Atta Boy, Girl!

There is a large segment of our population that knows Bruce Jenner as a former Olympic gold medalist in track and field way back in the 70’s. He appeared in a bunch of mediocre made for TV movies and I read that he was even Erik Estrada’s replacement for a brief time on the TV show CHiPs (I loved that show).  There’s also a segment of the population that knows him as the patriarch on that terrible Kardashians ‘reality’ show, and if I ever watched more than ten seconds of an episode I might be able to tell you what exactly he did on there.

Lately, though, Bruce Jenner has become quite widely known for something that has nothing to do with sporting achievements or horrible television. You see, Bruce Jenner has made it very public knowledge that he no longer wants to be a man and has taken several steps toward his goal of eventually living his life as a woman – even considering complete gender reassignment surgery; a sex change in layman’s terms.

While some people are gossiping about this, poking fun in many cases, and generally shaking their heads in disbelief, I have taken a different approach. As someone who would probably feel weird taking a bubble bath because it feels a little too “girly”, the concept of someone identifying as a gender completely different than what they were born is almost unfathomable to me. It’s mystifying but incredibly interesting at the same time.  What’s even more interesting is that I see around a half dozen people on a daily basis living their lives in much the same way as Mr. Jenner is attempting to do.

You see folks, this isn’t just a tabloid headline. I have started to notice the number of folks in our little city that are going through their own process of gender identifying. This is a very real phenomenon that is happening right here at home and I think it needs to be talked about a little more. Even more than being talked about, I think it’s something that needs to be understood because the people who are going through this transition are, I believe, some of the bravest people alive and they deserve our support.

I’m not proud to say it, but I wouldn’t have always thought this way.  I grew up in a very small town that was rife with many backwards attitudes – not the least of which was homophobia. In our backwoods little community, boys liked girls and girls liked boys – and anyone who declared that they didn’t fit this mold would simply be tormented and made an example of so relentlessly that nobody would ever think about ‘coming out’.  It’s probably why I didn’t find out until we were all in University that 2 of my closest friends since grade school were gay. They said that they were, literally, petrified of outing themselves as homosexuals in our town because they would have been almost completely ostracized.

The sad part is that through my upbringing and immaturity, I may have been among the folks who tormented these guys who I had always seen as my friends – and that was only because they loved and were attracted to men instead of women.  Could you imagine the number of heads that would have exploded if these guys had announced that they felt as though maybe they should have been women instead of men? Even though sexual orientation and gender identification sometimes have nothing to do with one another, it would have been a perfect storm of conditions that probably would have led to burnings at the stake. Being gay would have been a little molehill compared to the mountain of a Chris who decided that maybe he was really a Christine.

Thankfully, the stigma of homosexuality has been reduced significantly in our society. I probably know as many gay people as I do straight folks and they are all very proud of who they are. There will always be detractors, but most people have moved past the point where they are shocked and outraged by who someone chooses to share their bed with. That being said, even though my mind may be far more open than it was when I was younger, let me go on record as saying this whole transgender/transsexual/intergender thing is completely uncharted territory for this old fellah, and I really don’t understand it much at all. The good news is I want to understand it because anyone who has the intestinal fortitude to live their life completely oblivious to what others think of them is someone I want to be in the corner of.

In our lives, we all wear masks depending on who we are dealing with. One for your friends, one for your family, one for your boss – the list goes on. I am in complete awe of those who not only refuse to wear these masks to impress others, but they don’t lie to themselves about who they are either. Whether it’s Bruce Jenner or the fellow at the coffee shop, they make us all look weak with their courage to not live within the limits of what society expects from them.

I’d love to know more about it all but I have no idea where to even start. 

Perhaps listening to a former Olympic gold medalist without snide judgment is a place for us all to begin. 

Dressing Down

So, the big news in Moncton last week was about a young girl attending Harrison Trimble High School who took a stand against what she believes is unfair discrimination against females at her school. She wore a dress to class that, allegedly, didn’t fall into the confines of the school’s dress code guidelines and she was given detention because her outfit was seen as “inappropriate” and a “sexual distraction” to young (and oddly, older) males at the school.

The issue has been covered from all sorts of different angles, with the young lady drumming up a lot of support for her fight. My opinion of the issue aside, I believe that this girl is a great representative of what we should want in our young people; someone who stands up for what they believe in and that can do so in a respectful and eloquent manner.  Kudos to you, Miss!

Regardless of how this issue shakes out, it allows me to bring forth an opinion that I have had for several years now that isn’t necessarily a popular one.  I think it’s time to ask why schools – who are obviously concerned (maybe overly so) with dress code – haven’t instituted the policy of school uniforms for their students?  Before you get out the torches and pitchforks and accuse me of trying to take away kids’ individuality, let me explain.

Back when I went to school, as it is today, the way a child dressed was a huge indicator of social status and in many cases it determined which clique you belonged to. You had your ‘preps’, with only the most expensive clothing and top of the line running shoes. Those were the popular kids who ran in all the best circles and their wardrobes certainly indicated it. You had the ‘skids’, whose wardrobes generally consisted of well-worn denim jeans and jackets with their favorite heavy metal band patches on them. Despite some of those kids being the absolute kindest people you would ever meet, they were categorized as lower on the food chain and were somehow looked down upon by the more popular kids. You had your ‘poor kids’ who didn’t have the latest designer brands, the ‘burnouts’ who didn’t care how they dressed, and the ‘nerds’ who couldn’t put together a fashionable outfit to save their lives. All these kids were judged and placed in social circles simply because of their daily attire.  It was foolish then and it’s foolish now.  I say give everyone one uniform to wear and watch how fast those prejudices disappear.

Every year, there are parents who shell out hundreds of dollars to make sure their kids are decked out in new clothes for school so they don’t look like ragamuffins next to some of their peers. I, sadly, am one of those parents. $8 for a polo shirt and $10 for a pair of khakis would be a heck of a lot easier to swallow than $65 for the newest Under Armour hoodie. Imagine how easy it would be to get your kids out the door in the morning as well! No more trying on 10 outfits before they decide on one; Heaven to Moms and Dads.  By the way, the first kid who complains about not be able to ‘express themselves’ through their clothes, I simply point to the lyrics of a song that was popular back in my school days – like the Fresh Prince’s Mom says “You go to school to learn, not for a fashion show.”

Speaking of expression, though, true expression shouldn’t come from the clothes you wear. I’m speaking directly to you, kids. It should come from important things like your creativity, your personality, and what you bring to the table as a human being. Do you want your worth determined by the labels you wear on your clothes or the type of person you are?  Don’t you think it might be easier to form an opinion about someone if you didn’t make a snap judgement about them based on the way they’re dressed? You and I both know the answer to that one.

When it all boils down to it, schools should be institutions of learning where kids are coming together to help one another instead of segregating each other into groups based on a trivial thing like fashion. There are so many problems in this province’s education system, we really shouldn’t be putting the dress someone chooses to wear to school at the forefront of any discussion involving our kids’ educations.

If the schools are going to leave dress code open to interpretation and areas of grey, they shouldn’t be surprised when things like last week’s brouhaha erupt from time to time. I think it’s stupid for schools to tell a young girl that her outfit is sexually distracting, but it’s equally as stupid to assume that kids won’t challenge authority and push the envelope of what is deemed acceptable if the opportunity to do so is available.

Take the distractions away and put everyone in the same uniform. If you give kids less reasons to judge one another, you might be shocked at how well they can get along. Maybe all this time spent arguing about bare shoulders could be better spent actually learning about what’s important? I think we should try the idea on for size.

Everything Your Kids Want To Know About Sex...

Over the last few weeks in Ontario there have been an awful lot of students missing time from school.  They’re not ill and they’re not playing hooky; quite the contrary. They are missing school with the full support of their parents because of the unspeakable situation that has developed with a new part of the Ontario education curriculum.

They’re actually teaching kids about sex.  How terrible.

The new curriculum is moving beyond ‘boys have a penis and girls have a vagina’ and into more topics that are relevant to our culture today like homosexuality, identifying exploitative behaviors, gender identity, and many other subjects that are front and center to this generation. It should come as no surprise to anyone, though, that this is not being well received by many parents who believe that there is no place for this kind of sexual education in the school system.

I wonder if these are the same kinds of parents who would turn the car keys over to an eager 16 year old who hasn’t had one driving lesson. Sending a teenager out into the world without a firm grasp on their sexuality is just like putting an unlicensed driver behind the wheel of a high performance sports car – it’s a disaster just waiting to happen.

For whatever reasons, some people believe that sexual education should consist solely of telling your kids that sex is something they shouldn ‘t do until they’re married. It’s dirty, it’s dangerous, and something you should just completely avoid until you find the man or woman of your dreams and you make time for it every Tuesday in your home with the lights off. That’s all well and good to preach that, but it’s not reality. If you disagree, you obviously don’t remember what it was like to be a teenager.

Around the time of my thirteenth birthday, I became a monster fueled by hormones and constantly distracted by what was happening to my body and mind as it pertained to the ladies. I knew only two things about the opposite sex: I liked girls and I had an overpowering desire to touch one.  Aside from a rudimentary pamphlet with drawings of the reproductive organs that we were given in sixth grade, I didn’t have a clue about sexuality. My only sexual education came from a pile of dirty magazines my friends and I found in the woods and, as you can imagine, our ideas of what sex was all about were hilarious at best and potentially destructive at worst.

The only teacher who had the courage to speak to us frankly about sexuality was my eighth grade health teacher, and he was practically run out of town on a rail. We were a bunch of kids hopped up on hormones with no knowledge of safe sex techniques or sexual health of any type – so it really shouldn’t surprise anyone that our little corner of the world had some of the highest teenage pregnancy rates in Canada. You know it’s bad when they make a movie poking fun at the fact (check out New Waterford Girl for a great piece of Canadiana).  It’s a miracle I wasn’t a father at 16.

That was over 25 years ago, and even though our society is almost unrecognizable from those days, some people’s attitudes toward sex haven’t changed one iota. There are cultural and religious factors at play in why some parents don’t want their kids learning about sex, and there are some parents who just don’t know how to or can’t be bothered to talk to their kids about it. Instead of arming them with the knowledge they need to navigate the sticky world of sexuality, abstinence is promoted and sexual shaming is used as a weapon to try and make sure that our kids are ignoring every cue their bodies are screaming at them.  Good luck with that approach, folks.

My boys are seven and three, and we have been teaching them about sexuality from the moment they have been able to start questioning about it. They know all the proper terms for their parts, they know where babies come from, and they know that not all boys like girls and not all girls like boys. It’s a pretty good starter kit, we think, but it’s the kind of information that many Ontario parents think should be strictly off limits. Knowledge is power, and some are rendering Ontario children impotent to deal with the issue of their sexuality.

Luckily, many parents are showing support for the initiative and other provinces, for the most part, are worlds ahead of Ontario as far as what they’re teaching in school curriculums about sex education. The fact is, though, that parents should be the prime educators of their children – not just in sex ed, but everything under the sun. It saddens me that the parents who are keeping their children home from school because of sexual education classes are sending a very dangerous message about how they want their children to go forth in the world.

“You are not to learn about anything I don’t agree with!”

Those parents don’t want vibrant, independent thinkers. They want smaller versions of themselves that will continue with their lives; regurgitating the same outdated ideas and principles of their parents.  That’s just what we want – another generation of people screwing things up like we did.

The birds and the bees won’t bring down modern civilization. It’s about time we brought all our kids into the loop, before we have a whole bunch of extra kids to deal with.