With all the junk kids have to deal with today – broken homes, desolate neighborhoods, failing schools, etc. – they must now add one more thing to their plate: deciding whether they’re male or female.
In an attempt to eradicate traditional gender roles, a preschool in Stockholm, Sweden (called “Egalia,” which connotes equality), has recently chucked pronouns such as “him” and “her” in favor of terms such as “friends.” Swedish preschools have even hired “gender pedagogues” to help staff identify behaviors that risk reinforcing stereotypes about males and females.
Lest you think this sort of thing won’t arrive in America, it already has. Students at Oakland, California’s Redwood Heights Elementary School were given two days of gender diversity lessons designed to teach the notion that gender is not confined to the “binary concept” of two options. The course, which features transgender clownfish and promotes the idea that no distinctions between male and female should be legally allowed, was taught by a group called Gender Spectrum and was paid for by a $1,500 grant from the California Teachers Union.
Welcome to the new-age trend known as “gender neutrality,” the idea that people can choose to be different from the sex assigned at birth. According to Gender Spectrum, “Gender identity is a spectrum where people can be girls, feel like girls, they feel like boys, they feel like both, or they can feel like neither.”
Who, or what, is responsible for this madness? Why feminism, naturally. Feminists have fought the battle of the sexes in the name of “equality” for decades – but what they really want, what they have always wanted, is interchangeability between the sexes. To accomplish their goal, feminists routinely point to Sweden. Sweden is one of the most leftist countries in the world, and feminists are a leftist bunch. What better place to emulate such radical trends than California?
You may be tempted to laugh this off as an educational fad, one that will come and go quickly, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. As a former educator, I can assure you most educational trends go through a process of shock, capitulation and, ultimately, acceptance. Not only is the pressure from leftist bureaucrats overwhelming, the process often happens unbeknownst to busy parents – until it all of the sudden shows up at their doorstep.
That’s certainly the case in Oakland, Calif. “This instruction does not represent the values of the majority of families in Oakland,” attorney Kevin Snider of the Pacific Justice Institute said in a written statement. “Based upon some of the bills now pending in the Capitol, such as SB 48, this will be the new normal in California’s K-12 public schools.”
And when that happens, watch out. Most ideas that originate in California almost always move their way east.
Suzanne Venker is co-author of the new book “The Flipside of Feminism: What Conservative Women Know – and Men Can’t Say” (WND Books). Her website is www.suzannevenker.com.
