play time fun or red flag?

I really should be studying at this point but I really don’t want to! I know it sounds like I should be doing something else besides blogging but come on what could be better than simply blogging away!

Okay Perez sorry for copying your post but this is interesting and leads right into a rant by me. Okay Sherri Shepard…chill out! This is the precise reason why gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered and questioning people have such a hard time growing up. This sentiment of the hegemonic male being the ideal for young boys needs to end. I know she did not say that but I know what she meant no matter how she tried to down play it.

Dressing up does not make a child gay or transgendered! It only means that your child has a great imagination and you should encourage them to maintain that spirit. That imaginative spirit will be an asset to your child when everyone else has had it pounded out of them by their early teens.

What Sherri is really saying here is that no child of hers no matter how much she loves them is going to make her look bad because that child is part of her legacy. Parents feel ashamed of their transgendered children because they are so caught up in the constraints of our society as it stands. If you really love your child you should talk to them and let them know that you love them no matter what.

If parents could just do that there would be fewer emotionally traumatized LGBT youth. That shame and guilt planted into the minds of children from birth takes years to overcome. I still have not overcome it and many out there will never recover. For the record I dressed up in both my parents’ clothes and pretended I was an adult. There was no sexual undertone I was simply playing pretend and that is healthy!

We teach our boys that they must be rough and tough and be a “real boy.” We have this social construct of the specific gender identify that says boys wear pants and girls wear dresses. We scold boys for wanting to play with dolls or experimenting in the kitchen and tell them that only sissies behave like that. After filling our boys with this fear they become incredibly guilty about liking anything that would be seen as too feminine. Then we complain 20-30 years down the road that men are this and that when we made them feel that they have to seem that way in the first place!

Men are incredibly afraid of dealing with life issues especially those of an emotional nature. I think men would be truly stronger if they were encouraged to tackle these issues head on. The real issue here is not LGBT people it is about society and its continual production of emotionally crippled men. If both men and women were truly seen as equal human beings there would be no need for this separation of socially acceptable behaviour.

I can go on and on about this issue but I won’t. What do you think?