RANT: GREAT ZEUS! LET THAT BE PHOTOSHOPPED!

WHEN I FIRST SAW on the news about the teacher who comes garbed as some kind of “drag queen” to school each day, like many people, I thought it was a joke,  some silly internet meme. It’s not. These photos were taken by students in mid-September this year, and I read several newspaper articles and saw videos confirming their authenticity. I’d thought to dip my quill in the ink pot and scratch out a few paragraphs of barbed, satirical razzing, but then I watched Tucker Carlson’s recent opinion piece on Fox News, and I agreed with a lot of what he has to say.

He spoke of gay/lesbian and trans rights as proper freedoms in a democracy, and how sexual orientation and gender identity were personal matters in a live-and-let-live society. He nevertheless went on to excoriate the actions of the Ontario high school teacher (and her "woke" school board) for the shop teacher's flagrant flouting of social norms and expectations of professional conduct.  He went further, calling the teacher’s actions “grooming” of students and "sexualizing" them at a time of life when sexuality and intimacy are confusing enough. Carlson has a point.

I had thought more in terms of this teacher and their outlandish outfit as working through of what should be a private affair— “transitioning” from male to female—instead, making it public in a wholly inappropriate manner and place. Wearing such a prothesis (an offensive caricature of femaleness in my opinion) is more in keeping with bars or parades, not in schools with children.  What was she thinking?

I’LL LET MY BIASES SHOW and admit I’m a little tired of “transsexuality” and the whole “Trans” movement. I ‘get’ old-school transvestitism, dressing and adopting roles of the opposite sex. (Oops! My bad! Two sexes, male and female with a variety of ways of expressing them; sorry to disagree with the modern orthodoxy on gender fluidity!) 

 

ONE TIME, I READ AN OLD PAPERBACK NOVEL FROM THE 1950S, featuring the usual protagonist, the strong, silent, alpha male type who dukes it out with the baddies and gets the gal in the end. In an early scene, the main character describes someone walking towards him. But he uses the word “it”, as in: “It walked” with a certain gait or “its” clothes were such and such. At first, I didn’t understand what he was getting at but I noted he described the person in a contemptuous and sneering manner. THEN I REALIZED he was talking about a transvestite, male or female we’re not quite sure. The novel’s protagonist might just as well have been describing a space alien, instead of a fellow human. I found it a cruel description and not one to persuade me to root for this ‘good guy’, whose significant character flaws included raging homophobia.

 

I ALSO HAPPENED TO BE READING a science fiction novel set in the distant future where gender distinctions have been (mostly) eliminated, where they don’t use words like “he” or “she”, instead adopting the neutral term, “they”. I FOUND IT a bit confusing to follow who was who and which "they" they  were referring to, etc. Clothing and a host of gender-neutral social norms had also been adopted by this technologically advanced future citizenry, and it was a peaceful, indeed, a gentle world, compared to our own, where armies and war had been eliminated, in no small part due to  gender-less social ordering. It was interesting, however, that a good deal of the novel takes place in a high-end bordello, where gender roles and norms from the Eighteenth Century were adopted and played out between the sexes—in a very bawdy manner I might add! 

Virgin Air's New Uniforms: Deal with it!

EVENTUALLY, I GOT USED TO the novel’s “THEY”s by relying on the context to help me understand who was who. READING IT, I recalled a friend saying years ago at university that it was probably better to have a ‘middle-ground’ for masculinity, somewhere between a “jock” and a “nerd.” That made sense then and still does. Maybe we all should start wearing uni-sex coveralls. I dunno. But PLEASE! Leave the giant boobs at home.

 

Cheers, Jake.