Interesting interview with the parents who withdrew their kids from school because the school allowed a child to wear girls clothes. These parents, who declared themselves to be strong Christians (and who are now 'home schooling') said their kids were confused by this practice. Now, it would be unfair to expect these people to have fully thought out and clearly expressed arguments on this, and there is a obviously a discussion to be had about cross dressing six year olds and how this is explained with classmates. These parents contradicted themselves and each other frequently - the cross dressing boy would be bullied, or would not be bullied at various times in the interview (my reading was they just wanted to yell 'this is wrong and sinful!' but knew that this would not play well and instead stressed how much they loved everyone involved). Fair enough, they are not professional public speakers, they clearly feel strongly and really did not sound malicious, just lacking the knowledge, confidence and vocabulary to explain the situation to their own kids. But one point they really shouldn't have been allowed to get away with - the claim that a six year old cannot make up their mind about such things as their own gender identity (quite possibly true, I really have no idea), coupled with the unvoiced assumption that their six year old can decide not only that there is a God, but it's a Christian God. Poor interviewing on the Today programme. Equally poor interviewing by John Humphrys with Boris Johnson, neglecting to ask him why the Crisis Call Line his department has set up for the half a million British citizens caught up in Irma is so spectacularly useless, giving out the number of the Puerto Rico tourist board to people stranded on St Martens. Or why the triumphant government tweets of a picture of a barge with heavy equipment nearing a beach on Anguilla did not include the fact that it could not offload its cargo because 'the sand was wrong'. Fake news!
Like you, Stan, I really have no idea about all this gender identity malarkey. Plenty of opinions, but little real idea. What interests me, however, is whether there's any difference between what an individual believes to be true and what can scientifically proven. Is the acceptance by others of one's gender identity simply a matter of what one believes this identity to be from time to time, ignoring the evidence of the external physical, or are there internal as yet unidentified indicators of gender? One hears talk of the so-called 'gay gene'. Are there transgender genes or gender fluidity genes too? Like I said, I have no ****ing idea. Undoubtedly, acceptance and tolerance of this stuff can only be good for the individuals and minorities involved. But only time will tell if this will be to the benefit of society as a whole. I'm sure that some will say that it already has been, but dinosaurs like me struggle with it.
The old ones are the best. Jokes I mean, not turned over people. That would be an epistemological matter, Ubes. I like to look up comparative behaviour in animals on stuff like this, with no idea if it is relevant. Perhaps our resident bird of prey expert, Mr Rangercol, can cast light on something I've just read - 40% of male Marsh Harriers look and act like females their entire lives, so they don't have to compete and defend a territory.
Very true. They develop female plumage and keep it for life so that they can be less visible to other males. It also allows them to "sneak up" on females, as it were, during the mating season. I have no idea why 40% do it and the rest don't. Marsh Harriers are now doing well after years of low numbers. They have adapted their nesting habits and there are now quite large numbers in the UK, especially in the South and East.
Do full on male plumage males 'sneak up' on the males in drag, by mistake as it were? And if so does either party enjoy the experience? I am sure there are plenty of other examples of males pretending to be females and vice versa in the animal world, but they look to be for tactical reasons to me, not really casting much light on human sexual identity issues. Though if the human behaviour is genetically based it must have exact parallels in other animals, who after all also have genes, but we can't really ask them about it. The odd thing for us is the focus on clothing. Perhaps if we all wore boiler suits it wouldn't be so stressful.
