Neither-Nor Convulsions of Confusion

"I do not gender my child."
"It is up to Searyl to decide how they identify, when they are old enough to develop their own gender identity."
"I am not going to foreclose their choices based on an arbitrary assignment of gender at birth based on an inspection of their genitals."
Kori Doty, parent, British Columbia

A new poll from the Angus Reid Institute shows that 58 per cent of Canadians disagree with Ontario’s soon-to-be practice of issuing gender-neutral birth certificates for those who want them.Getty Images

Now that's different, one would have to admit, the name of Searyl. How many people have even ever heard of such a name. How might it automatically be assigned a gender? Searyl, a girl, or Searyl a boy. Take your pick. And 'taking your pick' is now high on the agenda of a number of righteous people who have become parents and who appear to resent biological gender identity. These are people who do not take kindly to being recognized as one of two sexes that nature endows her creatures with.

Certainly not all of her creatures, but most, and certainly by design, since the existence of those creatures, flora and fauna, were cleverly blueprinted by the originator of all that lives to reproduce. Survival and reproduction, and adaptation are all intertwined in the great design of existence. The great designs of science and nature focus on the most delicate and intricate of living systems, most of which co-exist in a great experiment of flourishing life.

Perhaps the most elemental and complex of the endowments we have been gifted with as humans is our brains, the capacity to think, to observe, to learn and to interact. Many do this as they were meant to do, developing their capabilities as they fit into and expand their potential. Many experience emotional temperamental resistance to the process, refusing to fit squarely into a diagram that fails to recognize their exceptionality.

And parents like the one quoted above fit some strange, preciously fey category where they themselves dabble in experimentation with their own. With themselves throughout their developing years to fashion a persona other than that which identifies with all others, and finally finding the opportunity to continue their experimentation into the following generation which they themselves have had a hand in nurturing to design.

Nature may have designed genitals for a distinct purpose, but anyone is free to reject that purpose with the claim that their minds and their physical purpose are at odds. Just as well for the future of the world that these are a distinct minority. Unfortunate that it is distinct minorities who make the most noise of being ostracized from the social contract, or suffering intolerance and discrimination, tweaking the conscience of the greater community.

Which in societies that have developed a collective conscience that recognizes human rights and the rights of minorities evokes a response that gratifies the demands of the minority. Leading to a situation where the LGBTQ2 communities scold and terrorize the greater balance of the wider community that has managed to shift their priorities to invite the minorities to stake their claims. Having done so, the position they occupy needs more room, and the majority is shoved over.

A poll conducted online by the Angus Reid Institute in the Province of Ontario discovered from responses that most people will not fully support non-binary identification of any kind. A majority of Canadians polled are prepared to oppose the province's plans to implement gender-neutral birth certificates, which are to be available to those who request them.


Even before that Draconian step in social-gender-identification accommodation, Ontario permits its residents to choose to place an X on their drivers' licence, eschewing the more identifying M or F. "There's a sense that with a driver's licence the person is at minimum 16 and has a sense of who they are and their gender by that age", observes Shachi Kurl, executive director of the Angus Reid Institute.

Men appear to be the most resistant to gender-neutral IDs; the older they are the more resistant, while women of any age have more tolerant tendencies relating to gender-neutral identification. Perhaps that is in recognition of women being more inclined to whimsy and playfulness generally, and men more practical-minded and direct in their mode of behaviour and expectations.

As far as absurd goes, can it go much further than a mother constraining the legitimacy of her language to use a plural to identify a singular individual? This is of course because that individual is so singular that nothing else does it justice. Instead of 'their', one might imagine the user having played with alternatives to 'he' or 'she' and in the end, deciding to reject 'it'. What a peculiar, preciously fey gift from a mother to her child, as though life is not sufficiently complicated.

Still from video CKNW