A New York Times op-ed hit the transgender ideology for being anti-girl and anti-woman, and also prompted many liberal commentators to complain about the harmful impact of pro-transgender advocacy on normal girls and boys.
The comments made by the New York Times‘ readers show emerging hostility among liberal women to the demands by gay and transgender activists that testosterone treatments and sex-change surgery be given to young girls who show typically boyish behavior and attitudes, such as avoiding dresses and long hair, or preferring contact sports or playfighting.
The April 18 article, titled “My Daughter Is Not Transgender. She’s a Tomboy,” was written by a liberal mother who supports legal rights for people who want to live as members of the opposite sex, but who also insists that girls who act like boys can still be girls:
My daughter wears track pants and T-shirts. She has shaggy short hair (the look she requested from the hairdresser was “Luke Skywalker in Episode IV”). Most, but not all, of her friends are boys. She is sporty and strong, incredibly sweet, and a girl.
And yet she is asked by the pediatrician, by her teachers, by people who have known her for many years, if she feels like, or wants to be called, or wants to be, a boy…
While celebrating the diversity of sexual and gender identities, we also need to celebrate tomboys and other girls who fall outside the narrow confines of gender roles. Don’t tell them that they’re not girls.
The author, Lis Selin Davis, repeatedly objects to so-called experts who insist that girls who act like boys deserve surgeries and drug treatments to convert them into quasi-boys:
“I just wanted to check,” the teacher said. “Your child wants to be called a boy, right? Or is she a boy that wants to be called a girl? Which is it again?”
I cocked my head. I am used to correcting strangers, who mistake my 7-year-old daughter for a boy 100 percent of the time.
In fact, I love correcting them, making them reconsider their perceptions of what a girl looks like. But my daughter had been attending the after-school program where this woman taught for six months
The article prompted an emotional response by liberal women who fear young girls are being pushed to either wear pink or face a lifetime of fertility-destroying male hormones and dangerous surgeries because transgender activists want to blur the legal and civic distinctions between males and females.
Commentator “CKM” from San Francisco got more than 391 upvotes for writing:
Thank you for this. I was a tomboy who actually went through a phase in which I told everyone I was a boy, gave myself a boy’s name and wore boy’s clothes. The reason was that boys had the cooler toys and games and careers. I wept bitterly at having been born a girl. I was smart and aggressive and decided I wasn’t going to let being a girl stand in the way of what I wanted to do or be in life. Eventually I discovered boys, grew up and became a (reasonably) well-adjusted heterosexual woman. I shudder to think what would have happened had this pre-pubescent gender reassignment been available. I might have been very eager for it, not understanding I was setting myself up for a lifetime of surgery and costly hormones.
Alexandra Hanson-Harding in New Jersey got above 616 recommendations for writing:
Are we in danger of not only figuratively trimming just children’s imaginations by constructing pink and blue prisons where each of these fascinating things can only belong to one gender, but, worse, literally trimming children’s perfect bodies to fit rigid roles?
“Mor” from California got at least 472 upvotes for her comments:
Concern for transgender rights can become a new form of misogyny, locking women and men into the narrow and outdated concepts of femininity and masculinity… I am a woman who rejects gender stereotypes but has no problem with her biological sex. Isn’t this what used to be called feminism?
“Christine” in Texas got more than 171 approvals for her reaction:
So agree with this. As a young girl I wanted to be a boy. Short hair is easy to take care of. You can’t be very active in a dress. Climbing trees is fun! Cops and robbers is so much more fun than dolls! And with my short hair it was almost like having a secret identity–you think you know who I am but you don’t. I grew out of it and have fond memories of my tomboy days. How sad that if it were to happen today my behavior would be pathologized into something that required treatment.
Read the article here.
In general, gay and transgender activists are trying to impose a “‘genderless society” on Americans’ society, which is now built on the recognition that the two equal-and-complementary sexes — both heterosexual and homosexual — want some single-sex institutions and practices.
That unpopular transgender ideological demand for a “genderless society” would allow children and teenagers to bypass parental objections when asking for taxpayer funds to permanently change their genitalia with hormones and surgery. Women would be forced to accept biological males in their shower rooms and stronger and faster men in their sports leagues. Men would be told that masculinity is toxic and their children should be exposed to pro-transgender curricula in K-12 schools.
All people, including high-status scientists and doctors, would also be punished if they use sexually correct pronouns — “she” or “he” — when they are referring to people who merely say they have the “Gender Identity” of the opposite sex, even in science classrooms and hospitals. Single-sex civic groups would be threatened by lawsuits until they agreed to accept people of both sexes, and insurance companies would be forced to raise premiums to cover the lifetime cost of medical treatment for people struggling to live as the other sex.
Single-sex civic groups would be threatened by lawsuits until they agreed to accept people of both sexes, and insurance companies would be forced to raise premiums to cover the lifetime cost of medical treatment for people struggling to live as the other sex.
Nationwide, only about one-in-four voters support the “gender identity” ideology. Also, there are very few people who wish to live as members of the opposite sex, with estimates ranging from a high of one-in-130 Americans down to one-in-2,400 Americans.