Confessing Evangelical

Great essay by the Internet Monk, Michael Spencer: Is Your Boy A Real Man?: Focus On The Family's Gender Confusion Watch, in which the iMonk lays into an alarming - no, make that terrifying - article on a FotF website which provides a handy checklist in answer to the question, "Is your child becoming homosexual?".

Here is the checklist. Any parents reading this, do please try to resist the urge to cast anxious glances at your own children as you read this:

1. A strong feeling that they are "different" from other boys.
   


2. A tendency to cry easily, be less athletic, and dislike the roughhousing that other boys enjoy.
   


3. A persistent preference to play female roles in make-believe play.
   


4. A strong preference to spend time in the company of girls and participate in their games and other pastimes.
   


5. A susceptibility to be bullied by other boys, who may tease them unmercifully and call them "queer," "fag" and "gay."
   


6. A tendency to walk, talk, dress and even "think" effeminately.
   


7. A repeatedly stated desire to be — or insistence that he is — a girl.

Ho. Hum.

Anyway, the iMonk points to the supposedly scientific basis of this article, namely the claim by a Dr Joseph Nicolosi that "In one study of 60 effeminate boys ages 4 to 11, 98 percent of them engaged in cross-dressing, and 83 percent said they wished they had been born a girl."

This left me reeling, for much the same reasons as the iMonk points out:

A study of 4 year old effeminate boys? The questions from that sentence could make up an essay of their own. What is effeminate, exactly? Is there a standard, researcher accepted definition of "effeminate?" Are there "effeminate" characteristics that can be objectively set alongside "masculine" characteristics? Is there any hope of objectivity in such a discussion?

I'll have to admit, it all seems a bit...bizarre. Especially when I read that this study was done with 4 through 11 year olds. Yes....that was FOUR year olds. What is an effeminate four year old like, and how do you find them for research? Do you advertise for them? Does someone find them at day cares?

We're off to a strange start.

As the iMonk goes on to argue, the whole article, and especially the checklist, relies on an equation of "effeminacy" with homosexuality, a fundamental error whose absurdity is compounded by definitions of "masculinity" versus "effeminacy" that would have been regarded as a bit narrow and backward in the 1950s ("real men don't cry, don't read books and don't back away from a fight, and they know that if you get bullied then it's your own fault for being such a goddamned queer").

For my own response to that FotF article, see my BHT post from yesterday. It's a bit of a rant, but then again the article made me pretty angry, and 24 hours further on my opinion hasn't altered.