"But won't children be confused by all the LGBT-"
Yesterday I saw a mother with a baby carriage, being followed by a girl of about 4-6 years old on a bicycle. The kid started ringing her bike bell like RING RING RING RING RING RING RING, and the mother turned to look behind them to see whether they were being followed by a cyclist who desperately needs to pass them for the sake of everyone's safety.
And the little girl - who just rang the goddamn bell herself 5 seconds ago - also turned to look.
Kids are confused by everything at all times. They don't know jack shit. About anything.
i remember being like 8 or 9 and being told that my dad’s ex-wife was no longer diane and we were to address her as daniel now. my reaction: “ok.”
me and my brother later had a small discussion about whether that could happen randomly (conclusion: no, he probably had to file papers or something) and whether daniel should now be referred to as dad’s ex-husband (conclusion: yes but only to see the face he’ll make) but at no point did we find it like... alarming? the world is big and weird. we were used to it.
finding out a sorta-relative could just change genders off camera, as it were, was a whole lot less head-splodey than finding out there were no squirrels in australia!
There’s no what
"Won't they be confused by all the--" So what if they are? Life is often confusing. That's part of how we learn. Part of the job of an adult is to help confused kids learn and understand things. There's no obligation to protect the kids from the confusing things. Quite the reverse.
In my experience anyone using this BS excuse isn't worried about a child's potential confusion, but their own, which they don't want to admit to having.
theres no squirrels in australia???
Aussie here, I DIDN'T KNOW SQUIRRELS WERE ACTUALLY REAL FOR THE FIRST EIGHT YEARS OF MY LIFE NO JOKE I THOUGHT THEY WERE A MYTHICAL ANIMAL LIKE UNICORNS
WHAT??
Also kids are far less likely to be confused by something the younger they learn about it. Kiddo had queer people in his life and casual references to queerness before he could even talk. It was never confusing for him. It was normal.
Squirrels were an invasive species to Australia but they never managed to gain a foothold and were eradicated within a few years of their arrival.
i was gonna make a joke like yes the mythical squirrel but i guess it does make some sense if you’d never seen one before
and there’s also Ratatoskr (no autocorrect NOT Ratatouille) from Norse Mythology, a giant squirrel that ran up and down the World Tree
one of my earliest memories was feeling confused and upset that I didn't have the words to correctly articulate that I really really liked my cinderella princess dress and my sickass red bicycle helmet with flames and feeling really upset that for some reason the people around me were making me feel like i had to choose one or the other. never directly i don't think, but idk how much made up oppression a 4 year old can conjure without any precedent. but it did very much feel like "do you want the princess dress and you can be a regular little girl" (tempting) or "do you want the flames and you can be a weird almost-boy little girl" (also highly tempting but this was implied to be bad for some reason???)
