Grooming, 101

Washington Post reporter Laura Meckler seems slightly torqued that some states forbid the teaching of gender non-binary, non conforming self-identification. Apparently, the CDC-- remember the CDC-- has discovered that a safe school environment requires teachers to confuse students about their and everyone else’s gender.

And, dare we say, to make it nearly impossible for children to communicate without risking opprobrium, for misgendering another child by using the wrong pronouns. We recall, with some chagrin, that a school district in Kiel, Wisconsin wants to prosecute eighth-graders for sexual harassment. Their crime--misgendering a child by using the wrong pronouns.

So, it’s time perhaps to defund the CDC. 

Meckler reports:

“There’s years of research that demonstrate that curriculums that include respect for others regarding their sexual orientation and gender identity are more effective,” said Kathleen Ethier, director of the division of adolescent and school health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s true not just for LGBTQ students, she said. “When you make a school environment safe and supportive for the most vulnerable youth, you improve the school environment for everyone.”

Naturally, these are therapeutically correct buzzwords. Safe and supportive means that each child has his own pronouns. And that those who use the wrong ones are being threatened. And that does not even get to the point where this form of teaching is telling young vulnerable children that they can change their gender by changing their minds. If the CDC thinks that this is science, they ought to be defunded.

Others have called it grooming, and are appalled at the effort to induce and entice children to undergo biochemical mutilation, among other horrors. This is obviously child sexual abuse, but no one dares call it by its name.

As we know, and as Lisa Littman and Abigail Shrier have documented, this grooming exercise has succeeded in producing more gender confusion among children. If you think that this will make these children world class competitors in math and science, you have no hold on reality.

Classes that address gender identity are still the exception in American schools. But an increase in the number of young people identifying as trans or gender nonconforming has prompted many schools to change course and adopt lessons that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. A Gallup survey released last year found 16 percent of young adults in Generation Z identify as LGBT, more than any other generation.

How do teachers brainwash-- or groom-- young children. Read and it feel horrified:

Students in first grade, for instance, may be prompted to consider that there are no “boy colors” or “girl colors.”

Some classes use the book “I Am Jazz,” the story of a transgender girl. “I have a girl brain but a boy body,” she says. “This is called transgender. I was born this way!”

A lesson meant for first grade called “Pink, Blue and Purple” comes from a curriculum called “Rights, Respect, Responsibility” developed by the activist group Advocates for Youth. It tells students that gender is not a fixed attribute.

“You might feel like you’re a boy even if you have body parts that some people might tell you are ‘girl’ parts,” the teachers are told to say. “You might feel like a girl even if you have body parts that some people tell you are ‘boy’ parts. And you might not feel like you’re a boy or a girl, but you’re a little bit of both. No matter how you feel, you’re perfectly normal!”

The lesson continues with students looking at various toys and assessing if each best suits boys, girls or anyone. Through discussion, the teacher helps students understand that all the toys — dolls, drums, paints, helicopters — are for anyone.

All the research has shown that boys prefer to play with trucks and that girls prefer to play with dolls. It is not a mystery. And yet, these teachers are telling children that their feelings are more important than reality. It is a consequence of therapy culture, where everyone believes that if  you feel it, it is real. And then, of course, they are going to lecture us about the importance of facts.

And, there is more. Kindergarteners are being subjected to this ideologically driven swill:

In his kindergarten classroom, one teacher in western Massachusetts using “Rights, Respect, Responsibility” introduces the idea of gender as part of an exploration of identity. He explains that people use all sorts of pronouns: he, she, they, ze. 

He introduces the terms transgender and gender queer but doesn’t fully define them because that is too much for kindergartners, said the teacher, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because his district did not authorize him to speak publicly.

He talks to students about anatomy but declines to classify various body parts as male or female. “We don’t say a penis belongs to a man,” he said. It belongs to a human, he explains.

And he makes clear that even if a doctor proclaims at birth, “It’s a boy!” that baby may not be a boy. “Someone who was born a boy may not feel they are a boy.”

Similar lessons are offered in older grades in his school, building in sophistication as children get older.

Is it fair to call this grooming? Of course, it is fair. Is it reasonable to ban this, and perhaps to imprison those teachers who are actively engaged in child sex abuse? Why not?

Bill Farmer, a science teacher in Evanston, Ill., takes a similar approach. Like Long, he teaches about people with intersex traits — those born with reproductive or sexual anatomy who do not fit a traditional male or female binary. And he introduces the idea that gender is a social construction, not a biological fact.

He teaches that there are three separate identities: biologic sex, or what sex organs one has at birth; gender identity, or what gender one identifies with; and gender expression, meaning how one presents to the world. So a student might paint his fingernails — a typically female gender expression — but still identify as a boy.

So, just in case you were wondering why some states have forbidden the grooming of kindergarteners, now you know.