the thin blue(and pink) lines

Back in October of last year, this mom's post went viral:

http://nerdyapplebottom.com/2010/11/02/my-son-is-gay/

And lots of people on the message boards I go to were cheering for this mom.

Now she's being disciplined by the church and threatened with not being given communion, for refusing to take down the blog post...the church says she's "bearing false witness"...lying about the incident? and "violating Matthew 18"-being arrogant?:


http://nerdyapplebottom.com/2011/02/03/epilogue/

They also seem to think she's "promoting homosexuality". Never mind that the boy in question is 5 years old. He might be gender-variant later, but that has nothing to do with who he chooses to get married to when he's old enough to do so.

He's a kid. Jeez.

Besides that, anybody who is queer or gender-variant can attest to you that their parents can freak out all they want.
And all that will do is cause misery for themselves and their child, possibly to the degree of precipitating the child into suicide.  But it won't erase the queerness or gender-variance.

Probably because those two factors are somehow neurologically hardwired in during prenatal development.

Most of us come to understand, accept, take pride and joy in our shades of queer.  But none of us just wakes up one morning and says, "Hey, I think I'll become a socially-despised minority today for fun!" We come to terms with what is initially an uncomfortable fact about ourselves.

I'm sure I'm not the only person commenting on this out there...but I'd like to use it as an illustration to point out how this reflects on America and our enforcement of gender roles...particularly on born males.
If a five-year old girl were to dress as a guy for a halloween party?  complete with a big fake beard?  Do you think anyone would disapprove?

I think they'd laugh, myself.

As a born female androgyne, I think I get away with being very gender-ambiguous at the moment because I am a born female.  If I were born male and suddenly started wearing long skirts-even with manly boots and a man's shirt...I think I'd get negative reactions.

Gender lines are enforced.  Have you ever thought about why?  Have you ever though about what harm it does to people who are very uncomfortable in the roles society dictates? Have you thought how the male role makes men into emotional cripples, and women into helpless lumps needing rescuers?
(Well...not all or even most of the time, but I'm making a sweeping generalization here. Go with me, for the sake of the argument, m'kay?)

Anyway...
If I choose to run around with unshaved legs this summer, I'm going to get negative reactions. I'm still deciding if I want to get fuzzy or not.