One of the first rules of debate is that, “he who defines the terms wins the debate.”
Meaning, if you define the terms in the way that are favorable to you, you’re going to win because everyone is thinking about the issue in the way you want them to.
Recently I came across some information that helped me understand how government schools are employing this tactic when it comes to education indoctrination around sex and gender. It also may help explain why so many young people have lost the ability to think about the subject.
The document below is part of a the FLASH sexual education curriculum created in King County. While the curriculum was designed for King County, it is now being adopted in school districts around Washington State.
This document sought to explain traditional gender expectations.
My immediate question was, “Who thinks these are expectations of men and women?”
Men are expected to be dominant?
Women are expected to be weak?
I grew up in the world the gender revolutionaries are most concerned about: conservative, Christian, and small-town. There was, and is, an appreciation of the innate differences between men and women. We often told jokes about those differences and laughed at them without shame. Still do, actually.
That being said, there is nothing about this description of traditional gender expectations I can relate to. This document refers to these gender expectations as “so common they can influence people even without their knowing it.”
Yet, I cannot think of a single person who would agree with this description. Living or dead.
It is true that after Thanksgiving dinner the guys often made their way to the couch to watch football while the women cleaned up after dinner, but if grandma said jump, every man in the house would ask, “how high?”
Among the planet’s seven billion inhabitants, is there someone who probably thinks this is how it should be? Sure. There probably is. But the exception doesn’t make the rule.
The problem here is that our schools are presenting the exception as the rule. They are responding to an argument no one is making in an attempt to make their argument look better.
As one lady in our office responded, “Somebody is projecting their childhood in an abusive home…”
Which, I suspect, might be exactly right. I think if we knew the stories of the people writing this curriculum, we might all cry at the pain they’ve experienced. And their efforts here are undoubtedly an attempt to save other children the pain they experienced.
Nevertheless, this characterization of gender expectations is not benign.
Here’s why.
The stated purpose of the FLASH curriculum is to reduce sexual violence. Everyone shares that goal.
But one way they hope to do so is to convince your kids that there are no biological differences between men and women.
The logic appears to be that the (mostly) men who perpetuate sexual violence do so because they believe women aren’t behaving the way women should. Ergo, if you eliminate the assumptions about gender roles, you will eliminate the motivation for sexual violence.
Let’s leave aside for now how badly this logic misunderstands human nature.
Effectively, they are approaching kids and asking, “Johnny, do you want women to get raped or do you understand that you can be whatever gender you want?”
“Ummmm”
“Johnny, are you a good guy, or a bad guy?”
That’s really the point.
Of course its possible to recognize that men and women are different without denying anyone respect. Men and women are different. Moreover, men are different from other men and women are different than other women as well. We aren’t supposed to be the same.
But that doesn’t mean that biology is now irrelevant.
The idea that gender is whatever you want it to be is irrational, it is also anti-science. But that doesn’t matter because they are convincing your kids that its better to be irrational than judgmental.
Your kids may get queasy when you ask them about history, grammar, or math, but they won’t hesitate if you ask them to explain why gender isn’t binary.
This curriculum explains why. Every kid wants to be a “good kid”, and this curriculum is teaching them what that means.
He who defines the terms wins the debate.