"Gender-neutral" bathrooms, the mixed-up kid and homosexual dad

By Selwyn Duke

The big news out of San Francisco last week was that it would register another first: a city elementary school is going to switch to all "gender-neutral" bathrooms. The idea is, as the Daily Mail put it, to "accommodate young students who don't fit into gender norms." Of course, this apparently means that normal students who might like those supposedly antiquated single-sex bathrooms can just go to Hell (I mean, the Hell that isn't San Francisco).

The scene of this enlightened step into the brave new world is Miraloma Elementary. Now, you might think a San Fran school would have a couple of hundred sexually confused kids, but, actually, the change is in deference to six to eight children (and to liberal dementia) who "range from tomboys to transgender," reports SFGate.com. Hey, don't you know? The whims of the few outweigh the good of the many.

But what really caught my attention was this passage from the Mail:

'I think most people don't think about how difficult it can be, going to the bathroom for someone like my son,' said a woman named Jae, who refused to give her last name to protect her son.

Her son, a first-grader, is a boy who identifies as a boy but prefers to dress and style his hair like a girl.

'He was just struggling with it quietly,' the mom added. '[Now] he can just use the restroom without thinking about it.'

Ari Braverman, 6, says he too is happy about the bathroom change since he likes to dress like a girl and doesn't discriminate between boys' and girls' toys.

'I think it's nice because then people don't have to be separated just to go into bathrooms,' Ari said. 'It's just easier to go to the bathroom if there's just a bathroom.'

Ari's dad, Gedalia Braverman, agreed, saying, 'As parents, you eventually realize it's not your job to change your child's personality. It's not my job to identify and pigeonhole my children's genders, and certainly it's not the school's.'

There's a lot here to take issue with. For instance, one could also imagine the following: "Ari Braverman, 6, says he too is happy about ice cream for dinner since he likes ice cream and doesn't care for meat and vegetables." Then there's, "Ari Braverman, 6, says he too is happy about replacing math with video-game time since he likes video games and doesn't discriminate between education and fooling around." What a six-year-old thinks about social norms is only taken seriously by someone (such as, let's say, Jimmy Carter) who would cite in a debate his little daughter's views on nuclear-weapons policy, or a president who'd say his flip-flop on marriage was influenced by his kids. (Of course, Barack Obama was for faux marriage in 1996, so it's more likely dad influenced Sasha and Malia.)

Speaking of influence, restroom Luddite that I am I got the feeling from the Mail piece that parents who are new-age bathroom reformers probably didn't give their kids a normal start to life. So I did some sleuthing. Finding information on the secretive "Jae" was unlikely, but there couldn't be more than one Gedalia Braverman in the U.S. And lo and behold, while this isn't mentioned by the Mail, I learned that Braverman is actually a single homosexual father. Moreover, read the following, from a blog describing "Gedalia's Journey":

His twins were born thanks to the modern technology of assisted reproduction, and with the help of his friends.

In last June's newsletter for Pacific Fertility Center, the clinic that helped Braverman become a parent, he describes the story of his journey.

"They say it takes a village to raise a child. In my case it took a village to create a child. Thanks to a loving gestational surrogate, and longtime friends as both egg and sperm donors, my dream of parenting has come true," he writes.

Question: Does it take a village idiot to raise a really mixed up child?

Of course, I'm sure Ari's Little Journey is just an anomaly. We know that homosexuals aren't any more likely to raise homosexual or maladjusted children than are average parents. We know this because the Left has told us so, again and again, citing "studies" all the way through. And it's bigotry to think otherwise (or even to think. Emote now, will ya'?).

Except for one thing. We also know that little children model the behavior of those around them; they could not do otherwise. While Braverman says it isn't his "job" to change his child's "personality" or pigeonhole his "gender," the reality is that he's shaping his children's personalities whether he realizes it or not. You influence your child by what you choose to be (which determines the example you set), by what you say, how you act, and by what you don't say. In fact, "values are caught more than they're taught"; it's what's assumed that is learned best.

Moreover, this Rousseau-esque notion of just letting your child be what he is "naturally" is pure and utter nonsense. Naturally, a baby is a barbarian, illiterate, bereft of morals and manners, and quite likely a sociopath. Just as how children have to be taught math or biology, they have to taught (trained in, actually) morals and civility. That's how they become civil-ized.

This gets at the contradiction inherent in the "I'm not going to put my child in a gender straitjacket" fad. (Note: "gender" once only referred to words, and it shouldn't be used with people.) Why stop at "gender"? Psychobabblers diagnose "gender dysphoria," the sense that you're stuck in the body of the wrong sex. But there's also "species dysphoria," the sense that you're stuck in the body of the wrong species. As to this, a young Texas woman going by the name "Wolfie Blackheart" insisted in 2010 that she was a canine.

So why suppress your child's "true personality" by putting him in a species straitjacket? Yet we do. We teach children language, manners, our human society's norms (mostly), how to use human-birthed technology and a whole host of other things beyond the average mammal's capacities. We do this because the child is human; we thus assume that a human-specific upbringing is a better idea than raising him like a ferret.

But just as this is indicated by biologically determined species, so does his biologically determined sex indicate the wisdom of a sex-specific upbringing. This gets at a once universally recognized truth:

Contrary to modern myth, sex stereotyping is actually a good and necessary thing.

It's not the application of a "straitjacket" any more than is providing musical instruction to a music prodigy. Rather, in the same vein, it is the process of recognizing the characteristic strengths and roles of each sex and providing teaching that will augment those strengths in preparation for those roles. Just as targeted training can help turn that musical rough diamond into a maestro, it can turn girls and boys into women and men.

On the other hand, we could just continue down the "gender identity" road and turn the whole nation into San Francisco.

© Selwyn Duke