My education started fifty years ago in public school. I was asked to be Santa for a holiday show. And, a boy in class was told to be Mrs. Santa. The gender blenders were active as early as the seventies in public schools! Beloved Mr. Rogers and Olwen Hufton, the first Women’s Studies Professor of Harvard, were onto this problematic theory way back then, too.

I say problematic because telling children they can be a different gender is a political death knell. Mothers can be terrifying when people mess with their children. At least many mothers are. I am nor sure where my mother was. But…

I did not subject myself to the humiliation of being Santa. There was something wrong with that situation.

“What is wrong with these people? I am a girl,” I thought to myself. How am I supposed to be a man? Perhaps they thought my job was to emulate “Transgender Santa.”

That Santa is a non-binary entity wrongly assigned to a biological male body instead of the female body he/she/they wanted is a lot for a six year old to fathom. This feels like a late night comedy show. ‘Like something adults do after hours that is none of my business. And, possibly get arrested for if they do it publicly. I was a six year old, I liked popcorn and cartoons.

What an impossible burden to put on children, making them to be confused about their little bodies. My solution to this problem is teaching biology.

I am not sensitive about who I am. Good thing. But, if my teachers were feminists, (baby boomers usually are), then isn’t confusing girls that they have to grow up to be like men, the ultimate humiliation of women? As if women by nature had no natural utility?

I am sort of tomboyish at times, I am no diva. But, it is stressful doing the work men typically do. Does that make me a traitor to the cause of women? If feminism is about female happiness I am all for it. But, if its about women trying to prove how like men they are, that’s lousy. I am out.

I just want to be myself. I don’t want to be a man. Nothing personal against men. They can’t help having strong backs and an enormous capacity to endure BS life heaps on us. Men seem to thrive on it!

Male competition is natural selection at work. See how much work I can do! It’s like the great mating call of the male of our species. It’s similar to other species’ behavior, like birds: making the best show, demonstrating feats of strength, and building impressive nests.

I am pretty sure this just happens naturally. What a sad prospect that I’d be forced to do feats of strength like men. But, without the physical stature and mental wiring that demands utility. Trying to be like a man is as bad a mismatch for my soul as transgender Santa.

Plus, I am pretty certain my father digging ditches for sixty hours a week in Boston his whole lifetime was not an act of “oppressive male behavior.” Seems to me an act of oppression would be expecting me to do the work men typically do all week long and me dying prematurely trying to prove a point.

The only point I’d be proving if I continued with this feminist thinking is that women make lousy men. Something I knew instinctively at six years old.