'Don't Judge Children Wearing Pirate Costumes'

Off Topic
101

[quote]DBCooper wrote:

[quote]pushharder wrote:

[quote]DBCooper wrote:

[quote]pushharder wrote:

[quote]Dr. Pangloss wrote:

…Perhaps out efforts would be better spent teaching mutual respect rather than mindless conformity.

[/quote]

Mindless conformity.

Mindful conformity.

There is a gulf betwixt the two. How large and easily navigable is it?
[/quote]
Regardless, in this case you’re asking someone to conform to the wishes of people who persecute you rather than conform to who you ARE. I think conforming to who you are and not to who people think you should be, even at an early age, is the epitome of mindful vs. mindless conformity.[/quote]

There is no “regardless” here. This whole debate is about the gulf.

For every “There should be no persecution for [whatever]” I can counter with a dam-burst of an example that would wash yours away.

Wanna play?[/quote]
no.[/quote]

High 5

102

[quote]DBCooper wrote:

[quote]Ct. Rockula wrote:
Ok. I get the age thing.

But when will the kid learn that kind of confidence if they get shut down every chance they get?
We are talking about ignoring transgendered kids here now.

You all want to create Buffalo Bills and Dahmers and other monsters like that?

[/quote]

This reminds me of a “guy” I used to know in college. He used to be a she.

Now, there is a difference between sex and gender. Sex is defined by our genitalia and that sort of thing, but gender is more of a role we play. Most of us play the male gender role. You happen to play them all, and to perfection.

This guy felt uncomfortable as a child being forced to play the female gender role and this arose from the fact that he felt more like a man than a woman. He came out as a lesbian around the age of 14 but this didn’t do much to alleviate the out-of-place feeling he constantly had.

To make a long story short, he began testosterone injections, had his breasts removed and “became” a man. Now he lives happily and has a good career and is well-adjusted. The first time I met him I was shocked to find out that he used to be a woman, although I suspected he was probably a fag.

The point here is that this kid in the dress may simply be someone who was born with male sex characteristics but was also born into a female gender role that he cannot live out. I think rather than force this kid to be someone he isn’t it’s better to expose him to the ridicule he will face in school at this age since he’s only going to face more of it as his parents have less and less control over what he does and wears as he gets older.

I also don’t think it’s appropriate to help foster an environment at school where the kids who would persecute this boy are legitimized by forcing the boy into a gender role he wasn’t born to occupy. All we’re talking about is children’s behavior here and I think the behavior that should be targeted and eradicated is the behavior of the children who make fun of the kid for wearing a dress.

Don’t forget, THOSE kids will also face more of these sorts of situations as they get older and I think by addressing this issue now it prepares them to respond to future scenarios in a more constructive, less persecutory manner.

As far as the parental approach goes, it may seem completely backwards to let a boy wear a dress to school but part of being a parent is letting your child learn to express himself in constructive ways. Kids are developing people and part of being a person is being able to express who you are and creating some sort of self-identity.

I think by not allowing a boy to wear a dress part of this development may be stunted. While it may expose him to ridicule, this is a teachable moment for parents and should be treated as an opportunity to explain to the kid that there is nothing wrong with the way he expresses himself if it isn’t hurting others, and wearing a dress doesn’t hurt anyone. Because what happens when a kid gets attacked like that is he/she begins to question who they are and start thinking that there is something wrong with them for thinking the way they do. This isn’t healthy for a child at all and parents who ban these sorts of expressions run the risk of further confirming those dark suspicions about themselves that children may begin to form.[/quote]
Maybe this kid simply doesn’t have the experience to understand gender roles in his society yet and your post is wasted typing.

A sensible parent would teach the why behind the what as cortes said, not encourage ignorance under the false pretense of acceptance. This would carry the danger of externally influencing the kid to develop a feminine self perception. Nature and nurture both are important and at a young stage, kids need to be nurtured appropriately.

103

[quote]IchibodCrane wrote:

[quote]DBCooper wrote:

[quote]Ct. Rockula wrote:
Ok. I get the age thing.

But when will the kid learn that kind of confidence if they get shut down every chance they get?
We are talking about ignoring transgendered kids here now.

You all want to create Buffalo Bills and Dahmers and other monsters like that?

[/quote]

This reminds me of a “guy” I used to know in college. He used to be a she.

Now, there is a difference between sex and gender. Sex is defined by our genitalia and that sort of thing, but gender is more of a role we play. Most of us play the male gender role. You happen to play them all, and to perfection.

This guy felt uncomfortable as a child being forced to play the female gender role and this arose from the fact that he felt more like a man than a woman. He came out as a lesbian around the age of 14 but this didn’t do much to alleviate the out-of-place feeling he constantly had.

To make a long story short, he began testosterone injections, had his breasts removed and “became” a man. Now he lives happily and has a good career and is well-adjusted. The first time I met him I was shocked to find out that he used to be a woman, although I suspected he was probably a fag.

The point here is that this kid in the dress may simply be someone who was born with male sex characteristics but was also born into a female gender role that he cannot live out. I think rather than force this kid to be someone he isn’t it’s better to expose him to the ridicule he will face in school at this age since he’s only going to face more of it as his parents have less and less control over what he does and wears as he gets older.

I also don’t think it’s appropriate to help foster an environment at school where the kids who would persecute this boy are legitimized by forcing the boy into a gender role he wasn’t born to occupy. All we’re talking about is children’s behavior here and I think the behavior that should be targeted and eradicated is the behavior of the children who make fun of the kid for wearing a dress.

Don’t forget, THOSE kids will also face more of these sorts of situations as they get older and I think by addressing this issue now it prepares them to respond to future scenarios in a more constructive, less persecutory manner.

As far as the parental approach goes, it may seem completely backwards to let a boy wear a dress to school but part of being a parent is letting your child learn to express himself in constructive ways. Kids are developing people and part of being a person is being able to express who you are and creating some sort of self-identity.

I think by not allowing a boy to wear a dress part of this development may be stunted. While it may expose him to ridicule, this is a teachable moment for parents and should be treated as an opportunity to explain to the kid that there is nothing wrong with the way he expresses himself if it isn’t hurting others, and wearing a dress doesn’t hurt anyone. Because what happens when a kid gets attacked like that is he/she begins to question who they are and start thinking that there is something wrong with them for thinking the way they do. This isn’t healthy for a child at all and parents who ban these sorts of expressions run the risk of further confirming those dark suspicions about themselves that children may begin to form.[/quote]
Maybe this kid simply doesn’t have the experience to understand gender roles in his society yet and your post is wasted typing.

A sensible parent would teach the why behind the what as cortes said, not encourage ignorance under the false pretense of acceptance. This would carry the danger of externally influencing the kid to develop a feminine self perception. Nature and nurture both are important and at a young stage, kids need to be nurtured appropriately.[/quote]

HoustonGuy with a nice and eerie themed name…

I like it.

104

This has been a very interesting read. Thanks for posting.

Honestly, I’m not sure how I would react if my (male) child were to request wearing dresses all the time. I think their answer to “why” would be pretty important. Although I suppose, my female child dressing like a “boy” (jeans/T-shirts?) would seem pretty normal. At the high school I volunteer at they all wear shorts/pants & Polos… pretty androgynous stuff really. I guess I’m not really sure school should be the place to explore sexuality at all.

After school? eh, I think I’d use the doctor’s rules above (I think it was the doctors).

105

[quote]Ct. Rockula wrote:

HoustonGuy with a nice and eerie themed name…

I like it.[/quote]

lol, I like that it’s appropriate for the season.

106

[quote]DarkNinjaa wrote:
When I was 6 or 7 years old, I wanted to go to school dressed in my Judo Kimono every single day but my parents wouldn’t let me. The idea was that I felt invincible in my Judo uniform, no one could hurt me 'cos I had superpowers. I felt like a superheroine.

One day I stuffed my uniform in my school bag hoping to get changed at school but my mum found the uniform when she was putting some snacks in my bag. I didn’t see that uniform for another 3 weeks, consequently missing 3 weeks worth of Judo training. I cried day and night for that fucking uniform until I got over it and moved on.[/quote]

You’re still a superheroine in my eyes :wink:

/cheese

107

[quote]therajraj wrote:
Wait a second here.

You don’t believe a male who prefers to wear typically female clothing will more likely than not end up being gay or bisexual?[/quote]

Not at all. The most visible form of cross dressing is the drag queen. Drag queens are typically very ostentatious in their dress, swishy in their mannerisms, and more likely to be gay. Why gay men are attracted to theater and especially drag is fodder for another thread I suppose.

The other type of cross dressing is the sexual fetishist. They are much more likely to be straight, approximately %90 are heterosexual. If you figure gay dudes make up %4 of the population, and bi dudes another %2, then we can see that while gay/bi dudes are over-represented as a percentage of the total population, any given cross dresser is much, much more likely to be straight. Cross dressers like pretty things, and sometimes they like those pretty things to be themselves. Doesn’t have anything to do with sucking cock.

We also need to differentiate between cross dressers who like dressing up in woman’s clothing, and transexuals who feel that they were born with the wrong genitalia.

108

[quote]DBCooper wrote:

[quote]Cortes wrote:

[quote]DBCooper wrote:
Also Cortes, while we don’t always get what we want, we DO get some things. One of those things is the ability to live within the gender role we were born into, no matter how much it flies in the face of that kid’s parents’ values.[/quote]

You missed the point I was trying to make. It wasn’t that wearing a suit served as a form of repression. It was that a parent’s job is to teach his kid that “Yeah, I know you don’t want to do this. Do it anyway.”

If my kid is going to potentially turn into a serial killer because he didn’t get to wear his tutu and toe shoes to school, that’s a chance I’m willing to take.

[/quote]
This is a disappointing statement. You mean you would rather risk your kid becoming a serial killer than let him explore his gender a little bit at risk of being made fun of? You would risk your child growing into a distorted, maladjusted human being rather than risk him actually finding comfort in wearing a dress and assuming a female gender?[/quote]

Yes, because I live in Sane Land.

We make risk assessments like this all the time over here. Especially those of us actively raising children, who work with and interact with literally hundreds of different children, in a school environment, every day. I know it appears to be a backwards cultural phenomenon from where you live, but it tends to serve us pretty well here.

109

[quote]therajraj wrote:

[quote]Cortes wrote:
Good grief, I NEVER STATED THERE WAS ANYTHING WRONG WITH BEING TRANSGENDERED AND EXPRESSING IT. I do have my doubts as to the reality of the condition in most cases, but that’s not important to my point.

[/quote]

You referred to it as a sexual deviance.[/quote]

You know the definition of the word deviance. I know you do.

110

[quote]Dr. Pangloss wrote:

There is no demonstrable harm from allowing a 6 year old boy to wear a dress. To bring sexuality into the discussion only muddles it. Many times a young boy wearing a dress is just that and not some glimpse into his sexuality.
[/quote]

Did you miss the entire 7th grade?

111

[quote]DBCooper wrote:

[quote]Dr. Pangloss wrote:

[quote]csulli wrote:
What I’m wondering is at what age do you trust your child to be able to know where they stand from a sex and gender role standpoint? The original topic was about kids. If your 6 year old son wants to wear a dress to express himself or whatever, it would seem logical to me to tell that child “No, you’re wearing boy clothes.” Because I know at least when I was like 6, I probably thought eating chocolate for every meal of the day was a great fucking idea. I think the kid ought to at least be in high school before I would trust them to actually know how to feel about this issue. I mean hell, wouldn’t they even need to start puberty first or something?[/quote]

I think the underlying premise to your question, and to other’s arguements, is that there is something harmful in allowing a 6 year old boy to wear a dress. In this case, it’s not like allowing them to eat chocolate cake for every meal, or watch 4 hours of TV a day, or any other activity which can either be shown to be harmful, or which reasonable people could agree would be harmful through some generally recognized mechanism of action. For example, allowing a 7 year old to watch Robocop might be seen as a parental choice, but I think most can agree that that level of violence is inappropriate for a 7 year old.

There is no demonstrable harm from allowing a 6 year old boy to wear a dress. To bring sexuality into the discussion only muddles it. Many times a young boy wearing a dress is just that and not some glimpse into his sexuality.

As a humorous aside, last Xmas my daughter wanted to know why our parish priest was wearing a violet dress during Lent. [/quote]
To build on this, any harm that does come from wearing a dress is a result of people’s responses to wearing the dress, not the actual act of wearing the dress itself. The response is what results in harm and the response is the behavior that should be stopped.

By asking the behavior that LEADS to the response to be stopped instead, it creates the impression (especially in the minds of young children) that the response is appropriate and the behavior that provokes it is not okay. If a parent asks that the action be stopped rather than the response to it, even if they support the child’s choice of clothing, it leads the child to believe that their own parents also think that it is okay for their kid to be made fun of.[/quote]

Some of us don’t feel like making our children object lessons for utopian society.

Having been picked on and teased myself, once for the clothes I was wearing, in fact, I can tell you that it is one of the worst, most traumatic experiences a child must endure. Most children will have to endure it no matter how rigidly they conform, and that’s natural. But taking a child and allowing him to engage in behavior that is going to rain down hell on him at school from virtually all of his peers, making him into a pariah when social acceptance is THE most important goal in life at that stage, is one of the most egregious form of abuse I can imagine.

112

[quote]Dr. Pangloss wrote:
I think what it comes down to is this: Children of all ages are going to explore as they become more aware of themselves. You can stifle that exploration and voice your disapproval in their curiosity, or you can let them know that your love for them as a parent is all-encompassing and there’s room for them to express themselves in nontraditional ways.

[/quote]

Or, you can let them know that your love for them as a parent is the reason certain rules that may now be unfathomable to them are enforced.

Enough with “disapproval in the curiosity” and “stifling exploration.” Please. I’m talking about doing your job as a parent, teaching them that men with penises and girls with vaginas are each expected to fulfill certain roles in society, and the proving grounds of elementary and jr. high school are not the appropriate forum for radical experimentation with cultural gender role expectations.

Please, can a parent who has BOYS here speak up and tell me that they would ACTUALLY ALLOW their boy to go to school wearing a Cinderella costume?

113

[quote]csulli wrote:

[quote]Dr. Pangloss wrote:
There is no demonstrable harm from allowing a 6 year old boy to wear a dress. To bring sexuality into the discussion only muddles it. Many times a young boy wearing a dress is just that and not some glimpse into his sexuality.[/quote]

Hold on a second, I may be out of school, but I still remember being a kid. In my experience, a boy dressing like a fairy at school would be WAY harmful to him socially, psychologically, and possibly physically.[/quote]

I honestly cannot believe we’re still here discussing this. How is this not patently obvious to anyone with any experience at all being a kid?

114

[quote]Dr. Pangloss wrote:

Perhaps out efforts would be better spent teaching mutual respect rather than mindless conformity.[/quote]

Yeah, they should teach the lyrics to “Imagine” in school instead of having PE, man.

115

[quote]therajraj wrote:
Realistically speaking, what is the harm in denying a 10 year old the ability to wear a dress to school until they are 16-17?

[/quote]

Irreversible future serial killer, you bigoted neanderthal.

116

[quote]Cortes wrote:
…teaching them that men with penises and girls with vaginas are each expected to fulfill certain roles in society, and the proving grounds of elementary and jr. high school are not the appropriate forum for radical experimentation with cultural gender role expectations.

Please, can a parent who has BOYS here speak up and tell me that they would ACTUALLY ALLOW their boy to go to school wearing a Cinderella costume?

[/quote]

My children aren’t cogs who are meant to fit into some role that really only serves to make those around them more comfortable with their own ignorance.

And I said it on the first page and I’ll say it again. As the father of a 10 year old boy and an 8 year old boy, if either of them want to wear a Cinderella outfit I will fully support them. My love for them isn’t dependent upon what they choose to wear that day. I’ll continue to have age-appropriate conversations with them about their choices, as I would with any significant choices they make.

You seem to be very uncomfortable with the idea that a son of yours would be seen in public wearing a princess outfit. Would you object if your son wore the outfit only around the house?

117

[quote]Dr. Pangloss wrote:

[quote]Cortes wrote:
…teaching them that men with penises and girls with vaginas are each expected to fulfill certain roles in society, and the proving grounds of elementary and jr. high school are not the appropriate forum for radical experimentation with cultural gender role expectations.

Please, can a parent who has BOYS here speak up and tell me that they would ACTUALLY ALLOW their boy to go to school wearing a Cinderella costume?

[/quote]

My children aren’t cogs who are meant to fit into some role that really only serves to make those around them more comfortable with their own ignorance.

And I said it on the first page and I’ll say it again. As the father of a 10 year old boy and an 8 year old boy, if either of them want to wear a Cinderella outfit I will fully support them. My love for them isn’t dependent upon what they choose to wear that day. I’ll continue to have age-appropriate conversations with them about their choices, as I would with any significant choices they make.

You seem to be very uncomfortable with the idea that a son of yours would be seen in public wearing a princess outfit. Would you object if your son wore the outfit only around the house?

[/quote]

I would worry about his motivations in doing so. There are about a billion different competing ideologies and messages I feel are unhealthy in modern society. It’s my job as a parent to steer him away from the bad ones toward the good ones.

That doesn’t mean I’m stifling his growth as a person. I’m guiding it. As the amount of people who SUPPOSEDLY are transgender is so infinitesimally small that it’s on par with hitting the jackpot in the lottery, I will opt for first getting to the bottom of why on earth he feels the need to engage in such behavior (especially since CLOTHES are a CULTURAL phenomenon and they are not INNATE markers of GENDER).

118

[quote]Cortes wrote:

I would worry about his motivations in doing so. There are about a billion different competing ideologies and messages I feel are unhealthy in modern society. It’s my job as a parent to steer him away from the bad ones toward the good ones.

That doesn’t mean I’m stifling his growth as a person. I’m guiding it. As the amount of people who SUPPOSEDLY are transgender is so infinitesimally small that it’s on par with hitting the jackpot in the lottery, I will opt for first getting to the bottom of why on earth he feels the need to engage in such behavior (especially since CLOTHES are a CULTURAL phenomenon and they are not INNATE markers of GENDER). [/quote]

I really don’t disagree with anything you’ve written here.

So, if you’re truly interested in getting to the bottom of why he feels the way he does, then what answers of his would be acceptable to you?

119

[quote]Dr. Pangloss wrote:

[quote]Ct. Rockula wrote:

HoustonGuy with a nice and eerie themed name…

I like it.[/quote]

lol, I like that it’s appropriate for the season.
[/quote]

So festive

Its awesome that he keeps coming back. Its like waiting for your favorite artist to release an album.

120

[quote]Dr. Pangloss wrote:

[quote]Cortes wrote:

I would worry about his motivations in doing so. There are about a billion different competing ideologies and messages I feel are unhealthy in modern society. It’s my job as a parent to steer him away from the bad ones toward the good ones.

That doesn’t mean I’m stifling his growth as a person. I’m guiding it. As the amount of people who SUPPOSEDLY are transgender is so infinitesimally small that it’s on par with hitting the jackpot in the lottery, I will opt for first getting to the bottom of why on earth he feels the need to engage in such behavior (especially since CLOTHES are a CULTURAL phenomenon and they are not INNATE markers of GENDER). [/quote]

I really don’t disagree with anything you’ve written here.

So, if you’re truly interested in getting to the bottom of why he feels the way he does, then what answers of his would be acceptable to you?
[/quote]

Not sure, to be honest. It’s not something I’ve had to deal with and hopefully I will never have to. I do know from personal experience that EVERY person I’ve ever met who has been socially maladjusted, culturally deviant, or defined themselves based upon their sexuality has had some childhood trauma or lacked two loving, engaged parents. In that sense, I think we’re saying the same thing. Where I diverge is that I feel it is a responsible act of love to shield your child from certain potentially harmful social situations.