Posted by
Shogrensus on Sunday, April 29, 2007 6:26:40 PM
April 27th on the View:
Hot Topics:
Hey, hey, the gang’s all here.
First, Barbara plugs her special on trans-gendered children. When did Barbara begin to emulate Springer and Povich?
The show is about kids who supposedly have “gender identity disorder” and their “very courageous parents” who support them. According to Barbara these kids apparently believe, almost from the time they can talk or think, that they were born into the wrong body. She says “What’s between their ears is not what’s between their legs.” She followed three children for the special- a 6 year old boy who thinks he is a girl, a 10 year old boy who thinks he is a girl and a 17 year old girl who thinks she is a boy.
What a tragic topic upon which to build a prime time show. These kids, particularly the 6 year old and 10 year old, have their private lives put out for the entire world (or at least the people who tune in) to gawk.
It is not possible to know why these kids have these issues. Is there a genetic abnormality? Did something happen to these kids in early childhood that caused this feeling? Did their parents consciously or subconsciously encourage this gender confusion? The questions could go on and on.
If adults want to go on TV to talk about their sexuality, let them. It seems at least slightly unethical to put these children on the world’s stage when there is really no benefit to them and the potential for pain so great. Everyone knows that children can be quite nasty- bullying today has reached a level of cruelty many of us could never have imagined. Children should be protected from this sort of commercial exploitation about a topic of such a private nature. Gender and sexuality are prime teasing topics on playgrounds across this country. Why would a parent increase the possibility of pain for their child?
Barbara can’t say enough about these parents- who really knows anything about these parents? I hope they are as wonderful as Barbara suggests but their judgement is certainly open to criticism.
She says this isn’t about sex, it’s about gender and that these children feel this way from the time they could even think. These sorts of claims are very odd as most people can remember virtually nothing from their early childhoods- not special events, or people that were important to them. Even children who had a parent die at a young age don’t necessarily remember the loss they felt at the time. (This is not to say that they didn’t exhibit reaction to the loss or that they won’t have difficulty because of the loss. Toddlers and young children have brains that evolve over time and the ability to recall experiences and to verbalize about those experiences changes. There has not been a lot of study about this issue but the field is growing. Many have focused on repressed memory issues. The problem with the belief that young children repress negative memories is that also don’t remember positive memories. Click here for brief discussion of childhood memory)
People have the occasional memory of their early childhood experiences, often complimented by a picture to support their recollections. Somehow, these children, particularly the 6 year old, are able to articulate feelings they had from their toddler years.
This may get ratings but that doesn’t mean it should be aired. Sad, sad, sad…