(This article was just published in American Thinker.)

For a change, the ultra-liberal New York Times sort of got it right.

Pushing back against the reflexive tendency of so many on the Left to embrace “gender fluidity” and to even encourage people to claim that they are really of a gender different than that of their birth and biology, the Times just published an op-ed by Lisa Selin Davis which reads in part:

“I just wanted to check,” the teacher said. “Your child wants to be called a boy, right? Or is she a boy that wants to be called a girl? Which is it again?”

 

I cocked my head. I am used to correcting strangers, who mistake my 7-year-old daughter for a boy 100 percent of the time.

 

In fact, I love correcting them, making them reconsider their perceptions of what a girl looks like. But my daughter had been attending the after-school program where this woman taught for six months.

 

“She’s a girl,” I said. The woman looked unconvinced. “Really. She’s a girl, and you can refer to her as a girl.”

 

My daughter wears track pants and T-shirts. She has shaggy short hair (the look she requested from the hairdresser was “Luke Skywalker in Episode IV”). Most, but not all, of her friends are boys. She is sporty and strong, incredibly sweet, and a girl.

 

And yet she is asked by the pediatrician, by her teachers, by people who have known her for many years, if she feels like, or wants to be called, or wants to be, a boy.

The knee-jerk tendency to assume (and wish?) that people are transgender has become so pervasive that anyone who shows interest in that which is not wholly typical for his or her gender is suspected of very likely being “trans”. While such thinking is foolish and myopic, reflecting a mind tightly locked in a socially-progressive bubble, it is also downright dangerous.

How many young children show an interest in that which is beyond their gender? Well, starting at home, I recall that our older daughter was initially a real tough tomboy in her early years. She was a genuine athlete, loving action, racing and sports, hating dolls, and having more physical prowess than her older brothers. (Besides, how else could she deal with two older brothers? And yes, she could really give it to them…) This same daughter, now a high school senior, has become the epitome of a lady (although she can still stand her ground like fire against her older brothers).

What if we had suggested to our daughter as a little girl that perhaps she was “really a boy”?  After all, in her early youth, our daughter preferred a short haircut and insisted on wearing corduroy pants (until her Orthodox Jewish girls school’s dress code mandated skirts), and she was a tough sports-loving person; one seeking to label people as transgender would appear to have had a worthy specimen on hand.

Placing in young children’s minds the notion that they are likely of a different gender is dangerous and sends messages of confusion. And what happens later when children mature and are in a different phase, suddenly showing an interest in that which better matches their gender? Would a female-born “trans boy” who is now attracted to males and who now prefers makeup over boxing be deemed to have become a “double-trans girl”, or some other conjured-up classification invented by those who reject the gender that was divinely-assigned at birth?

By the same token, one of my sons was a real baby – almost a “sissy” – when he was a little boy. His sister could (and did) win any brawl with him. He is now a with-it, very masculine young man, whom none would dare call a “sissy”. (Here is a photo of his yeshiva classmates on their way to vote for Donald Trump – all very “regular guys”.) What kind of damage could have been wreaked had my wife and I taken our son in his toddler or preschool years to a psychologist, who may very well have suggested that we encourage him to reconsider his gender? It sounds crazy, but we now read about three year-olds who are being classified as transgender. (And let us not forget that in the ultra-liberal world of New York Mayor Bill De Blasio, businesses which fail to use gender-neutral pronouns may be penalized for human rights violations. Talk about messed-up…)

Let us allow people to be as God created them and not impose on them the artificial and damaging categories that social progressives contrive in an effort to tamper with nature and truth.