Gender Policing Leads to Infant Death

"Max, are you a girl?"

Max shakes his head, no.

"That's right. You are NOT a girl. So put down that pink shovel."

That's verbatim a conversation I overhead between a mom and her three-year old son, on a crowded playground, on the Upper West Side of the podunk little town we locals call Manhattan.

And then later on, some kid walked by wearing what looked like a standard issue witch's hat. Black, pointy, sparkling with purple glitter. When my boys asked me about it, I said, "It's a witch's hat." To which the boy replied, "It is a WIZARD'S hat. What do I look like, a GIRL?!"

Gender police out in full force today, kids.

And not just in Manhattan. As Alex Blaze reported on bilerico.com, that very same day, in Riverside, NY,a 17-month old boy named Roy A. Jones was brutally killed by his babysitter, who told police "I was trying to make him act like a boy instead of a little girl."

Someone please tell me, how does a little boy act? Like a brute? Does he play war? Does he use his blue toys and monster trucks to demolish block houses? Does he only act macho and strong, never straying from the accepted stereotypes?

And while we're on the subject, how does a little girl act?

It's all well and good that we limit bullying in the schoolyard. Kids can be cruel. But as we learn, time and time again, adults are the cruelest. The government wants to protect kids from other mean kids, it wants to set a good example, and yet Maggie Gallagher and her cronies are allowed to spew lies and taunts and threats against the LGBT community to their little heart's desire with no consequence.

Except there are dire consequences. Children who are kicked out of their homes for not conforming, adults who are bashed outside of nightclubs, homosexuals raped in prison, people fired from the jobs, evicted from their homes. These are all acts of adult bullies. If everyone is so worried about what those outside of the gender box are going to do to our kids and our communities, and are responding by simply shutting them down and pushing them out, the government must step in and set an example.

With the Student Non-Discrimination Act in place and the Safe Schools Improvement Act introduced, we are one step closer to teaching young kids about the consequence of bullying. Now all we need is something that could send the same message to adults....maybe a bit of legislation that protects us all in the workplace. Or how about a bill that allows gays to serve openly in the military? A repeal of that Defense of Marriage act could work, too.

Hopefully once the government establishes protections for all of us, sending a message that the LGBT community contributes to society, and will no longer be threatened by it, adults will follow suit.

Photo credit: Leon Wilson