The trans-sexual emperor, if you will, has no clothes. He/she is parading about, living in fantasy world that has no connection to actual, objective reality. If a little boy speaks up now, however, he will be fined by the local human rights council. Human reproduction has not really changed, however. Chromosomes are still chromosomes. Biology is still biology. This is just politics. It’s just silly and dangerously so.

On a quick trip to and from Washington D.C. I read P. J. O’Rourke, The Baby Boom And How It Got That Way…. As always O’Rourke is funny, insightful, and often right on the mark. I’m not sure that I’m convinced that those of us, whom he calls “freshmen,” who were born during the Kennedy administration are really boomers‐the boomers had the Beatles, the Kinks, and the Stone and we got Disco. I watched Ed Sullivan but it was long after they changed the camera angle to hide Elvis’ gyrating hips and long after  the Beatles nearly brought down the theater. Nevertheless, his contrast between the relatively carefree way in which the Boomers were raised (no one drove us to school, no bicycle helmets, we played outdoors unsupervised until dark) with the structured, controlled, super-safe way children are raised today (brought to you by the Boomers and their children) rang true. Whatever the differences between the experiences of those born during the Truman administration and those of us born during the Kennedy administration, we do share things in common and one of them is that my generation had a lot in common. We all did more or less the same things, at the same time, in the same way while asserting our “individuality.” As a public school students we did a great deal of lining up and marching in order.

One of the places for which we lined up and to which we marched was the bathroom. Our kindergarten teacher was a female so when we boys went to the bathroom we were relatively unsupervised. Females were not allowed in the boys’ bathroom except in extreme emergencies and we never had any of those when I was in school. We took an extraordinarily long time to wash our hands. We competed to see who could pile up the foamy soap the highest while Mrs Engstrom stood outside pleading for us to finish and get back in line so we could march somewhere else. We knew, however, that we were boys and she was a girl, a grown up girl but a girl nonetheless. No one really had to explain to us that girls were different. We knew that. We could see it for ourselves. They behaved differently. They talked differently. They walked differently. They ran differently. They really ran when we chased them and we liked to chase them because when we did, they squealed and that was strangely exciting. While we were surreptitiously trying to set leaves and helpless bugs on fire with Billy’s father’s magnifying glass, the girls were huddled together in another corner of the playground sharing secrets and talking about girl things. We were doing stuff and they wererelating.

As a very young boy I did not much appreciate the differences between boys and girls. I only knew that they were yucky. I don’t really remember liking a girl until perhaps 2nd or 3rd grade. At some point, however, there was a girl who caught my eye. I don’t remember her name or why I found myself thinking about her but she did and I did. I doubt I ever spoke to her but perhaps we traded Valentine’s Day cards. I don’t remember. I’m sure I was not much of a catch. There was no doubt among us boys that boys and girls were different. No one had to teach us that there was a difference. We knew it instinctively. We knew it from experience. We knew it from nature. Of course, when we made classroom trips to the bathroom, we separated and went our different ways. I’m sure it never occurred to any of us children nor did it occur to any of the adults that there might be a third group of students, who were neither male nor female. I’m sure it never occurred to anyone at school that a teacher should suggest to a child that he or she might not be either fully male or female. Nothing in the experience of the adults around us or in the experience of us children suggested to us that there might be more than two sexes. Some of us had pets and our dogs and cats were either male or female. When we traveled to Grandpa’s farm, the livestock were either male or female. That was just nature, creation, the way things are.

Remarkably, however, things have changed rather dramatically since the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.

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