I wasn’t able to watch the Faso/Suozzi Gubernatorial Debate tonight, but BuffaloPundit liveblogged the debate.
I wonder what the name recognition of Faso and Suozzi is–around here, I’ve really only seen ads for Spitzer, and I doubt that your average Joe even knows that there are other people running, both in the democratic primary and in the general election. That being said, what a stupid move for Spitzer to choose not to participate in any upstate debates. This decision is a great way for Republicans to show Spitzer for the arrogant ass that he is and hopefully get some name recognition for Faso upstate.
Whoa…I though the public school system was bad…now look at what one private school is doing according to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle yesterday.
Park Day School is throwing out gender boundaries.
Teachers at the private Oakland elementary school have stopped asking the children to line up according to sex when walking to and from class. They now let boys play girls and girls play boys in skits. And there’s a unisex bathroom.
Admissions director Flo Hodes is even a little apologetic that she still balances classes by gender.
Park Day’s gender-neutral metamorphosis happened over the past few years, as applications trickled in for kindergartners who didn’t fit on either side of the gender line. One girl enrolled as a boy, and there were other children who didn’t dress or act in gender-typical ways. Last year the school hired a consultant to help the staff accommodate these new students.
“We had to ask ourselves, what is gender for young children?” Hodes said. “It’s coming up more and more.”
Park Day’s staff members are among a growing number of educators and parents who are acknowledging gender variance in very young children. Aurora School, another private elementary school in Oakland, also is seeing children who are “gender fluid” and hired a clinical psychologist to conduct staff training.
What?? In ELEMENTARY School?? I understand that some children may have problems with their gender identity, but is society ever going to stop to think that maybe we are CREATING these problems by programs like this? Hey if a boy wants to play with a doll, or a girl wants to act like a tomboy, fine…but this is kinda taking it to the creepy level. Do we really think Kindergarteners are able to decide which gender they want to be?
The article continues…
Children with gender variant behaviors feel intensely that they want to look and act like the other sex. They prefer toys and activities typical of the opposite gender. Signs usually start appearing between the ages of 2 and 4.
For some children, it’s a passing phase. Some grow up to be heterosexual, some gay. Some children insist they are the opposite sex although they might have a hard time explaining it. One nurse therapist said a boy once told her, “I think I swallowed a girl.”
“The point is we don’t know the outcome and don’t need to know,” said Catherine Tuerk, who runs the gender variance outreach program at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C., considered a leader in the field.
“What we need is a place where children can express what they want to,” said Tuerk, who has been working on gender variance for three decades.
Kids have always explored gender roles, but precisely how many exhibit gender variance has not been estimated, said Dr. Edgardo Menvielle, associate professor of psychiatry with the Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C.
“What is new is how parents and educators are addressing it and being open to it at earlier ages,” said Taneika Taylor of the Gender Public Advocacy Coalition, an organization in Washington, D.C., that is trying to end discrimination and violence caused by gender stereotypes.
This increased awareness, Taylor said, is fueled partly by the availability of information on the Internet and television. As the school year begins, new Web sites, e-mail support groups, educational materials and conferences offer support and education for parents and teachers of kids who defy gender stereotypes.
Their common message is not to try to change who these kids are, though mainstream mental health professionals are not unified. Some believe such feelings can and should be extinguished through therapy; others believe that can destroy children’s self-esteem.
“If you are forced to be something you don’t want to be as a kid, you are miserable,” said Carla Odiaga of Boston, the consultant hired at Park Day.
Odiaga speaks from a decade of experience counseling lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender teens who she says are scarred by early memories — a daughter forced to dress like a girl or a son whose dad hit him when he refused to play sports.
In the worst cases, children pushed by parents and picked on by peers grow depressed, suicidal or physically ill, said Caitlin Ryan, a clinical social worker at San Francisco State University who is conducting a long-term survey of gay youths and their families. She said many adolescents she talked to were picked on from kindergarten age — long before they knew their sexual identity — for looking or acting “too feminine” or “too butch.”
Gender variance is an especially touchy topic when young children are the subjects. The Traditional Values Coalition calls efforts to accommodate these kids “normalizing the abnormal.”
The group’s executive director, Andrea Lafferty, said gender variance is a Bay Area phenomenon.
“If you talk to your typical person across America, they would be appalled,” she said. “God made us male and female, and God makes no mistakes. To teach a child at an early age self-hatred, and that’s what this gender variance is, is very sad.”
Even a prof from my Alma Mater weighed in…
Warren Throckmorton, an associate professor of psychology at Grove City College in Pennsylvania known for his work in the so-called ex-gay movement, agrees that some gender-variant children could be redirected to their birth sex.
“I’ve treated kids who were quite sure they were the opposite gender and are now are quite consistent in their behavior and their feelings with their biological sex,” said Throckmorton.
But he warned against dogma on either side of the debate. “It’s so individual. I don’t want to say there’s one answer.”
I’m sure that these problems exist, and they need to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis…but solutions like the one instituted at this school seem to only perpetuate and normalize behaviors that should not be mainstream.
H/T: Inkwell