Dana Sitar is a 28-year-old writer who works as a barista in a bookstore coffee shop to pay her bills. Divorced and childless, she is perhaps not the role model of happiness and success to whom America’s mothers usually turn when they need parenting advice, but being a feminist entitles her to tell you what you’re doing wrong. Quite frankly, she’s decided that your parenting is too heteronormative:
Your Toddler Might Be Gay
. . . In a world where we’re finally making some progress on understanding non-straight identities as deserving of recognition, respect, and equal rights, forcing heteronormative assumptions on yet another generation is a huge step away from an inclusive and tolerant society. . . .
If we keep talking to that little girl for the next 10 years as if it’s her destiny to fall in love with a man (put a pin in the implied sexism and other layers of bigotry for another conversation), how will she react to herself and others if she finds herself attracted to the girls around her, not the boys? Or to both? . . .
How will she treat herself when she realizes she wants to kiss the girl down the street, not the boy next door? . . .
Not being a bigot is a huge first step, and I thank you for it.
But it’s not enough to quietly believe in equality. We have to actively practice tolerance and become aware of the presumptions we project. We have to let our kids see a world where their identities are all treated as normal and acceptable, regardless of the odds.
Perhaps you didn’t notice that she used the phrase “our kids,” although Dana Sitar has no children herself, so that her use of the first-person plural implies that this feminist coffee-shop waitress is asserting her proprietary interest in your kids. Yes, mothers of America: Your expectation that your daughter will grow up to be normal — even in 2014, about 98% of U.S. women are heterosexual — is a sort of prejudice, just one step removed from “being a bigot.”
Feminists condemn you for “forcing heteronormative assumptions” on your girls, thus impeding “progress” toward “an inclusive and tolerant society.” You’re a homophobic hater, mom. Your little lesbian toddler is already being oppressed — by you! (You’re probably showing her heteronormative Disney cartoons, aren’t you?)
How is America supposed to make progress toward an inclusive and tolerant society, if mothers keep brainwashing little girls into thinking it’s quote-unquote “normal” for them to like boys? If we are ever going to achieve the kind of equality feminist theory demands, mothers must put an end to this intolerant oppressive heteronormativity. Only then can your daughters be free to grow up as completely confused as Rollins College sophomore Bekki Charbonneau:
I am a queer woman. I flip-flop between identities. I have been “straight,” then “bisexual,” then “pansexual,” then a weeping puddle in the middle of the floor (which has occurred frequently enough to be considered an identity, in my opinion).
I often feel “not gay enough” to hang out in queer spaces; I feel like an intruder or a wannabe. I have had friends “jokingly” tell me that I should just “pick a side already.” And sometimes I actually contemplate it: I would just be happier being straight, and I wouldn’t have to deal with homophobia as frequently! Besides, some men are hot. I could deal with being straight.
But then I see a really pretty girl, so I think, “I’ll just be a lesbian. Many men don’t bother learning about social justice because of their privilege, and I don’t want to date someone I have to educate. It’s too much work. And some girls are just lovely.” . . .
I often get concerned about how many of the qualities I’m attracted to in a person are a result of growing up in a heteronormative, patriarchal society. I am often attracted to masculinity (either in cisgender men or in male-identifying persons, and occasionally in women with masculine characteristics). Am I attracted to masculinity simply because I have been raised in a society that places on a pedestal and reveres all things male?
Feminists must celebrate Bekki Charbonneau’s self-described “queer” sexuality, ignoring concerns about the schizophrenic tendencies manifest in such confusion. The difference between feminism and insanity is simply a matter of perspective.
By the way, mom: Seen any good cable TV shows lately?
- July 14: Radical Feminism and the Long Shadow of the ‘Lavender Menace’
- July 26: Feminists Worry That Disney Movies Are Making Girls Heterosexual
- July 28: Feminists Against ‘The Unnatural, Yet Universal Roles Patriarchy Has Assigned’
- Aug. 2: How to Become a Lesbian, Step One: Watch Cable TV While Depressed
- Aug. 3: #DearFeministMen Illustrates a Fundamental Problem
Which is what the hospital patient said after receiving Saturday night emergency room care for inserting foreign objects where they probably should not go.
Cognitive dissonance. Any time you present an obvious truth that conflicts with their worldview, they get nasty and sometimes violent. In fact, suggesting they have cognitive dissonance sets off their cognitive dissonance. Same is true of people who belong to religious cults.
Well, I’ll be… Priceless!
I searched YouTube (so I thought anyway!) and the best I could find was a rendition on the dulcimer…
Bahut Dhanyawad!
What I think is interesting here is that rather than taking to defending your view for the entirety of the article, you rely on tearing tear down another person…and that is not exactly the most convincing of argumentative tactics unless you’re only interested in getting a rise out of people who already I agree with you for clicks.
I have a suspicion that a lot of ‘tolerant’ liberals suffer from #NotMyKids syndrome and while they’re happy to celebrate the abnormalities of your progeny, they are quietly hopeful that theirs turn out ok. Unless, of course, you have a case of Munchausen by proxy, in which case your children are no more than play actors in your wildest fantasies.
I’m pretty sure we didn’t have these first world problems half century back and I’m not sure why we’re trying so hard to create them, other than to give a bunch of otherwise unemployable gender studies grads a job opportunity.
Look: If you don’t like my “argumentative tactics,” that’s fine, but maybe you didn’t notice that most of what I did was to QUOTE TWO FEMINISTS, and simply point out the logic (or lack thereof) involved in their “argumentative tactics.” If you’re OK with teaching kids to be gay, or to be so “queer” they are hopelessly confused, how about you make an argument in favor of that, rather than implying that my “tactics” are unfair or bigoted?
Well, first off, earning doesn’t say anything about the consumption you find so bizarrely objectionable.
Second, the actual earning potential tends to correlate well with things like intelligence, work ethic, responsibility, and other positive qualities.
Ok, I’ll bite 🙂
I did notice this. My comment was in reference to what you did write and how you framed it. We’re all on different sides of an argument. All I’m saying here is that part of our problem as a culture is that on both sides we care more about discrediting and tearing down other side than adding to the solution.
I personally think that we should use our platforms to build others up. Even if we disagree, we can talk about things in a way that focuses on the issues, right? I’m not talking about not disagreeing…I’m talking about doing it in a way that adds understanding to the conversation—whether you’re liberal, conservative, or libertarian. Of course, that all hinges on what your goal is…
I don’t see anything in what you wrote above that encourages parents to teach their kids to be gay (especially since this is not something that can be taught). The reason this point of view seems to be illogical is that you don’t believe homosexuality is a naturally occurring orientation. If you start from the assumption that homosexuality is wrong, of course anything framed from the opposite perspective makes no logical sense to you and anyone who beliefs the same.
It’s not that she is saying that by assuming that your child will be part of the majority you’re being a bigot. In fact, she starts with “thanks for not being a bigot”. The assumption is that the reader is not a bigot. What she is saying is that parents should remain open to who their child may be. To the author it’s not much different than if your child is a natural born creative or an analytical thinker. It’s about helping our families thrive.
There is a difference between this and how you framed it. I have never in my life heard someone say they want to teach their child to be gay and I hope I don’t since that’s not a real (or healthy) thing.
At least as qualified as the Psychologists, prolly more so.
Do kids need to be taught how to be gay? I thought that the current favored theory was that gay people are born that way. So, why would parents endeavor to teach their kids to be gay, especially when gays only make up about 2% of the population. It makes more sense for parents to assume their kids are straight instead of confusing them with questionable dogmas as they are growing up. if it turns out they are gay, I suspect they will discover it on their own.
Didn’t the word sinister come from a Latin word meaning left?
We could that today too. Some one that kicks up that kinda drama prolly oughta be burned.
Just more for us genetically superior righties.
We all know of a guy in MD that would hit that. She’d prolly run screaming, tho.
In the Indian Version of Deliverance.
That’s not hard. Just take all the bad and double it. It’s gonna get reeeeeaaalll ugly.
“What she is saying is that parents should remain open to who their child may be.”
Perhaps, but the author’s requirement for “nurturing” whatever precious orientation that lurks within the toddler is for family and friends to have to suppress and purge their “heteronormative” expectations and habits and practice some kind of enforced agnosticism in any statements that refer to gender or sexual matters, lest the child be contaminated by heteronormativity. When it comes time for the “birds and the bees” talk, will the parent have to discuss every possible variant of sexual activity? This is called group sex, dear. This is called pegging, and this is called tribadism.
But then again, what if the toddler turns out to be asexual? The very mention of the possibility that the toddler may couple with anyone or anything (even in the most egalitarian and inclusive terms) may squelch his/her’s blossoming asexuality.
“I have never in my life heard someone say they want to teach their child to be gay”
You don’t have to look any further. The feminist magazine XOJane covered that:
“My mom started encouraging me to “find a nice girl to fool around with.” She told me any woman who had sex with men wasn’t a feminist. She told me all heterosexual sex was rape “by definition.” When I asked her if she meant I was a product of rape, she told me I was “letting myself get raped” every time I had sex with my boyfriend.”
http://www.xojane.com/family/i-was-raised-to-hate-men-and-now-i-dont-know-what-to-think-about-feminism
The “born that way” argument may be true. That’s the first and ready line that is thrown in the face of benighted heterosexuals who cannot understand the majesty of gay existence.
However, there are some signs that the “born that way” line is really used as a “noble lie” or a “strategic essentialism” propagated so that society gives up any idea that non-heterosexuals can in anyway changed, and so that therefore they be given free reign to change society and heterosexuals. Whether or not is actually scientifically true is not as important as it political use.
Even some homosexual advocates are sort of giving up the ghost and indicating that they do not really buy the “born that way” line themselves.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tracy-baim/cynthia-nixon-choice_b_1224241.html
Some celebrity gay pride professor named Suzanna Walters has just issued a book called “The Tolerance Trap.” One of her arguments in her new masterpiece: “She challenges both “born that way” storylines that root civil rights in biology, and “god made me that way” arguments that similarly situate sexuality as innate and impervious to decisions we make to shape it.”
http://www.amazon.com/The-Tolerance-Trap-Intentions-Intersections/dp/0814770576/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1407362664&sr=8-1&keywords=the+tolerance+trap
I sent my kids to a touchy-feely school where no gender roles are imposed on anybody. The boys immediately turned anything that wasn’t a perfect sphere into a gun and the girls immediately turned anything, spheroid or cubic, into a baby. It was often quite amusing to see the horror with which parents saw nature coming out in their children. It didn’t surprise the teachers, though, who had been around long enough to be realists…
Someone quick, give Ms. Charbonneau the number of the local suicide hot line!
Exactly. The only acceptable kind of interference is an offer of help, no judgement included.
Am I somehow reading The Onion?
The ringtone on my android is “Dueling Sitars” but it’s not a version of the original classic guitar duo but something entirely different. It’s cool though.
The ringtone on my android is “Dueling Sitars” but it’s not a version of
the original classic guitar duo but something entirely different. It’s
cool too, though.
TO: All
RE: ‘Our Kids’?
It’s worse than ther.
I judge high school debate.
Sitting in the judges/teachers/coaches lounge between rounds, I hear the teachers refer to the students as….
….MY children,
Pansexual? Two legs good, four legs better?
According to Joe Biden, “our kids” are camped out on the border between Texas and Mexico.
Yup. Got two older boys and a girl. When they were little, the boys played with trains and Legos. The girl never got the building thing. She turned the Legos and trains into mommies, daddies, and babies.
Moment that summed it up for me: my son and a girl cousin, both about 3, climbed on top of one of those colorful plastic Playskool buildings. Her: “I’m a princess!” Him: “And I’m Frankenstein!”
“Many men don’t bother learning about social justice because of their privilege, and I don’t want to date someone I have to educate.”
Sister, wait until you have to educate a woman about her heteronormative behavior as she pushes herself away from you.
“Do kids need to be taught how to be gay?”
As a matter of fact, that IS part of the Queer agenda.
So you think it’s wrong to criticize an opinion you disagree with? Or do you want those who disagree with you to shut up?
It’s one thing when it’s solicited advice, another (irritating thing) when it’s unsolicited, really obnoxious when it’s from someone with no real experience, and quite another when that person feels they have the right and obligation to override your parenting, regardless of being told to butt the f-ck out.
The people who do this, and some famous examples include the “It Takes a Village” idiot, the tampon earrings wearing Melissa Hyphenated Perry who thinks that your kids (despite supreme court rulings to the contrary) somehow “belong” to the community, and this over-caffeinated, pretentious busybody – they all have one thing in common with the political class:
Their power comes from your acceptance of their presumption that you’re incompetent, and somehow in need of their ever growing, ever encroaching nurturing, mentoring, controlling, second guessing, monitoring, harassment, malicious prosecution, and ultimately, having to prove in court that you’re a competent parent, and that letting a child play outside in the front yard, in a cul-de-sac, is NOT negligent supervision.
What “Julia” doesn’t realize that the government that gives her everything does so because it presumes she’s incompetent. She’ll realize it later when some CPS worker, to pump up the state’s take of federal money to put kids in foster care, makes a mountain out of a molehill when trying to take her kids.
These people need to be told, and not politely, that they’re not welcome, and their smug intrusion is offensive and threatening.
Sounds to me like Bekki Charbonneau is a pretty normal college girl doing perfectly normal experimenting. I’d be willing to bet money that by 35 she’s married with children and living in the suburbs. Her lesbian past will be no more than a few titillating stories she tells at parties to give her life some mystery, to hint that she’s not really as boring as she seems.
Now I know it’s 2014 and this question exposes me as a hopeless fuddy duddy, but what does “cisgender” mean?
Who in the hell said anything about “without invitation”? It’s the “without invitation” part that’s the problem, not the “without kids” part.
Good God.
I may not be a parent, but I’ve been a kid, so I understand the relationship.
My mother was mentally ill and flew off the handle on her assumptions, and I’ll tell you: I sure as hell was appreciative of others who were there to play referee!
Also, armchair quarterbacks have the luxury of seeing everything in hindsight.
Exactly. That’s how they manage to be right. We should listen to people who are outside the squabble and have the benefit of detachment.
The scary thing is, 10 years ago I was a liberal and I still never saw the extent of this coming. Not even close.
You might want to look up the definition of hindsight chief.
“She might realize she’s more comfortable being a man.
She might want to have several husbands, wives, boyfriends, or girlfriends at once.”
Notice the two new hot causes of the decade got pushed right in there too. I wonder if there’s going to be money coming out soon to push the polygamy thing even harder. The leftie media has certainly been ALL over it since pretty much the day the SCOTUS ruled on same sex marriage.
I think I have mentioned the quiet but huge influence of a gay billionaire’s foundation called Arcus before on here. http://www.arcusfoundation.org/ Take a look at their list of grantees if you have a chance, it will predict what’s coming next. This guy has a ton of money and he pours it on his projects in stunning quantities–half a mil to guarantee an outcome permissive to GLBTs at a medium sized church conference, for instance. He has taken up transgenderism as his next big thing. If he picks up polyamory, we’re really in for it. Money talks.
“There are things a man will tell his bartender he won’t tell his doctor.”
“Cisgender” means “not a tranny.” I.E. Normal.
You see, once they created their “transgender” title, they decided that normal people needed to be assigned some matching politicized label to describe their gender status.
That you haven’t taken doses of hormones to make a man into a not-quite-woman or a woman into a not-quite-man.
Well fortunately for you here was someone to play referee, not all of us were so lucky. having a mother who was in and out of the physc wards the entire time I was growing up.
It to to be such a regular thing that my sister and I used to I refer to it as mom’s semi-annual vacations but that didn’t stop my sister from hanging herself due to the streak of schizophrenia that has affected my family for generations.
Your point of reference was the ‘too much drama’ in your post, all families have drama. Next time qualify your statement a little better and maybe more of us will understand.
Thank you both. I’ve seen cisgender used a number of times recently, but couldn’t tell which special interest group it referred to. I didn’t think of “normal.” After all, that group already has a term.
Stick to dating girls, Bekki. Men have enough problems without getting involved with someone who feels the need to ‘educate’ them out of their heteronormativity, whatever the hell that means. Or you could just stay single, and only make one person miserable at a time.
It’s simple to see what Bekki is. She’s a pre-suicide.
I had a standard response to childless people my age (or younger) who offered unsolicited advice on child raising. It started with “Go” and ended with “yourself”. I’m sure you can infer what the verb in the middle was.
The whole concept of the LOOGY in the bullpen offends me a lot more than the designated hitter.
DKos is over there:
<———————
You’re a public benefactor, you are.