SOMETHING FOR TERFs TO CONSIDER.

One day, when I was in primary school, I was bored but didn’t have a lot of time, so I started to read a book titled “Oliver Button Is A Sissy”. Oliver Button liked going into the attic of his parents’ house and dressing up and dancing. His father said to him, one day, “Go outside and play football, baseball, any kind of ball.” He didn’t want to, so his parents enrolled him in a dancing school, where he was the only boy. The boys at his school wrote on the wall “Oliver Button is a sissy,” and one day, the boys were tormenting him and talk his shoes away. Guess who came to his aid? A bigger boy at school? No, the girls!

There was no mention in the book, even though it was a children’s book published at a more innocent time, of the girls at the dance school’s parents coming along and saying, “I don’t want this boy dancing with our daughters!” And his teacher even said that there was a talent quest and she wanted him to be in it. And no, the parents of the girls weren’t up in arms saying, “What?” The Friday before the talent quest, Oliver’s teacher, a male, even said, “One of your classmates is going to be in it. I encourage you all to go along and cheer for Oliver Button.” The boys whispered, “Sissy.” Oliver didn’t win, but he scored a place, and his teacher and parents were proud of him. And when he arrived at school on the Monday morning, he saw that someone had crossed out Sissy and written Star.

Even though I was on the tail end of some of those things, what this book showed was that it was okay for kids not to conform to gendered norms. What people need to remember also is, Patrick Swayze was the son of Texas cowboy who was shocked that his son was doing ballet dancing, and Patrick, as a younger man, said, “Yeah, I’m a dancer, but I’m a macho ballet dancer.” And there were plenty of women, my Year Nine English Teacher amongst them, who swooned over Patrick Swayze. And let’s not forget, as Johnny Castle, he was a dance teacher and bit of a bad boy, but he also played Darryl (Darry) Curtis, in The Outsiders, and was the onscreen brother of Rob Lowe and C. Thomas Howell (Sodapop and Ponyboy Curtis respectively).

I respect women’s safety, but nobody has come forward since his death and alleged that Patrick Swayze had sexually assaulted them. Why? He was a gentleman.

The right-wing carries on about letting kids be kids, but this must extend to allowing LGBTIQA kids to be kids and letting kids whose interests may be outside the gender norms to be able to be kids. It’s one thing to be opposed to the patriarchy but enforcing gender norms is more patriarchal than allowing transwomen into women’s spaces.