Monday, April 27, 2015

Gender Identity and John Money

Part of the Health and Physical Education for Ontario schools contains the new controversial sex "education" curriculum that is scheduled to be implemented for the school year 2015-16. The curriculum covers a number of radical ideas that parents should be concerned about. One of them is the concept of "gender" and "gender identity." The document claims that there six "genders" and numerous sexual orientations. These terms are defined and presented to students and teachers as something factual and societally agreed upon. This is false and possibly dangerous thinking. But the students, parents and teachers are not being told any of this. After all, it's coming form the government and the local school and so the assumption is that we should be able to trust the source. Children will have no choice in the matter. But this is a mistake. Parents should not be fooled.

How did "gender" come to refer to characteristics of being male and female as mere social constructs? Gender was once just a grammar term referring to nouns that are masculine, feminine and neuter. However, in 1955 John Money the "sexologist" and writer first began to use the term to define human sexuality based on social factors. He wanted to differentiate between the biology of being male or female and "gender" to denote a role that culture assigns through socialization to each person or an individual assumes. Money took the word away from its grammatical meaning. He was interested in moving beyond the chromosomes and biology. His interest centered on human identity including sexuality was based on social influences and feelings. He thought sexual identity could be changed in the first three years of life.  (more...)


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