There has been a growing movement to make the United States more
gender neutral. From what I can tell, this push partly comes from the
feminist movement, LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered) community
and its liberal ideological cohorts. But what is the purpose and is it a
good idea? Let us discuss.
Gender neutral: As far as I can tell, the goal of
making things more gender neutral is inspired in part to avoid hurting
someone's feelings. What I mean by this is that the gay, lesbian and transgendered
community typically do not have their own bathrooms, locker rooms, and other
similar private changing areas. So heterosexual people typically become
uncomfortable around these groups of people because they do not know how to
react to them and makes the LGBT group feel ostracized. So the idea, I
believe, is to get everyone from a young age used to interacting with people of
different sexes, gender roles and sexual orientations. Basically, have
people of opposite sexes be used to each other in such a manner that they do
not get that awkward feeling anymore in more private/intimate settings.
As such, I believe the supporters of this idea hope to change society’s
outlook on gender and sexual orientation in a similar manner to how it was done
with race/skin color in the civil rights movement. The reason the
feminist movement seems to support it is due to the age old separations between
men and women being seen as antiquated and thus anti-feminist.
Problems: Some have taken issue with this
gender neutral approach. However, the goal is not necessarily disagreed
with, but the methods of achieving that goal. For one, unisex bathrooms
have become controversial because some schools have allowed them for children
in high school leading to complaints about peeping toms, and privacy concerns.
Others have taken umbrage with reading materials which feature gay
penguins, or books with explicit sexual content being read by young readers
(without informing the parents or opt out clauses I may add). So the issues
generally are not with having the lesbian, gay, transgendered (or any sexual
orientation in between) becoming more integrated, or the de-masculinization of
society but the methods.
Conclusion: Parents are the main group that
should and do show concern for what is going on with this growing trend.
Many traditionalists look upon supporters of this idea as backwards as
they are supposed to focus on preventing hatreds and discrimination (which they
have largely achieved), not changing the entire cultural landscape from the
ground up. As someone who is not a parent, I personally do not have a
problem with unisex bathrooms or other unisex like facilities so long as people
can have the privacy they want when they want it. To me it is a privacy
issue with respect to most of this gender neutrality debate. I don't want
to show my "junk" to some random person regardless of sex, sexual
orientation or anybody for that matter. As to the education front, I just
hope schools stop with the crap of forcing this stuff on kids. It should
be up to the parents to decide what material is pertinent to their kids’
education with respect to these kinds of education materials, not anyone else.
These are my thoughts on the issue, give me my privacy and stop forcing
things like gay penguins into kids’ faces. And that is as they say is
that.
No comments:
Post a Comment