Excerpts from Megan Fox@PJM
Dear Gender-Confused, Questioning, or Queer Guy with the beard wearing lipstick: I saw your open letter to parents like me with young children who stare at you when you are out fannying about in your skirt and your lipstick without bothering to shave your face or attempting to pass as a woman in any way. You think it’s rude that my kid stares at you in the mall or at the beach or wherever you happen to be defying all gender-normative behavior.
You don’t like it and you especially don’t like it when I tell my child not to stare at strangers or talk about them in public. You think I should drop whatever I’m doing at the moment to explain queer theory to my kindergartner. Let me save you the trouble of worrying about this a second longer.
That’s not going to happen.
Let me tell you what is going to happen in my house. We don’t subscribe to the current false notion that gender identity is fluid or vast. There are two genders; male and female. Your chromosomes determine your sex. Whatever mental gymnastics are going on inside the minds of people who want to believe otherwise are none of my business. However, I will never lie to my child about biology.
You suggested I pull my child aside after he asks why you’re wearing lipstick and say to him, “Yes, Johnny, sometimes boys do wear lipstick and that is perfectly okay. You can wear lipstick too if you want!” Except what you are suggesting is that I deny my religious beliefs and science to do so. Would you force a Muslim child to eat bacon to please your sensibilities?
As a gender-non-conforming person, it seems to me that you have made a decision to be “queer” in many senses of the word and that comes with a lot of staring. No one says you have to go out painted like a mashup of Lady Gaga and John Wayne Gacy. That’s the choice you made. The consequence of that choice is that small children might be frightened or curious. Your insistence, though, that all people conform to your non-conformity and your personal ideas of what a man can or should be is unsettling. You want to be able to define masculinity for you, but we are not allowed to do the same for ourselves? You cry for tolerance of your strangeness but are completely intolerant of biological sex-affirming philosophy.
Speaking of gender dysphoria, it’s a mental disorder. Clearly, you are all working hard to have it taken off the list of disorders but even that won’t change the truth. People who suffer from gender dysphoria are truly living in pain. That is not something I would ever encourage in my children. On the contrary, I would seek out psychological help and therapy if any child of mine had this problem. Gender dysphoria is not a party. It’s a lifelong, crippling disorder that can result in the destruction of healthy body parts and suicide.
The photographs of you seem to show a man who isn’t really interested in passing as female. There’s little attempt to hide male traits like your beard and facial features that are decidedly male. Add to that your style of dress, which is more performance art than “running out for errands like everyone else.” A biological woman in your outfits would draw stares too. You’re broadcasting a “look at me” vibe but you don’t want to be looked at.
So either try harder, or shut up about the staring.
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