Nearly every day someone, somewhere, “discovers” a new definition for something.
Before I was allowed to leave the house on my tricycle, I had to learn – Read: memorize – our home phone number, address, and names of my parents. Unbeknownst to me, that was critical to being able to reunite me with my family in case of becoming lost or being kidnapped.
Even at that tender age of probably three or four-years old, I knew the real names of Mommy and Daddy, as well as the difference between the two.
Throughout subsequent years I became interested in sports, cars, girls, and girls, in that order. To me, it was a natural progression of living in a household with Daddy as the man, and Mommy as the woman. It was pretty succinct.
Each of them had tasks seemingly specific to their sex; yard work, auto-related jobs, remodeling, and working outside of the home were Dad’s fields of expertise, while Mom concentrated on cooking, cleaning, shopping, and keeping us on-schedule.
It seemed to work, and was not at all unique to our family. Virtually every other family on our block functioned similarly, and they, too, appeared to live well and enjoy life. Occasionally the moms would help the dads with raking, and sidewalk sweeping, as dads assisted moms with peeling vegetables, grilling, as well as changing bedding and linens.
Then, suddenly things changed. Most all moms found work outside the home to earn more cash and make life more lucrative. It would prove to be an important decision as retirement age was quickly nearing, demanding more cash than “the system” would provide.
By this time, we kids were older and barely noticed Mom was gone while my sister and I were exercising more freedom while demonstrating responsibility. This all felt natural.
Now, too, we were too old for toys. But as previously stated, my sister gravitated to dolls; she wanted them to have more clothes and learned to sew, as a result.
I was interested in trucks, bulldozers, and pretending I was both a cowboy and soldier, during my formative years.
Not long thereafter, though, something arose from nowhere: women’s liberation. Apparently lots of women were not liberated and needed to be. For some mysterious reason the cry among women was “Burn the bras!” And while this seemed fine with me, it was also perplexing.
Women changed themselves while changing the American way of life, and even the world, all because of a perceived slight.
Divorces skyrocketed as women left home to “find themselves.” Upon leaving, they needed vehicles for more independence causing vehicle prices to skyrocket, as well.
Younger children suffered, too. Almost immediately there were no at-home moms, who also served as baby sitters. Baby sitters became the latest, greatest employment opportunity. Unfortunately, those baby sitters often operated without regulations or guidance from the parents themselves. Remember that baby sitters were largely not free, requiring more money in addition to the higher vehicle prices.
All the while, those toys changed, too. Boys were encouraged to play with something called “action figures.” It seems as though action figures is another way to say dolls for boys. G.I. Joe was one of the first, I believe because of the seemingly endless Vietnam War.
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| The original Easy Bake Oven |
So, it went for decades with more and more girls buying pink and tools and firearms (yep, you read that right,) specifically marketed toward them; boys were targeted by manufacturers hawking “girl toys” in an apparent effort to blur the lines of gender making everyone “equal.”
And blur they did. After a few decades of this bastardization we have arrived at a place that would largely be foreign to people like my now-late parents. Of course most of these changes-cum-legislation is fad based, most of which will be changed faster than you can say, “Lawsuit!”
Still, the residuals live. We regularly find ourselves applauding “firsts.”
The first ___________ (you fill-in the blank) is where the hoopla begins. It’s no longer the first person to fly into space, rather it’s the first woman, first African-American woman, first amputee-of-color, first American Indian meteorologist, first lesbian, first Puerto Rican, first handicapped, first Episcopalian, first transgender, first left-handed midget, first non-binary cisgender…
It’s clear that rather than uniting people though their strengths we have breached the crest where we are now dividing because of trying to homogenize people. And now girls are not girls, boys are not boys – in fact, they can be whatever they want to be on a whim.
Title IX was an effort to include everyone through sports programs in schools. After years of providing equal opportunities for both sexes, the anointed among us have decided to let lawyers overrule doctors in deciding the sex of an individual.
“What?” you say. Indeed. So that everything is fair to everyone, a school permitted a boy who identifies as a girl to swim on the girl’s swim team. This sexually confused swimmer has been handily winning meet after meet over his teammates, much to the chagrin of the losing girls.
Lawsuits failed to settle this biological tornado because no one wants to be called a sexist. And so, once again, society gets what it asked for: fairness through being unfair.
Did this gender-fluid swimmer play with action figures or Easy Bake Ovens as a small child? I don’t know. But it seems awfully convenient he/she/it discovered a sexual identity change once it became beneficial to receiving scholarships. Wink, wink.
Behavior is learned – just as I learned the parents’ identities at an early age, I also learned there is a difference between the sexes. And whether or not the newest Supreme Court Justice can define a “woman,” women are – for the record – different than men, and should be treated as such.
No one should be afraid to aver that we are not all the same. As we have heard throughout the COVID-19 pandemic “follow the science.” Let’s apply that idea to life.
