I’ve been thinking of what the month of September meant to my generation when we were younger. The highlights of the month included the premiers of the new fall TV shows, the unveiling of the new car models and of course, back-to-school.
Somewhere in the later middle-school years (we called it “junior high” back then) and the early high school years, the boys would come back for the new school year in our stiff, new jeans and squeaky, breaking voices to discover that many of the females who left school in June as “girls” miraculously turned into “women” over the summer.
In three short months the girl’s bodies had taken a new form that we boys thought looked pretty darn good. Their legs had become shapely, their rear ends now were round and protruded some, and their chests now were decorated with (gulp) boobs.
Maybe a few of the girls assisted their “natural” development just a tiny bit. Some of them had discovered the “magic” of make-up, many found a new hair color (is “bleached” an actual color?) and several worked on their summer tans (“orange” is a real color when the tan came out of a bottle.)
There were vicious rumors of tissue paper helping out in the chest development of some girls, but we never really knew for sure. At our lockers we’d exchange vital information like “Jessica told Suzanne that Julie has PE with Donna and saw toilet paper fall on the floor when Donna was changing.” The stories would quickly spread around the campus and eventually get back to Donna who, feeling self-conscious, would wear a parka until the following June, not always comfortable in Los Angeles. (It is ironic that Jessica, Suzanne and Julie would eventually pay surgeons to get similar results Donna got for pennies.)
Those were great days. Impalas were real cars with V8’s, I Dream of Jeanie kept her belly button hidden to make us crazy and June’s “girls” became September’s “women.”
Back-to-school in my town will be different this year. Not only have many of the girls transformed into women, one of the teachers did as well…but this teacher left school in June as a man.
West Linn High School math teach Nicholas Kintz has decided to become Nicole Kintz.
*CONTENT WARNING* The following will be void of any attempts to be “tolerant” or “understanding.” This is where I start ranting as the middle-aged, middle-class, straight, suburban, conservative Christian male that God made me to be. You’ve been warned.
The kids had been whispering at their lockers for some time about Kintz. Just rumors; kind of like the “toilet paper” rumors (maybe the Kintz gossip included “tp” stories as well…I’m just saying…)
The rumors were confirmed when the principle sent a letter to the parents of Kintz’s fall students announcing the change. The principle called it a “teachable moment,” and cited state law prohibiting discrimination of any kind against Kintz and his decision to transform from “he” to “she.”
With Facebook, Twitter, I Phones, cell phones and everything else, the word got around town in about three seconds. The consensus opinion of the students appears to be along the lines of “Eeeeuuuuwwww! That’s sick!”
The local papers and radio talk shows have featured comments from readers and listeners applauding Kintz for his/her “bravery” and for being “true” to his/herself by becoming the “woman” that has been “trapped inside” of him all his life.
What a bunch of crap! The kids have got it right.
We used to bank at a branch where one teller was taking hormone treatments to transform into a female. The eye-liner and high-pitched voice said “female” but the five o’clock shadow screamed “male.” I’m not ashamed to say that the guy “creeped me out” and I don’t think I’m the only one that felt that way. The kids would stare and giggle.
One Father’s Day, my wife and daughter took me to downtown Portland for what was going to be a nice, family outing. We walked around a corner and there was the annual Gay Pride Parade.
My daughter, seven or eight at the time, loudly asked “Why’s that man wearing a dress?”
Of course we “shushed” her and whispered something along the lines of “He’s just being silly.”
Kids know instinctively that boys are boys and girls are girls. We were wired that way. Sure, some little boys may be “softer” than others and some girls lean more “tom boyish” than other girls. Generally though, they get the sexuality thing figured out when they get older.
Isn’t it amazing to watch babies and toddlers gravitate toward toys and activities that go along with their sex? The boys like dirt, trucks and blocks and the girls like dolls, tea parties and playing school. They just know.
As they grow older, things become fuzzy and less defined. Parents, schools, society, culture, HBO, MTV and other “learning institutions” begin to plant seeds of doubt in their minds, not just about sex, but about everything.
Black and white is replaced by shades of grey. Right and wrong becomes subjective and conditional. Male and female becomes “gay,” “lesbian,” “bisexual,” “transgendered,” “cross-dressing” and those that are old-fashioned remain “straight.”
I kind of feel bad for Kintz. He/she is confused and troubled and has been for a long time. Once married (to a woman) with a couple of kids, the math teacher was a “cross-dresser” in hiding for years. After being discovered by his wife, after his son found pictures on the family computer of dad dressed in drag, the marriage ended and the family dissolved.
I feel bad for Kintz, but I feel worse for his former wife and children. What they’ve been through, what they continue to deal with, is just terrible.
And now as the school year begins at West Linn High School, it’s a “teachable moment.”
While the math teacher will be permitted to stand before the class, displaying, demonstrating and espousing the “freedom” of becoming the person he/she felt that was always trapped inside, the students will learn another lesson on “tolerance.” They’ll have a real life lesson on being “accepting” and “non-judgmental.”
They’ll be taught that if they feel uncomfortable about the “new” Kintz, that it’s because they are old-fashioned, unenlightened, simple, intolerant, homophobic, bigoted and perhaps even religious.
They’ll be told, and so will their parents, that they are the ones with “the problem,” not the new Ms. Kintz.
As I get older, I’m realizing that we had it right as kids, even as toddlers. We were right to think that there is black and white, good and evil, right and wrong and even male and female. That’s the way we were wired; that’s the way God designed us to be.
The blurry lines, the fuzzy thinking, the squishy “if it feels good, do it” way of acting always comes back to bite you. I’m thinking of using a permanent marker on some of those fuzzy lines from now on just to make sure.
The kids summed it all up for me; “Eeeeuuuuwwww! That’s sick!”
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The preceding was solely the opinion of one unenlightened, intolerant, middle-aged, middle-class, Caucasian, suburban, judgmental, right-wing, conservative, straight, “get your gayness out of my face” wacko Christian male. Deal with it.
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Best-selling author Marcus Buckingham knows how to “read” the numbers. In his new book Find Your Strongest Life: What the Happiest and Most Successful Women Do Differently, the former Senior Researcher for the Gallup Organization starts off by dismantling some “myths” about today’s women. For instance; as a result of having better education, better jobs, and better pay, women today are happier and more fulfilled than they were forty years ago. Nope, just the opposite in fact. More than a million surveys indicate that men have become happier and women less happy.