Meet Gender Snowperson
A tweet from Teacher2Teacher, an account where teachers apparently share ideas and advice and the like:
⛄️ Using this “gender snowperson,” Ss learn about identity and language! (📸 via educator
@LexingtonDEI) #EdEquity #ChampForKids #SchoolCulture
From the graphic style it appears to be aimed at very young children. Is it really teaching?
Do very young children really need to be taught about “gender expression”? I’m not sure I think anyone does, but the older the children the more able they are to question what they’re told by teachers. Do they need to be taught about “gender identity”? Are they taught what “identity” is first, and then how that can be made to fit with “gender”? I don’t think it can, myself, but very young children tend to believe what adults in authority tell them.
Should very young children be taught that they can be girl, boy, both, or neither?
Should very young children be taught any of this crap?
I don’t think so.
I guess the star represents the genitals? Or is it meant to be a yellow star? And is that a skirt or a random rectangle? Is it supposed to balance the sideways baseball cap? “Look, you can be both – cap and skirt! Heart and yellow star! It’s all so exciting!”
It was for a 4th grade class:
https://mobile.twitter.com/LexingtonDEI/status/1184477429705986049
#WokeAF
What good does it do to children to teach them gender identity theory? Who benefits from all this?
Presumably trans activists think it would alleviate the suffering that some gender-atypical young boys and girls might be feeling inside.
But the suffering gender-atypical children feel inside comes from bullying, and perhaps abuse from close-minded parents. This is not at all like the suffering transgender adults feel inside, which comes from anguish over the incongruity between their sense of their gender and their biological sex. (This isn’t to say trans adults never suffer bullying and abuse as well.) Children — even extremely gender-atypical children — don’t feel that kind of anguish. They can’t, because they’re too young to even grasp the concepts involved.
You can encourage regular kids not to bully gender-atypical kids without constructing a whole new pseudoscientific theory of sex and gender. You can teach parents to allow their children to enjoy gender-atypical activities.
It’s completely unnecessary to teach children this new theory that they are whatever sex or gender their young child brains tell them they think they are; that their bodies are incorrect if they don’t match whatever gender they’ve been encouraged to identify as; and that they can be made right with medical treatment and radical social engineering (to make sure Mom and Dad and friends and everyone else is on board or else).
None of this convoluted nonsense is necessary if your goal is simply to prevent gender-atypical children from being bullied. But all of it IS necessary if your true goal is instead to recruit gender-atypical children into the culture of transgenderism. If you’re trying to make children feel anguished and confused about body/mind incongruity, this is exactly the way to do it.
It’s well-known that many extremely gender-atypical children will grow up to be homosexual. I believe teaching gender identity in schools is harmful to all children, but I want to talk about the especially-atypical ones — the likely-homosexual ones — for a minute. Throughout much of history and across the world, where cultures have had any place at all for gender-atypical people (and many didn’t: they simply cast them off or killed them), they were identified as gender-atypical in early childhood, and diverted into transgender social roles. (E.g., the hijras of the Indian subcontinent; the xanith of the Arabian Peninsula; the travesti of Brazil, the berdache (a.k.a. “two-spirit”) of Indigenous North America; the ladyboys of Thailand; the mahu, fa’afafine and countless other words for it throughout Polynesia…) And most (though not all) of the time, their assigned social roles were of low status: they often lived marginalized, impoverished, limited lives, often castrated or mutilated and forced to work as prostitutes.
Two things changed all that: the concept of (and movement to promote the ideas of) feminism, and the concept of (and movement to promote the ideas of) “egalitarian homosexuality” (in contrast to the “transgender” or “gender-structured” homosexuality that has been the worldwide norm; or, to a lesser degree, the “age-structured” homosexuality you’d find in ancient Greece or Renaissance Italy). Both movements aim to demolish harmful gender-structured aspects of society. And as the word “egalitarian” implies, these movements have hugely improved the life, freedom, status and well-being of gender-atypical people.
What we’re seeing with this new gender-identity movement is a complete reversion back to the gender-structured, limiting, narrow ways from before feminism and before homosexual rights, disguised as a new kind of empowerment. Just like before, gender-atypical children are being identified in early childhood and diverted into transgender social roles, the end result being that traditional gender norms stay the same, only this time we’re pretending these suggestible young children are making an informed “choice,” influenced by nothing more than their Inner True Selves. Just like so much third-wave feminism in the ’90s, this movement is really just about capitulating to regressive social norms and pressures, stylishly branded as some kind of libertarian-y Choosy-Choice individual freedom of expression.
Many gender-atypical people in the contemporary West still identify as transgender despite the progress feminism and gay rights has done to open up alternatives for them, to allow them to participate fully in society. And that’s fine, and there’s lots of advocacy work that can and should be done to ensure they can still paticipate fully in society as trans people — that they aren’t relegated to marginalized, limited, lowly lives like transgender people have been all over the world. There’s a rational, practical way to include trans rights alongside gay rights and feminism. But it starts with trans activists acknowledging what transgenderism actually is — not a bizarre folkloric reimagining of biological sex but merely an alternative expression of gender variance that is limited to social customs and which doesn’t override biological sex. If we could actually talk about it on those terms, we could all work together and make real progress for everyone.
And most importantly: acknowledging what transgenderism actually is means absolutely not foisting it on children and adolescents.
I am horrified by this “gender snowman.” It’s naked recruitment of children for transgenderism. There is no scientific basis for transgender ideology, and the creation of transgender children provides fodder for the biggest uncontrolled medical experiment of the 21st century. Thousands of children are being sterilized, mutilated, and made permanently ill by this experiment.
This snowman isn’t a representation of reality, it’s an argument for transgenderism. Look at the way it’s constructed. Every kid knows building a snowman starts with the bottom ball. That is the sex. Every child, certainly by fourth grade, knows he or she has a sex. Now the children are told their sex isn’t really their sex, it’s “assigned.” Next the children are told they put another ball on top of their sex, which contains their heart, and their heart could go towards girls or towards boys. Most children know that sex, in the sense of sexual orientation, is something older people do, not babies, so this is already being developed as a model for the process of maturity. The third ball, placed for a head, is labeled with gender identity. So the kids are told if they have a brain, they must develop a gender identity.
Most insidiously, the bottom ball wears a skirt. The littlest girl already knows she’s a girl. Following the development model, then the little girl must learn she has a heart. (Who do nine year old girls love, and how do they love them? Is sexual orientation even relevant to them?) And finally the little girl must, because she has a brain, develop a gender identity. Which wears a sideways baseball cap. This is a suggestion being given to both budding lesbians and tomboys: they are not allowed to be happy as unusual females, they need to be mutilated.
This snowman is going to be responsible for a lot of middle-school girls wearing binders that damage their lungs, breasts, and ribs. It’s going to be responsible for a lot of broken families, as kids fall down the internet rabbit-hole of transgender radicalism. It doesn’t make it easier for kids who grow up gender nonconforming; it makes it much, much harder.
Artymorty is right about how regressive the transgender ideology is: instead of moving towards equality and freedom of expression, it wants to jam us back into the old boxes. Sensitive boys who love to wear flowers and bright colors can’t just be different sorts of boys, they have to be secret girls. Girls who love struggle and fighting and competition and math can’t just be different girls, they have to be secret boys inside. It is regressive, oppressive, and damaging.
(NB, Artymorty, in future it might be good to edit your recitation of gender-atypical roles to note the fact that Brazilian culture is a contemporary, Western culture. “Travestí” just means “transvestite,” and neither goes back farther than the 20th century in this use).
Wait. You mean, liking math means you must be a boy? Oh, shit, I’d better run out and get a breast binder right away!
Just kidding. I would rather break stereotypes than mutilate myself to fit them.
That’s getting the point down to bumper-sticker length.
The intention may have been to discourage bullying of non-conforming children. But bullying is actively taught by parents. It represents ‘Sincere Religious Belief’ and protected political attitudes.
I should clarify: I’ve been referring to these non-Western gender roles in the past tense even though most of them persist to this day, only because they’ve usually been around longer (and are in my opinion less egalitarian) than Western egalitarian homosexuality.
The travesti aren’t quite the same thing as our idea of transvestites though (thoroughly male straight guys with kinks), and travesti culture isn’t the same as transsexual culture either (supposedly sexually mis-brained people, or something); as I understand it it’s its own distinct South American thing in which they are understood as not-men but not-women too. Travesti is pretty new but it’s a non-Western gender identity; there’s no travesti community in Paris or Toronto or New York for example, and Stonewall isn’t clamoring to add travesti to their stupid “transgender umbrella.”
Artymorty, I’d like you to consider that you may be a little disoriented here (or, as one says in Portuguese, desnorteado.) Take a look at a map. Brazil is a Western country. Maybe what you mean is that it’s not a Northern country?
Not only is Brazil a Western country, but the Western traditions it has, including transvestites, come from Europe. Perhaps not the part of Europe you might be most familiar with. Although the word travestí came from French, the social phenomenon of travestís came to Brazil from Portugal and Spain, where it still flourishes, though perhaps to a lesser extent.
The assertion that there’s no travestí community in European cities suggests to me that you have not only never gone for a walk in Candelária, Rio in the evening (seriously, I was only going up to Santa Teresa!), but nor have you gone for a walk through the Puerto del Sol, Madrid in the evening.
I attribute this tradition, as a cultural manifestation of homosexuality, to the historic machismo of Iberian cultures.
If you were to look up travesti on Wikipedia or Encyclopedia Britannica I’m sure it would be described as a non-Western gender identity. I don’t want to get bogged down in the debate about whether and which parts of Brazilian culture count as Western.
Yes, that tradition of calling South American things non-Western is annoying and stupid. Just because Wikipedia (don’t get me started) and Encyclopedia use it that way doesn’t make it less bad. Western is supposed to mean western hemisphere, which means that some countries included in Western culture aren’t western at all, and it means that a lot of Western hemisphere cultures, most noticeably South America and Mexico, get called non-Western.
Geography. How does it work?
(Okay, I’ll bow out for now, but I do teach a Physical Geography course and it annoys me to see how poorly we use language related to geographical issues).
The word has been hijacked to mean something quite unrelated to geography, no doubt because people feel squirmy about using descriptors like “developed.”
Somebody’s going to have to come up with a better word, or clutch of words. “Democratic” and “liberal” are no use if the intention is to include the US, because we’re not either any more.
Artymorty, Brazil is a Western country. Look at a map. Calling Brazil, or Brazilian culture, “non-Western” is a common error; it would not surprise me to find it in popular sources, nor would that prove much besides the current fad. Give me a dollar for every foolishness on Wikipedia and I will be a wealthy man.
Some Western people seem infatuated with the idea of calling any culture not their own “non-Western,” and some other Western people are very offended by that. I have even heard Americans refer to Cuba, or Cuban literature, as “non-Western,” despite Cuba being settled by Europeans long before America was. This common bias is of a piece with considering people from southern Europe not to be white – which was American common practice and policy for quite some time.
Brazilians consider that Brazilian culture is a mixture of three principal roots: Portuguese, African, and Native. Many aspects of Brazilian culture can clearly be traced to African or Native roots, but the Brazilian tradition of the travestí doesn’t come from the African or Native root, it comes from Iberian roots.
It sounds flippant, maybe, but why not just show the kids “Free to Be You and Me”?
Skip all the gender identity nonsense. Teach (or remind) children that everyone’s different in some ways and the same in other ways:
We have different personalities, skills, dreams, etc. But we all want and deserve respect, happiness, safety, etc.
If you’re a boy who doesn’t like sports, great. Be yourself. You’re fine the way you are. If your friend is a boy like that, great. He’s fine the way he is. If you’re a girl who wants to program computers, great. Be yourself. You’re fine the way you are. If your friend is a girl like that, great. She’s fine the way she is.
It doesn’t sound flippant at all.
New Zealand and Australia are considered “western” countries though they’re way down south and east.
I expect “Free To Be You and Me”. Will soon be declared trans-suppressive hate speech. When William said he wanted a doll, his gender wasn’t affirmed.
Cross posted from Miscellany 4, as I just twigged this is as good a place to put it as anywhere.
You may already have seen this. Very interesting.
https://thetexan.news/dallas-custody-battle-over-alleged-transgender-seven-year-old-will-resume-next-week/
It has to be said that the court papers show the fathers character may be questionable at best, but that doesn’t mean his concerns are not valid. The article is almost painfully even handed and explanatory.
KBPlayer, I’ve always wondered about the whole West vs East thing. It’s a very euro-cenrtic view of the world that really shouldn’t hold any more. After all, while china is east of europe, isn’t the ‘east’ actually closer to the west coast of the USA than the east coast? Isn’t the USA the quintessential ‘western’ nation? It’s really silly shorthand – especially on a roughly spherical planet. Now if we lived on a rectangular plate…
Rob – and then there’s Australia, to throw a real clinker in the works. Often lumped with western nations, but the geographic coordinates say “east”.
On a related note, I overheard a conversation between two of my students in the van on a field trip today. These young women are apparently insufficiently “woke” as they were mocking the trans movement, and declaring that they affirm their “born assigned [said with a sneer] gender 1000 times”. So maybe the entire group of young people hasn’t drunk the Kool-Aid.
@Rob – it’s a cultural thing – I don’t know if it still exists in New Zealand which has lost a lot of its UK baggage. In NZ north (everywhere else in the world) and south (the Antarctic) is a more pronounced sense of orientation. “Far East” did mean China there meaning Far East in relation to the UK.
BTW I was once on the Islands of Aran on the west coast of Ireland. Great cliffs falling into the sea and the next stop America. I heard a couple of New Zealanders:- “it’s the inds of the earth here?”
KB, I agree totally cultural, but also a hangover from centuries past. Maybe our culture needs to evolve.
“inds” – I see what you did there. Careful, or I’ll torture you all with phonetic spellings and slang. :-)
I don’t know if you recall a low budget art-scifi movie from NZ many decades ago called “The Quiet Earth”. It’s about a guy who wakes up one day to discover he is the only person left on earth. I recall a UK travel writer reviewing the movie saying “I’ve been to New Zealand. You can wake up there any morning and believe that.”
Times have changed a bit, but yeah.
@Rob – I have to say that when I have found myself in parts of New Zealand I do have a sense of having parachuted down in virgin territory. In Scotland I’ve been up a mountain in the Highlands and my companions have said, “we’re in a wilderness” and I’d say “but there’s a house there, and I can see one over there, and there’s a road just over there.”
I haven’t seen The Quiet Earth. Choice, uz ut?
O/t I’ve been really impressed with recent NZ films like The Hunt for the Wilderpeople.
Utz rully choic, A.
Admittedly I haven’t seen it in 30+ years, so I don’t know how well it’s aged. It’s broadly in the tradition of Russian sci-fi. Very much in the head, slow, very little action. By the standards of the time the budget was huge for a New Zealand film, about a million I think. Worth finding on line for a wet Sunday.