Boy or Girl? :: Cowok atau Cewek?

Yesterday's head line of Times of India (3rd Dec 2006) is bothering my mind. Under the title of BOY OR GIRL? BE WHAT YOU WANT - Cross dressing children get support as doctors, educators in US redefine 'Normal'. It is said that 'advocates gain ground for what they call gender identity rights', 'children as young as five who display predispositions to dress like the opposite sex are being supported by a growing number of young parents, educators and mental health professionals'. See how the world has moving forward or is it backward?

I think this idea is too premature to be legalized, a proper research should first be conducted, the positive and negative effect should be studied. How can you let children by 5 'choose' their gender identity? Do they already have the capacity think that much? Supposed we assume that children have it, how would they cope with the staring eyes? Even he will become a target of bullying, then you'll argue that it's just a matter of time, when the socialization of the new rule've been done, and the society accept this, then there will be no more staring eyes? Yup, but then untill the time has come how many victims should we sacrifice?

I will tell you a research conducted by my friend, IGAA Jacky Viemilawati. The aim of her reseach was to see how the children of interfaith parents grow their religion identity. She used a qualitative approach on 5 adolescent of interfaith parents. The interfaith combination was varied, i.e Muslim-Christian, Hindu-Muslim, Catholic-Hindu. And in fact that all of these parents are so called modern-tolerance-open minded, that neither of the couple force their religion to be followed by their children. So, they let their children choose their religion since they are babies, in the name of tolerance to the pair.

And this 'freedom to choose' have negatively affected the children's, they grow up in confusion, a simple thing like attending a religion class at school become a nightmare for them, a simple chat about religion make them nervous. There was one statement of one of the research subject which make me very sad, shows how much burden they have on their shoulder, 'When I was a child, I came to Buddhism temple, Hinduism temple, Church, unfortunately there was no mosque in my surrounding, if only there was, then I would have been able to read Al- Quran'.

I think, gender identity should be teach according to their biological gender, at least until they have reached adolescent stage, in which this is also debatable. Do not give children choices for something beyond their capacity, gender or religion identity is something big.

Papanya Fiori (Btw Fiori hari ini ulang tahun lho... :)