TOPICS:
Gender Equality Run Amok
Jun 06, 2012 / Written by: Gary Isbell
The politically correct idea of equality seems to know no bounds. Sweden has just introduced a new gender-neutral pronoun — hen. In the Swedish language, he is han and she is hon. Now it seems Sweden’s educational establishment is set upon using the nation’s preschools national curriculum is to abolish gender distinction among children. The schools have even gone so far as to employ “gender police” to assist teaching staff in identifying language and behavior patterns in children that might reinforce old stereotypes that need to be “corrected.” Old stereotypes can be understood as those models influenced by Christian civilization.
The word hen was first introduced by Swedish linguists in the mid-60s but was curiously added to the online version of Sweden’s National Encyclopedia on the very gender-specific International Women's Day on March 8, 2012. At one public preschool called Egalia in Stockholm, staff now avoids using words such as him or her and address students as friends or hens instead of boys and girls.
Another preschool has gone so far as to eliminate recess from its curriculum because, as one teacher put it, when children are free to play “stereotypical gender patterns are born and cemented. In free play there is hierarchy, exclusion and the seed to bullying.”
Every detail of children's interactions gets micromanaged by “concerned” adults, who end up placing children in a quandary over the development of their sex by how they form friendships, what games they play and the words used in the songs they sing.
This odd behavior was largely inspired by Sweden's first gender-neutral children's book written by Jesper Lundqvist, Kivi and Monsterdog. It seems Lundqvist desired to write a children’s story where characters are not identified with any sex and do not conform to a traditional gender-based story line. He (or perhaps hen) was in fact trying to avoid giving his characters roles that children tend to emulate.
The manner in which they do this is by designating as stereotypes those roles based on nature and Western culture. Most people understand stereotyping as a widely held, but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person. While this conjures a negative connotation of the word, those pushing a liberal agenda like Sweden’s school system are able to obliterate the natural distinctions inherent to each sex all in the name of “gender equality” and avoiding stereotyping.
Conveniently this contorted application of Lundqvist’s strange book fits perfectly into the global homosexual agenda by blurring the necessary and natural distinctions between men and women. Sweden is now advocating androgyny among its youngest citizens. When students play house in school, they are encouraged to include daddy, daddy, child; mommy, mommy, child; or any other modern unnatural combination to refer to family.
Not everyone has embraced this radical equality with enthusiasm however. Many critics affirm that it can be psychologically and socially damaging, especially for children. Columnist and former equality expert Elise Claeson, from the Swedish Confederation of Professions stated “that young children can become confused by the suggestion that there is a third, in-between gender at a time when their brains and bodies are developing. Adults should not interrupt a child's discovery of their gender and sexuality, argues Claeson.” She is quoted in the Swedish daily, Dagens Nyheter, that “gender ideologues have managed to change the curriculum to establish that schools should actively counter gender roles.”1
If Sweden’s school system were really practicing equality, they would put their children on equal footing as themselves and respect the child’s opinion as equal to their own. By teaching them anything at all, they place themselves as superior, and thus, they teach inequality by example. Why would they encourage children to say daddy, daddy, child regarding family if they did not have an ideological agenda? If Sweden’s preschools were consistent with this warped notion of equality, children would be taught to say hen, hen, hen. Perhaps gender equality has simply run amok.
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