It's a rainbow world with the U.S. voting to support same sex marriage. The notion of the rainbow is that we are multi hued and we should celebrate and embrace our differences, free from bigotry and discrimination. Sounds good! The insidious move I'm seeing now though is the push to homogenous us all. Using terminology about children being 'assigned a gender' at birth and the discussion on neutral gender approach at pre school and high school. It all sound so lovely and open and empowering because we are able to choose whether we want to be boys or girls and it's wrong to gender discriminate or stereotype. What I see though is a social science experiment that in my view dehumanises us into homogenous blanks and it tampers with the fabric of our society which includes cultural and social stereotyping and roles and approaches and differences. Societies all over the world have evolved and survived on defined and distinct roles and social norms. Evolving over time and interwoven with cultural and often religious values. We haven't had a society yet where everyone is a totally blank canvas, leaving it to the individual to decide whether they want to be he or she or it. And that there is no distinction between gender and gender identities or roles. It's a huge leap from where we've come with feminism and the fight to recognise that women and men are different but equal. Then GLBT people also being different but equal. Now we are saying equal and not different. Wonder how this will turn out?
