Wednesday, June 08, 2011

Gender-Bending Lesson


After studying the 1960s, including themes of the sexual revolution and the women’s liberation movement, I gave follow-up lessons on legacies of those and other issues in American culture today. This is one.

“Feminists and homosexual activists use the words ‘genders’ and ‘sexes’ almost interchangeably. They’ve been pushing an idea that there are more than two genders since at least the 1990s,” I told them. “They’ve been trying to pass a United Nations resolution that instead of two genders, there are five.”

“What would those be?” asked a girl with an incredulous look.

“They claim that male and female are out on the edges of a spectrum,” I explained as I wrote on the board. “That inside the female on the extreme right are lesbians. That inside the male on the extreme left are homosexual men, and than in the middle are ‘transgender’ people who go either way.”

“That’s ridiculous,” she said. “A lesbian is still female. She’s not another gender.”

“That’s crazy,” said a boy.

“To them,” I explained, “it’s another battle in the Sexual Revolution.”

“Well I hope they lose,” another girl said.

“Remember last month when a speaker came in to discuss bullying at an assembly in the gym?” I asked.

There were nods all around. “Last year it was a football player,” said a boy.

“Yes,” I said. “What did you think of those lectures?”

“They were good,” he said.

“What do the rest of you think?”

Most indicated the lectures had been interesting.Joel Baum Fox News

“Well, in Oakland, California, students get different kinds of bullying lessons,” I said, wheeling the LCD projector into position and plugging in my laptop. “Watch this.”

It was a “bullying” lesson on “gender diversity” in which the lecturer told fourth grade students they could be a girl or a boy or both. Joel Baum told students: “They can feel like girls. They can feel like boys. They can feel like both, and they can feel like, as I said, kinda like neither.”

Baum is educational director for Gender Spectrum, an activist group pushing the idea that the two sexes - male and female - are too rigid. Students can move around on the “gender spectrum” depending on how they feel. They can change whenever they want.

“They’re way too young to be listening to that stuff in the fourth grade,” said another girl.

“They shouldn’t teach that stuff,” said a boy. “It’s crazy. Those kids are going to believe it now. They believe anything the teacher tells them.”

“Would you think it was all right to teach this,” I asked the the girl, “if the students were older?”

“Yes,” she said.

“At what age then?”

“I don’t know - high school maybe.”

“It’s mandatory for all students in Oakland to take it from kindergarten to twelfth grade,” I said. “Mandatory means they have no choice.”

“That’s brainwashing,” said a the boy. “Those schools shouldn’t be doing that. It hasn't got much to do with bullying.”

“What if it were taught only in high school and students could choose to take the 'gender spectrum' course or not to take it?”

“That would be okay,” he said.

“The California Teachers’ Association, the CTA, is paying for this. That’s the teachers’ union,” I explained.

“Why?” he asked.

“Teachers’ unions all over the country are very left-wing,” I said. “They think this stuff is wonderful, and teachers’ unions are the most powerful groups in the Democrat Party.”

“You’re not left-wing,” said a girl.

“I’m unusual,” I said. “There are very few conservatives in this profession.”

“And you’re retiring.”

“Yup.” “This kind of gender-bending stuff is happening all over the country,” I explained. “The Maine legislature, for example, is about to vote on a bill that would prevent males who claim to be females from suing when they’re not allowed to use the ladies’ room in middle school or in a restaurant. In two cases, a boy’s parents and a man have sued a school and a restaurant and the Maine Human Rights Commission has agreed with them. Now the Orono Middle School is being forced to allow a boy to use the girls’ bathroom. A Denny’s Restaurant was forced to allow a man dressed as a woman to use the ladies’ room there.”

“In both cases here, the newspaper article refers to the boy and the man with the personal pronouns of ‘she’ and ‘her’ as if they were indeed females,’” I explained. “I don’t do that.”

“If you were in the Maine Legislature, how would you vote?” I asked. “How many of you would vote ‘yes,’ which would allow schools and restaurants to prevent males from using female bathrooms or locker rooms?”

Five or six hands went up.

“Who would vote ‘no’?”

Two hands.

“Who isn’t sure?”

Another five or six hands went up.

“Okay,” I said. “We’ll see what the legislature does.”


42 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good grief! If Adam and Eve had been taught by the types of California educators you wrote about, the human race might well have disappeared from the face of the earth by now...

aliledar said...

Good grief indeed! Have they no awareness of nature? Talk about a disconnect. How sad and how dangerous for kids and for society.

Anonymous said...

Good grief, you mean someone lets these legislators leave the asylum without an escort. Mercy.
How about three sexes, male, female and confused. Or maybe UniSex, you figure it out when you get there.
I have enough of my own insecurities without having to stand next to someone who doesn't know what to use or where to use it.
I cringe to think of whats next.

Anonymous said...

I can't wait to see how the Carroll County Liberal Democrats gather their talking points on this issue and then attack you saying you suck as a teacher and just wait kids; another teacher is on the way next year. I can almost predict it now, while they read the talking points as their writing; "Your argument is weak here, go to ALL CAPITALS while writing".

Keep it up Tom, I love seeing liberals get that rabid foam appearing in the corners of their mouths when you rile them up.

Name withheld for fear of being put on the Obamma watch list!

JOHN R said...

TOM, WHEN YOU STAY AT HOME YOU DO
HAVE AN GOOD GRASP OF WHAT YOUR
TALKING ABOUT.

Mr. Crowley said...

Androgynous people are the goal of the satanic elite who rule this country. Among these so-called global elite are some very nasty and deviant rituals and practices. But as far as the gender bending stuff is concerned it is all very deliberate and calculated. Just look at Lady Gaga. It was Madonna before her. And on and on. Androgyny is worshiped by these satanic freaks. And they put it in our faces via the mass media, which they control. It is far stranger than you can imagine.

Listen folks, this isn't a pretty picture. We are ruled by pedophiles and murderers who worship at some very dark altars.

one of the benefits of the internet is that there is a lot of info out there just waiting to be found.

It ain't baseball and apple pie anymore.

Stanley Kubrick knew the score.

Anonymous said...

Good Grief! And as if this wasn't enough, The U.S. Department of Education is another bastion of skewed thinking.

Great article, Tom! Thanks for exposing the problem.



Show Low Yaqui

Anonymous said...

If our society were not so afraid of the naked body, after a while these problems would go away. Sex is here to stay, why are we so afraid of it.

Winston Smith said...

Freud would have a field day with this one.

Anyhow, more important than gender issues is this weekends Bildeberger meeting in Switzrland.

If you care about the world you live in than you will research it. This is a meeting of the worlds top bankers, politicians, and scumbags. Not unlike bretton woods they are conspiring to ruin us.

Anonymous said...

“They’ve been trying to pass a United Nations resolution that instead of two genders, there are five.”

Tom, could you please direct me to a link about this U.N. resolution?

Thanks.

Anonymous said...

Good grief! People getting upset because schoolkids spend a few minutes during the schoolyear learning about gender harassment and to hear things as shocking as:

"Earrings used to be something only girls and pirates wore," Baum said to fourth-grade giggles.

And what's on the outside doesn't necessarily reflect what's on the inside, he said.

"People can feel like girls," he said. "They can feel like boys. They can feel like both, and they can feel like neither."

Gasp! OMG!! What is becoming of this world??!!??

At least that is the reaction of some uptight old farts.

Kids, though, like fourth-grader Desmond Pare thought that it was no big deal.

"I think it's about how it doesn't matter who you are," he said. "If you're a girl who likes girl stuff, or a boy who like boy stuff, it just matters if you're human."

I can hear some of you screaming now at your computers - "NO, gays are not natural, they shouldn't exist, trans-gender people should be out-lawed!

C'mon, let your bigotry out. Don't think about the misfortunate ordeals that a gay or transgender has to go through in life. Just bury them away.



Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/05/23/BAI51JJQ35.DTL#ixzz1OnrhbTqe

Anonymous said...

From New Scientist


Transsexual differences caught on brain scan

26 January 2011

Differences in the brain's white matter that clash with a person's genetic sex may hold the key to identifying transsexual people before puberty. Doctors could use this information to make a case for delaying puberty to improve the success of a sex change later....

Full story

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20032-transsexual-differences-caught-on-brain-scan.html

Anonymous said...

Keep it up Tom, I love seeing Cons making fools of themselves!

lol

Name withheld for fear of wackos burning a cross in my yard

Winston Smith said...

BILDERBERG 2011
St.Moritz Switzerland

This weekend!!!!!

You should be concerned!

Never heard of Bilderberg? Ask yourself why after you find out who these people are.

You should be very very concerned.

Gender issues? While certainly a scary subject we have turn our collective attention to Switzerland at this very moment our fate is being decided.

Paul said...

"Bilderberg" It even has a Hollywood evil sounding name! I think you give these uber-elite characters too much credit, though.

Seems to me this is just a big gathering of powerful, egotistical bastards, stroking eachother's egos and whatnot, and thinking of ways to consolidate power that best suits them. OK, so maybe a lot of them may be be classified as evil creeps, but I hardly think that talk of eliminating portions of the population or whatever other such theories are out there get beyond drunken banter on the golf course.

Come to think of it, Winston, perhaps you are onto something....

Paul said...

....but then again, Winston, you also think gender issues are a scary issue, so I gotta think you are as wacky as Tom and his peeps.

Winston Smith said...

Dear Paul,

I realize that you buy into the Disney version of history and politics. I get it. Do yourself a favor and do some research on Bildeberg It ain't pretty. Consider who attends and the amount of secrecy involved. And the way they " stroke each others ego" is by deciding things like, who replaces Strauss Kahn, the Euro, the formation of the WTO, etc. Etc.
Or you can justnwatch the nightly news and hear no mention it. Do you have any idea what is going on?
Let me guess, you swallow all that the corporate media tells you to? And anyone contesting that is either a conspiracy theorist or un American? They certainly have you in there pocket.

And I do not share toms opinion on the gender issue.
However, I said scary b/c of the obvious PR campaign that has emasculated, or is trying to, the American male.

Paul said...

Winston, I too believe that our country has been taken over by ill-intentioned corporations. I do not believe everything they tell me, nor do I believe every rumor I hear about them. I like to get the facts before deciding.

I have researched this group a bit but perhaps you can point me to some evidence that proves the extent of their evil-doings. Unlike Tom, I know you will try and do this. Tom posts some wacky stuff and then ignores requests for his sources. Perhaps he is doing this again with the United Nations resolution, but maybe he really has something this time. We'll see.

It seems to me that facts mean little to people of his ilk. Not surprising, given the antics of heros of his like Palin. After getting caught flubbing up on basic history lessons with her Paul Revere comments she fails to (wo)man-up and admit it. As the globe said:

"Palin seems incapable of gracefully conceding an error. It’s no sin to be hazy on the details of Paul Revere’s ride. But voters might well entertain doubts about a politician too stubborn — or arrogant — to accept a simple correction."

Like Tom, pretending she didn't flub up.

But she is a joke anyway. Her candicacy doesn't really warrant any more serious thought than did Trumps.

But back to Bilderburg, I'm willing to listen.

Winston Smith said...

Sorry, I can't do research for you. I only know enough to stay away from corporate media and try and find some semblance of truth from other sources.

You can start by watching the RT America broadcast from last night about Bildeberg. They are far from the mass media point of view. Interesting. RT has a YouTube channel.

Also, as I write this there are three Swiss members of parliament who want to go to Bildeberg and arrest Kissinger for war crimes. No joke. The Swiss see through this bs. We seem to enjoy it.

Infowars.com listen

I am fully aware of the source.

Winston Smith said...

BTW it's near impossible to try and prove things that aren't meant to be known. You have to be as objective as possible and follow your gut. Connect the dots. This is time consuming and unpleasant. It's a lot easier to ignore it and believe everything Brian Williams reads to you every night. Or what you read in the paper, doesn't matter which one.

It would be easy to prove this if we had the free press we were supposed to have and used to. The one that keeps govt in check rather than run the PR campaign.

Lastly, I fully ignore anything to do with democrats and republicans. I don't play games that are rigged.

Winston Smith said...

YouTube

Search: RT America Bildeberg


That should bring you to last nights piece on Bildeberg.


Btw, if you want a refreshing alternative to NBC, abc, CBS, cnbc, fox, PBS, and CNN then watch RT America news..great stuff. Online and on time Warner cable in Maine.

Paul said...

Winston, I have been watching RT from time to time since you mentioned them earlier. I like them. I also have no reason to distrust the Boston Globe. I have heard nothing about them playing around with the facts. I watch no network news. I get a lot of good exposes from Rolling Stone magazine - the piece this week on Roger Ailes and Fox "news" was fascinating - talk about unabashedly distorting the truth!!

And, like you, I loathe the two party system we have.

Anyway, I do a lot of my own research, I connect the dots, and follow my gut - which leads me to believe that the media I rely on is every bit as trustworthy as anything else to be found out there. The internet is dangerous ground - one can find ANYTHING they want to support their beliefs....just see the list of "experts" claiming global warming is a hoax, or even rubbish our own Tom puts on the internet about Obama tripling defecits and detainees having to be released, etc, etc.

I have not yet reached the stage of cynicism that I automatically think everything considered 'mainstream" is a lie.

I do believe that Bilderberg is up to no good and is a horrible thing for our world....and MUCH more worthy of our concern than children being told to accept boys who like pink and girls who play with trucks.

Alex said...

I feel like it's difficult to argue about gender issues coming from a rural, conservative area. Obviously, homosexuals and transexuals do not have a great presence in small-town New England, and our children do not have the opportunity to learn from those who feel differently about their sexual preferences and orientations. The important thing to note is: there are people out there.

I'm in college out in California, about 45 minutes south of San Francisco. Needless to say, there is a large and vocal LGBTQ community here. Coming from a town like Fryeburg, I had only known two people who were gay, and one of them came as a surprise to me over the summer. Being here has opened my eyes to the size of this community, and how passionate they are about their cause. You can walk up to any member of the LGBTQ and have an incredible conversation about their life and thoughts on gender. It also makes me realize how sickening it is that back home people are afraid to "come out."

They are afraid, because back home "them gays are abominations." This thought begins with a lot of commentators on this blog, and trickles down (thanks, Reagan!) to the children. Kids that aren't exposed to different ideas in the slightest grow up openly using words like "gay" and "fag" without caring about who they are hurting. These same kids made my friend refuse to come out until he had graduated. These same kids slashed the roof of a Mustang convertible owned by a bisexual student, who had worked two jobs every day in the summer to save up for it. These same kids call those they don't like "fags," just to exercise their power over them. This isn't right, and this is what the video you reference is trying to abolish.

If you are not gay or transexual, a video on tolerance is not going to immediately have you putting on mommy's dresses and listening to Ricky Martin while sipping Cosmopolitans. It will, however, make you realize that kids can think differently than you. This seed of tolerance will allow those who were once too afraid to come out to make their voices heard. It will let others know that these "fags" are actually real people, who want to live their lives just like anyone else.

I know that I'm going to be accused of being gay, just like the last time I stuck up for LGBT rights on this blog. That's fine. I know I'm not, and I'm secure in the fact that I can converse with, argue with, befriend, and trust members of the LGBT without having Satan override my soul and make me like boys. Because that would be preposterous, yes? Oh wait, that's just what someone was mentioning above...

Anonymous said...

Well said, Alex. Not everybody is confident enough in themselves to show tolerance for those differing than themselves sexually. Some insecure people even get so riled up that they don't even want others, such as school children, to learn about reality.

Tom McLaughlin said...

Alex,
Your implication is that the Bay area is more typical of the human condition than rural Fryeburg, Maine. What is typical?

Homosexuality has been around for millennia at least. Except for Greece, it has been condemned for millennia by the world's biggest religions. It's also been called the "love that dare not speak its name." Now it won't shut up.

Studies have shown that about 1-3% of the population is homoesexual - self-identified. That people who are different should not be bullied is something any civilized person can support, but to indoctrinate schoolchildren with pro-homosexual propaganda is way over the line.

What causes homosexuality? Activists like Mr. Baum would insist that it's inborn, but evidence to support that notion is non-existent or, at best, is extremely thin. Yet that agenda item is presented as if it were scientific fact.

More evidence exists that, at least in some cases, it's a learned behavior. Yet activists are extremely intolerant of any views opposing their propaganda. Through hate-crime laws, they've criminalized any speech critical of their agenda in Canada and the UK and similar proposals are high on their agenda in the USA as well.

They're quite good at embellishing their victim role, but free speech is becoming a victim when they have their way.

if my tax money were used to pay Mr. Baum and his ilk, I would be more vocal in my opposition, but as far as I can tell, it was the California teachers' union funds used. Other state and federal funds have been coopted however by homosexual activists to push their agenda under the guise of preventing bullying or the spread of AIDS and it's coming to a school near everyone if it's not there already.

Anonymous said...

“They’ve been trying to pass a United Nations resolution that instead of two genders, there are five.”

Tom, I am wondering why you did not respond to my first request for a link to where you got this information.

Kevin said...

Oh, Tom, do we really have to work out your sexual hang-ups in this public forum?

We get it, like Ted Haggard in Colorado you have some issues to work through regarding homosexuality. (Why is it that the most outspoken against gays are so often the ones to be closet homosexuals?) You would like to pretend that it is a choice. That leads me to believe that you could fathom making that "choice" - and to get it up for another man. I think any heterosexual man could no more make the "choice" to get it up in these acts than they could make the choice to get it up for an animal.

Sorry, but speaking for me, there is NO WAY that I could do it...it is not a choice for me, but a physical impossibility.

I guess for you it is different though. Interesting.

Steve said...

To the Anon who is asking for Tom to give evidence about his UN statement:

You must be new here. Tom does not defnd his lies. How could he? What is he suppossed to do, if he gave you the source for most of his lies he would have to bend over and show you his arse.

Stick around though, it is fun poking holes in his fantasies and getting some good chuckles in the process.

Anonymous said...

New Study Finds Genetic Link to Homosexuality

National Cancer Institute
National Institutes of Health

A new study has found a correlation between a specific region of the X chromosome and male homosexuality. The finding represents new evidence that sexual orientation may be influenced by heredity.

The study is reported in the July 16 issue of Science by scientists from the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland.


***************************


No matter how people feel about the issue, it is increasingly hard to argue that genes play no role in homosexuality. The evidence began to pile up in 1991, when studies showed that identical twins were more likely to have the same sexual orientation than other pairs of siblings. That same year, a California scientist reported slight brain differences between gay and straight men. And in 1993, an NIH researcher found a stretch of DNA on the X chromosome that seemed to harbor one or more genes affecting sexual orientation.

Charles Landers said...

Don't use science and facts to make a point with Tom. Just look at his stance on global warming.

A study done by the University of Maryland has shown that the more Fox News is watched the more ignorant one becomes as to world events. This seems quite obvious but it is nice to have a study to back it up!

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/6132266/university_of_maryland_study_shows.html?cat=9

Anonymous said...

As proof of an attempt to "indoctrinate schoolchildren with pro-homosexual propaganda", Tom offers the following:


“They can feel like girls. They can feel like boys. They can feel like both, and they can feel like, as I said, kinda like neither.”


So THAT is the "homosexual agenda". Yikes, dangerous stuff. They are stating the truth about how people can feel. I know that Tom has troubles with the truth, but....wow.

Anonymous said...

aliledar said:
"Have they no awareness of nature?"

I guess aliledar doesn't.


Bisexual Species: Unorthodox Sex in the Animal Kingdom

Homosexual behavior is common in nature

By Emily V. Driscoll | July 10, 2008 | 48

Recent same-sex couplings at New York s Central Park Zoo include these two young male chinstrap penguins, Squawk and Milo.

Two penguins native to Antarctica met one spring day in 1998 in a tank at the Central Park Zoo in midtown Manhattan. They perched atop stones and took turns diving in and out of the clear water below. They entwined necks, called to each other and mated. They then built a nest together to prepare for an egg. But no egg was forthcoming: Roy and Silo were both male.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=bisexual-species

Anonymous said...

So much bull I don't know where to start.

First off, "pro-homosexual propoganda" is not a bad thing. It will keep those that choose that life from being horribly bullied and/or brutalized.

But doing it in the fourth grade may be pushing it. Try middle school, closer to the sexually aware age for the average child.

As for homosexual tendencies not being in-born, but picked up later, look to nature. Animals, not only demestic but wild, couple with same sex. Not as common or often as humans, but it happens. Get over yourself.

As for the lawsuits, that's just sad. If you have a dick, go into men's restroom, if not, women's. Period.

Do what you want in private. Dress how you want in public. But some lines shouldn't be crossed.

Anonymous said...

Tom admits he can choose to be sexually attracted to males!!!!!!

Atta boy, Tom!

Tom is saying that, if he wanted, he has it in him to be turned on by naked men!!!

Only Tom knows what his body is capable of...

lol

Oh, this is too good!!!!

Anonymous said...

If Tom can choose to be excited by men or women I suppose that makes him Bi. Seems he should be glad that children are being taught that this is acceptable.

Anonymous said...

Do people choose to be gay?

By Nadia Williams


Short answer: no.

Long answer: I have never heard of anybody at some point thinking: “Hmm. I wonder which sexual orientation I should go for,” then writing down the pros and cons of each and making a pick. (If you did, not only are you weird, you’re probably bi.) If people did this, do you honestly think anybody would CHOOSE a path which will bring teasing, scorn, vilification, condemnation and rejection?

The idea that people choose to be gay is just ridiculous. I hope this stupidity will go the same way as witch burnings, fading into history with a whole load of other bad ideas we grew out of.


We do choose every day either to be kind or to be ignorant. Why do so many fail this simple test of humanity?

Anonymous said...

Tom's fascination with photos of leather clad men is becoming clearer. At times he chooses to be turned on by such things. At other times he chooses to be repulsed. Aren't his choices fascinating.

Anonymous said...

How many people out there remember making the decision to be turned on by the opposite sex instead of the same sex?

No one?

Case closed.

Richard Kay said...

Case closed indeed. How could anybody deny that people who know that they could choose to be sexually aroused by a member of the same sex is showing, at the very least, latent homosexual tendencies.

I have nothing against people who show these behaviors, nor those who keep it hidden but know they have it in them if they so choose. I support Tom in whatever decisions he may make in this area.

Anonymous said...

Tom seems worried that our school children will be "indoctrinated with pro-homosexual propaganda".

I wonder if he would share with us what he imagines would happen to society if this did happen. Could you please share with us, Tom, the nightmare scenario that would come to be if people become "indoctrinated"?

Anonymous said...

What would happen??? I shudder to think. Gays would be prancing around with nobody keeping them in place and making sure they knew that they were not "normal".

People in dresses might go into a stall in the Women's bathroom and take out their hidden weiner to pee!!!

Society would crumble if we accepted these people. It would no longer be acceptable for me to snicker and call out words of derision when I encounter a freako in public!! How am I supposed to feel better about myself if I don 't have them to look down on? Normal peoples egos would suffer which would probably affect businesses.

Aargh, it would be disaster. I wouldn't even get that great, "naughty" feeling of breaking taboos when I play dress-up when nobody is home....

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