Swimming Against the Riptide of Gender Bending

While on vacation at the ocean some time back, I was rafting some gentle waves and lost track of the shoreline.  When I looked up, I was far from land.  I immediately began to swim back for the beach but was caught in a strong current.  I fought hard for shore but was moving farther and farther from land.  There was a point where I thought I didn’t have the strength to make it back – in fact I had gotten very nearly to the point of no return.

I now have that same sense in regard to our culture.  Yesterday, the New York Times stated that the Department of Education would issue guidelines that schools should allow students to participate in activities and use facilities in accordance with the gender with which they identify.  These guidelines come with the threat of removing federal funds if schools do not comply.  I heard high school principals, state officials from around the country, and progressive educators explaining the benefits both for our students and our country.  Cultural elites are hailing this as a great day for fairness and an inevitable step of progress toward true equality for all.

My reaction?  This is total ridiculous nonsense!  Our government has absolutely lost its bureaucratic mind!  We must love these students who struggle with their sexuality.  We must encourage those who feel they don’t belong and find ways to help them connect to the broader groups.  Teaching them, however, to fight their biology seems a ludicrous way to overcome these problems.  I feel sympathy for a young man who doesn’t fit within the tribe of other young men yet longs to belong somewhere.  I feel pain for the young woman who is uncomfortable in a world that rewards a very narrow view of femininity. But to jump to the conclusion that the best, the right, thing to do is to affirm that a confused child is actually the opposite biological sex is harmful and wrong.  It's time we stood up and said so!

Our society has only exacerbated the occasional instances of gender confusion that arise by trying to normalize them.  I sympathize with the parent whose child questions his or her gender, and I can understand that parent’s fear of making things worse.  Psychologists are telling parents to embrace their child’s self-identified gender even if at a very early age.  I’ve heard the stories of children who even try to commit suicide because of their hopelessness and sense of rejection.  I believe, however, that encouraging them to go against nature will not ultimately help their hopelessness.  It will only make it worse.  Opening more bathrooms to the gender-confused will not resolve gender confusion.

Young people who are gender-confused need love, encouragement, and help.  We do young people no favors by telling them that gender is fluid and that you can be whatever you feel you are.  When you are born a male, you are a male no matter how you feel at the moment.  You have male genitalia, male hormones, and male genes.  The same is true for a female.  Denying this is just nonsense. 

I can wish all kinds of things about myself that are never going to happen.  I can feel a kinship to African American culture, believe I fit in better as a black, desire to be black, and work to appear black, but there is nothing in the world that will ever make me an African American.  People would always see me as a white guy trying to be black.  I can desire to be tall, feel tall, buy stacked shoes and long pants and pretend to be tall, but I am not tall and will never be so.  Why is this so complicated with gender?  Perhaps because of the strength of feelings of rejection of the gender confused, but that is no measure of the effectiveness of trying to be something one is not.  It is merely a measure of the need to which we should show love and attempt to help.

The ultimate question is, “What or who determines your gender?”  Is it subjective as the gender fluidists argue?  Are you free to be whatever you want?  Can you even move back and forth between genders or land somewhere in the middle?  Is biological gender a roll-of-the-dice accident of nature that really doesn’t matter?  Or are we, as I believe, created by God to be what we are?  If so, does it not make sense to accept it?  I can shake my fist at God for not making me more like others who seem to be better loved by society for the way they are constructed.  Alternatively, I can accept who God made me to be and do the best I can with it.  I argue that the latter is far healthier for the individual, whether it be in regard to gender or any other set aspect of our biology.

I could cite many examples, but gender-reassignment just creates new issues.  Top of the list of examples at the moment is Caitlyn (Bruce) Jenner.  Even now, the stories are breaking from Jenner’s close friends that Caitlyn is seriously considering transitioning back to being Bruce as life has only gotten worse trying to live as a woman.  That's no surprise to me.  We are doing our children no favors by encouraging their confusion through this kind of affirmation.  Folks, it is OK to tell people that their confusion over gender is best resolved by accepting how they were born. 

Adults who identify as transsexual find it offensive for schools to tell young people that transsexualism is anything less than normal.  Politically correct sexual-revolutionaries want to be seen as open and affirming, so they embrace the narrative.  This is what the bathroom controversy is about.  We are not helping children by embracing their gender confusion.  I want people to be fulfilled and flourish.  I believe people will be most fulfilled when they accept how they are created.  Believing this has truly become a swim against a swift current.  I hope this nonsense will not sweep us out to sea.