The trick here is the use of the word gender as something different from sex. (Language purists should heave a deep sigh here over the co-opting of a term whose original — and sole — meaning in English was a distinction among nouns by case. Talk about cultural appropriation!)
But I digress. Planned Parenthood has come out with a set of guidelines for the parents of children that the organization was unable to abort. Not to fear, though. The group’s recommendations for parent-child interaction are every bit as appalling as their stance on killing fetuses.
In a section of the guide titled “How do I talk with my preschooler about their [sic] body?” you find this:
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It’s common for preschoolers to have questions about genitals and how bodies look different for boys and girls. (It’s even common for preschoolers to show each other what parts they have when left alone. That’s totally normal, but you may want to have a conversation about healthy boundaries.)
While the most simple answer is that girls have vulvas and boys have penises/testicles, that answer isn’t true for every boy and girl. Boy, girl, man, and woman are words that describe gender identity, and some people with the gender identities “boy” or “man” have vulvas, and some with the gender identity “girl” or “woman” have penises/testicles. Your genitals don’t make you a boy or a girl.
You can say that most girls have vulvas and most boys have penises/testicles. You may want to emphasize that it doesn’t matter too much what parts someone has — that doesn’t tell you much about them. But you can make that decision based on your values and how you plan to talk with your kid about gender as they grow up.
In case you’re wondering, there are no footnotes citing sources, no links to scientific journals that support the claims about what’s “common for preschoolers” or advise on how you should to your preschooler about his body.
This is nothing more than baldfaced propaganda based on one extreme position in the debate over “transgender rights.”
The guide inadvertently makes another strong argument for cutting off federal funding to Planned Parenthood.
