I am writing in response to John Blasiak’s May 16 My Turn opinion piece. His cisgendered white male privilege is clear in the second sentence, when referencing women as “exotic creatures.” In his mind, men are men and distinctly different from women, and that’s how things should be. To argue that women have been “empowered in every culture” shows a clear lacking of historical and current reality. Just this week, 25 powerful white men in Alabama voted to criminalize abortion with no exception for rape or incest. How exactly does this empower women in their state, rather than deny them the rights to their bodies?
Blasiak goes on to espouse his beliefs on gender, and how the lack of a mother and father in traditional child-rearing roles will result in “later psychological issues.” Besides the point of his gender- and hetero-normative statement, does he truly believe that no other factors would contribute to the well-being of a child’s development, such as racial bias, economic stability, geographic location, etc.? In fact, as a 2016 study from The Williams Institute at the UCLA School for Law titled Same-Sex and Different-Sex Parent Households and Child Health Outcomes: Findings from the National Survey of Children’s Health reports: “Children with female same-sex parents and different-sex parents demonstrated no differences in outcomes.” As other research has proven, a child’s well-being and success depends on a safe, nurturing, stable home life with loving caregivers.
In his closing he writes “I wonder if the misguided authorities who are actively abandoning the training of children to be boys and girls, or neglecting it, realize the damage they are doing…” Unfortunately Blasiak is among the misguided who believe that all people need be defined in one of two binary gender categories. The LGBT rights movement has made great strides in this country during my lifetime. We are fortunate to live in an area where it is generally safe to be open about one’s sexual orientation in public. Gender identity expression is growing in awareness in our Valley, but acceptance is still lagging. The true damage has been and continues to be felt by many of our fellow residents, who are not able to express their preferred gender or sexual orientation due to fear of violence, shame, or ostracism from family, friends, or employers, let alone complete strangers.
I do agree with Blasiak’s final line, “For the sake of all that is good in the world, that madness needs to stop.” However as a white male myself, co-parenting two young boys with my wife, the “madness” as I see it are the opinions expressed in the aforementioned piece, and this close-minded thinking shared by many others in our society.
Ben Clark is a resident of Deerfield.