Identity outside of "male" and "female" is an emerging concept that currently has several identifiers and little academic agreement on which is the most pertinent.  Or most useful.  The two leading descriptors are "non-binary" and "genderqueer."  Gender diverse, however, is emerging as a new, more neutral, term that has the aim of including all other terms outside "male" and "female" within it and suggests the increase in its use to describe gender identities outside the traditional binary.  Use of the term binary, currently, evokes a slight shudder of distaste, as it is slung about with such careless conspicuousness and ubiquity. 

By now, sociology well understands that teenagers dye their hair magenta, pierce their young skin with a variety of metal appurtenances, or invest in showy tattoos their parents would be presumed not to condone — all in the name of asserting independence from their parents, or in keeping with peer norms making abstinence from such acting out costly in terms of group acceptance. 

We submit that  the childish foot-stamping indulged in by the tiny vocal insect layer at the Mouse House in Orlando is perhaps a graduation of teenage angst and showing the parents who's who and what's what.  It is a trend that is almost as often countermanded by those who have chopped and undergone surgeries and expensive hormone treatments to achieve a vagrant netherworld of otherness that's not truly changing sex, but establishes a severe foothold in Look at me! I've altered the terrain and now identify as [fill in the blank]. 

Reversal of the normal tidal maturation process isn't easy or cheap, but it is a signal that all is not so settled among the gender-diverse singles of this miniature revo movement. 

Our frail and fragile president has curiously pledged to  "have the back" of children who are so "brave" and deserve the tolerance and support of parents and teachers.  But though he throws in with a slew of loci where gender patching is now a radical trend taking hold among a certain thin stratum of malcontents, in the military, for one, dozens of studies have shown that soldiers do not welcome or accept "sex-changed" "men" or "women," not to mention the outsize cost to taxpayers if the transformee has joined the military, as some do,  in the expectation that Uncle Sam will pay for the exorbitances of surgery and endless rounds of suppressive hormones and maintenance.  

Soldiers do not bond with people who have special pleadings, and regular soldiery experience their effectiveness waning significantly if forced to share foxholes and bivouacs.  They don't easily accommodate the morphological disparities evident in moving either way.  Soldiers don't want to favor weaker "males" who are still female in bone structure, muscle mass, and  life training.  Nor do female soldiers happily accommodate males who have softened their contours, implanted apparent mammaries, recontoured their Adam's apples, and the like. 

Uneasy lies the head that wears the ... clown. 

Compounding the short-term trendiness of leaving behind one's sex, sort of, is the more important contrast with world events that render all these first-world "choices" additionally silly.  The Taliban, for one, just reneged on all promises to open, or reopen, schools for teen girls.  The men still disagree with women getting any education or holding any professions. 

In the Baltics, war is stripping the veneer of sophistication and civilization from cultures older and more deeply thoughtful than these spoiled first-worlders bent on slicing off genitalia or puffing up their chests so they can compete unfairly in female sports feigning femaleness.  In Ukraine and nearby, men and women, the elderly and just born are fleeing for their lives, losing everything but the bodies ferrying them to nearby neighboring arms.  

In these besieged lands, few are obsessed with body dysmorphics.  People just want to keep breathing in and out, not co-opting toddlers into their abusive notions. 

Beyond these stark realities and disparities, there is the prospect, also readily seen in sociological treatises, that a society ready to fold in and implode on itself, like the Rome of 2,000 years ago, loses its way, forgets its pride and strengths, and devolves into squabbling weak simulacra of "the greatest generation" of men and woman patriotic and proud.   

Testosterone wanes.  Androgyny saps. 

Shocking as it sounds to our ears, a poll in early March 2022 found that more than 50% of Democrats asked about whether they would defend this country were we physically invaded à la Ukraine said, Um, no, we wouldn't fight to save our land or presumably their vaunted freedoms. 

Translation: Our nation is weaker for all these experimental trendoids. 

In sum, our puerile "president" defends the foolish and monstrously beside-the-point, failing — as has been his habit since his inaugural.  We have, under this tenure, lost the plot, with only the conservative polity still staunch in patriotism and fervor in support of our flag. 

A sobering question is whether just the GOP plus an independent or three are enough to carry this nation into a strong, surviving tomorrow. 

The more rabid the trans activism, the less likely are we to make it through to a better day under the red, white, and blue. 

Do not cave.

Image via Pxhere.