are socially created: discrimination by bigoted individuals and institutions. Which, of course, was also the case with the "disorder" of the runaway slave or the "hysteria" of the suffragette.

pansexuals and omnisexuals give me the creeps more than any other sexual group.

#76 | Posted by Tor at 2013-02-27 04:49 PM | Reply | Flag:

Fear really is what these prejudices are all about. If someone can be pansexual or bisexual or gay, if a woman can have male sex organs or a man can have female ones, the meaning of your own sexuality and your own gender identity becomes unmoored. You no longer can look at your own gender identity or preferences as being somehow privileged (by God? by nature?).

"If this kid is allowed the use the girls bathroom it opens the doors to all kinds of perverts hanging out in the opposite sex's bathroom."

If you are referring to the risk of harassment, that exists even in gender segregated restrooms (and, of course, represents a broader issue that needs to be dealt with on a social and institutional level; merely gender segregating solves nothing).

They all do that and they do all the time. PC running amok. The biggest danger in a democracy used to be a tryanny of the minority but MAN has THAT flipped. Now the majority is constantly tyrannized by the minority by situations such as this one.

#85 | Posted by jestgettinalong at 2013-02-27 05:28 PM | Reply | Flag:....Says the 1950s segregationist.

You're really going to allude to jim crow laws?

#90 | Posted by Tor at 2013-02-27 05:31 PM | Reply | Flag:

1) I have, indeed, already done so and explained my reasons for doing so. Scroll up.

2) Segregation is not a wholly owned franchise of white supremacists. It need not invoke the pre-Civil Rights American South.

"Forced? Who is going to do the forcing?"

In the post you quote, I was referring to gender creative individuals and their families forcing society to confront the issue of gender creativity (through legal challenges, awareness campaigns and so on). They should work to create conditions under which people cannot escape the reality of gender creativity, much as gays created various highly effective means of forcing people to confront the reality of homosexuality (pride parades, etc).

Of course, when discrimination occurs at the institutional level, sometimes the government needs to get involved, as was the case when schools were desegregated in the US.

"And you wonder why we need our weapons and the 2nd Amendment."

We have been over this and over this, Boaz. Your weapons will not help you. The government has an overwhelming advantage over civilians when it comes to military equipment and has for at least a century. If that is what your second amendment is for, then it is a joke.

I think you will be surprised when soldiers have to fire on american citizens.

Here's a hint, they wont do it..

#100 | Posted by boaz at 2013-02-27 08:10 PM | Reply | Flag:

Sure they will, Boaz. They always have in the past.

And do you know what is more likely to make them fire on American citizens? If those citizens are armed. Honestly, you take a military that has spent the last 50 odd years fighting one civilian insurgency after another and your way to win their sympathy is...... to become the very thing they have been trained to fight for their whole careers? The thing that has threatened their lives and maimed or killed their comrades?

And, once again, you have blatantly contradicted yourself. If your only hope of resistance against the government is that the military will mutiny, than you concede that guns are not necessary. Indeed, as shown above, they are likely to actually hurt your efforts.

The military will fire when defending themselves, but they WONT when citizens are expressing a right or when they are refusing to be forced to do something. That is different.

#103 | Posted by boaz at 2013-02-27 08:18 PM | Reply | Flag:

Even assuming that this is true (and you should take a long, hard look at your country's history), you seem to be conceding that private gun ownership actually hurts popular efforts to resist oppression, because an armed resistance guarantees that soldiers will feel threatened and, as a result, will not hesitate to use force on their countrymen/women. So, there you have it, dear reader: Guns actually render a population less able to resist tyranny.

Some people still have some common sense in this world. And this is where the craziness of the left have brought this nation. Fantasyland is next on the horizon.

#116 | Posted by matsop at 2013-02-27 08:56 PM | Reply | Flag: ....Said the 1950s segregationist