My friend is facing a very difficult challenge right now. The school where her three children ages, 6, 9, 11 are attending (A local Belgiun school)anounced that their male gym teacher will be undergoing a Gender reassignment and will be coming back to school as a female instead of a male. They made the announcement and met with the parents to inform them that this will be the case and that the school will provide clinical counseling to parents and children who feel they might need help to make this a smooth transition for their child.
Am I crazy to think that they are doing this backwards? Instead of offering phychological help to the children and families, thinking they should be the ones who need the help in learning to adjust to anothers inability to live life as they were born. Shouldn't it be the other way around? Shouldn't they be offering the teacher the help to treat the gender personality disorder, instead of throwing this disorder in the face of many young innocent children and asking them to conform? Can you imagine telling your 6 year old that today your gym teacher is a man, but tomorrow, he'll be a woman and so must call him/her a different name. Talk about confusing information. That's like asking us to eat an orange and then telling us to believe that it tastes like an apple, when you have always known it to be an orange and genetically speaking it is an orange.
You know children see things as black and white as part of their development process at that young age...I just can't imagine why an adult mind would want to even put that in their face like that and confuse them. Even crazier to me....other adults, like the school and perhaps the law are saying...great, let's teach the kids about tolerance and make them accept this as the norm. Yikes! I believe that the gym teacher should resign his postion....make the change and then go get a job where no knew him as a male and not confuse the young children's minds.
Perhaps I sound intolerant. But again...my issue is always with the safe, healthy development of the child....and I am a proponant for traditional values as the best way to achieve that for a child's sake. This situation simply is not healthy for the child, and not fair to the families trying to raise their child with those values. It appears that my friend will be pulling her kids from the school and plant them somewhere else, and this is frustrating to her, as now her kids are displaced and will have to start over with new friends and new surroundings. It doesn't seem right to me that they have to make that decision. What is good is that they have the choice to make. But then, so does the gym teacher...and he chose to stay where he is at and make everyone else conform.
Not to mention my other question, who's locker room/bathrooms does the gym teacher get to go in? The girls, the boys? or both? Who knows if he/she prefers males or females? Will there be potential of abuse? :( Confused and dismayed in Belgium.
9 comments:
It certainly is a difficult issue, but since secularism demands acceptance of the lowest common denominator, I suspect there is no recourse for parents who cannot move their children to another school. For secularism, the needs of the children are paramount when it is convenient to claim that it is so, otherwise the children just have to deal with it.
I believe as you do that they have it backwards as well. My question in face of the health care debacle that we are in here in the US and moving towards a more "European" healthcare system is who pays for such surgeries there? Is the teacher's surgeries government funded and therefore being paid by the parents of the students they are now offering counceling to?
It doesn't surprise me...you're living in Europe. Having never been there, aren't Europeans more accepting of these things generally and so it isn't so far fetched for them? Just curious.
I don't know if the teacher is using any social health benefits to pay for it or his own money since I don't belong the this health care system, I don't know what their benefits are. I suspect they won't pay for elective surgeries, and he is paying for it on his own. Europe is more liberal, but according to my friend, she and many other parents are very unhappy with this and don't feel it appropriate for the kids to have to be subjected to. I don't beleive they are necessarily more accepting to this situation.
Too bad if people with children are upset! For heaven's sake! The children most certainly can handle this wee bit of news. With all the changes that kids encounter! Try this: the greater shock that no one seems to worry about is all those kids of marriages whose minds are seriously messed up by their parents who DIVORCE. Get that abuse and confusion sorted out and then we'll talk.
People die. Kids have to deal.
People are mean. Kids have to deal.
People fight terrible diseases and are permanently impaired. Kids have to deal.
Sexual awakening happens. Kids have to deal.
Drugs are tossed about. Kids have to deal.
Terrible acts of violence invade a kid's life. Kids deal.
A man becomes a woman: so what?
Remember that some people are BORN with varying sets of genitalia. God or nature or whatever got it wrong.
The truth about this is that there is an underlying, pervasive, and pejorative judgement regarding gender reassignment. If understood appropriately, there is no reason for fear or drama. The kids will be fine if spoken to appropriately, the parents...I'm not so sure?
Pulling your kid out of school? Really? Now I find that shocking.
Kids certainly have to deal with a lot, but there are unavoidable things that happen, and then there are things that are done to them. We try to comfort them when the former happens and we try to protect them from the latter.
I know this leads into the topic of GLBT and that we will not convince each other of anything. We end up agreeing to disagree - but even that does not always happen anymore. As is often the case nowadays, when the sensibilities of the religious or conservatives are offended, they are told "just deal with it." But just mention God or morals in the public square and the left gets all huffy puffy and bent out of shape.
The distinction that you make in your first paragraph is valid. The question is whether or not protection regarding this subject is warranted. My position is that it is not.
It does indeed open on to GLBT issues. There are those who honestly believe (any of you may be one of them) that openly GLB persons ought not teach children. Protecting them from the confusion, the evil, the sin of same-gender attraction is paramount.
I have felt the brunt of this from time to tim even in my liberal school hence my augmented sensitivity to Teresa's post. Nearly identical arguments to those made by the family in Teresa's post were made about me. In my case, the answer was that our school is then clearly not the right school for the dissenting family.
Conservative moral sensibilities ought/can/must be heard, but not necessarily accommodated in public arenas wherein the law is dominant. Their ideas/concerns are worthy of debate. However, it can be tricky because conservative morals are seen by their holders as absolute and therefore anything short of accommodation seems to be unacceptable.
I think that is why you may have the notion that conservatives are just told to 'deal with it' because indeed outside of established law, that is their only choice because established law (always evolving liberally in this country and most western countries)
is less and less the result of hermetic religious dogma.
"Deal with it"! Are you serious? Who should be the one to be "Dealing with it"? He should be the one to "Deal with it"...not the masses! The school and PTA is not asking this man to not go through with his gender reassignment, they are asking him to please not do it in front of the school public. They have asked him to please take a leave of abscence, make the transition and return to another school, that has another gym teacher willing to trade schools with him so that when he comes back as a she, she will come back to a school where the kids would never have known her as a he, and where no one had to watch the transition. The school has tried very hard to accomodate his needs, but still watch out for the greater school public that doesn't want him to do this in the school public eye. He has refused their offer and their help and said no, he wants to do it and stay right where he is at. How selfish can he be? He can't see two feet past his own shadow. He is so wrapped up in his need to do the transition that he doesn't care whose he hurts. Instead, he chooses to make the transition while still working and parade himself around the school public like a circus clown. Budding breasts...voice changing etc.... If he really cared about others, he would bow out of the public arena and make the transition intimately and come back as a women in a different environment....thus sparing young children and their families of having to watch the transition. Those who think he has a right to do this are ignoring the fact that the school and the parents have the same rights to protect their children from viewing this transition. If a parent doesn't want their young children to be subjected to this situation (keep in mind this is an elementary school, not a high school)then they have that right. He is taking away their right. I beleive it is his right to make this transition but not his PRIVALAGE to do so on the public school stage when the masses have asked him not to for the sake of protecting their children. He should do the right thing and do so in a non-public setting.
Alan is correct when he says that when the conservative wants to raise their families with traditional values the liberals get all huffy puffy. He is being kind....I would have used stronger words like, they are insensitive, selfish, hateful and rude. They can not see past their own need to fulfill their self serving desires and the example of "Deal with it" is exactly what I am talking about. The law has nothing to do with it....this is all about character. Laws do not define or even uphold character. Laws are very impersonal to that. Even if the law says you shouldn't kill someone....deciding to kill or not kill is very much a character issue. If this man had upstanding character, he would take into consideration the law that protects his right to transition and then the request of the school and the school public asking him to be sensitive to their requests and consider the needs of the children and their families. His good character should kick in and agree to step down and make his transition in the non-school public arena. In my opinion, people who push the law for their right to do what ever they please even when it is destructive to the masses, are not tapping into their good character and are only self serving. This man is clearly self-serving.
There is nothing wrong with what he wants to do.
There is no reason for him to be ashamed.
There is no reason for him to hide the transition from anyone including children.
There is nothing to protect children from.
There is no destruction to the masses by his actions or his public display of it.
There is no reasons for him to act ashamed and hide it in any way from anyone.
Teresa sees it as immoral and thus her emotions regarding it and children. I do not and thus my comments.
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