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A Chemistry Lesson
There was a time she pined to be a boy,
Around the age of six or maybe eight,
When centipedes and beetles were her joy
And skinning knees in trees, her frequent fate.
There was a time she longed for hair so short
No brush would tear and tug at tangled knots.
Her irksome dolls would draw a scornful snort;
She’d swap them all for sparring BattleBots.
There was a time she didn’t want to be
With loutish lads—those bullish, brawling brats.
In dizzy dreams, she breathed the ecstasy
Of fragrant girls with politesse and plaits.
There was a time she feared the scarlet bloom
And rage and rip of pain bestowed by birth.
She cursed the hefty burden of her womb
Until she knew its wonder and her worth.
There was a time she found her mind had lied.
She felt a rush and blush so lush and keen—
A call to gifts that wouldn’t be denied—
A tug to all her heart had not foreseen…
A pull that led to him, a pledge, a son.
A love that sent confusion on its way.
A life she wasn’t meant to spurn or shun
In times when science didn’t pry or prey.
In her day puberty was never prone
To being blocked for thoughts not fully grown.
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A Prayer for Sanity
Please spare us from the doctrine of the sick
Who tell us right is wrong and wrong is right,
That gender is a trait our kids can pick
And hormone blockers are the guiding light.
Are children’s brains so crystal-clear and bright
They know their mind and body’s every trick?
No! Lies are told to lure each muddled mite—
Please spare us from the doctrine of the sick.
Deliver us from hacks and quacks who kick
All tried and tested truth plain out of sight—
That settled-science, social-justice clique
Who tell us right is wrong and wrong is right.
Please save us from satanic dogma’s blight
That hits us like a stray Antifa brick,
And all those shills who sell the vile soundbite
That gender is a trait our kids can pick.
Please cast out experts pushing wicked schtick
Then reveling with devilish delight—
The cons who claim castration’s mighty slick
And hormone blockers are the guiding light.
Pray let us find the fortitude to fight
The gospel of the preachy lunatic
Pronouncing chromosomes are there to spite
The grand transgender plans of good Old Nick.
Please spare us!
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Susan Jarvis Bryant is a church secretary and poet whose homeland is Kent, England. She is now an American citizen living on the coastal plains of Texas. Susan has poetry published in the UK webzine, Lighten Up On Line, The Daily Mail, and Openings (anthologies of poems by Open University Poets).
That was hilarious. Whatever else it may have been . . . sincere? . . . confused? . . . facetious? I don’t know and can’t tell. Reckless abandon, indeed!
hi susan,
i saw in a comment you said there are only two sexes, which is correct. but gender? doesn’t even exist. there is nothing in our biological makeup that makes men like women, cars and football. there’s nothing in our biological makeup that makes women like men, dresses and cooking. it’s really that simple. it’s not perverse to tell kids they don’t have to fit in a box, when we literally made the box up. explain to me how it’s pushing sexuality on to kids when someone says “you don’t have to be what society expects you to”, but it’s NOT pushing sexuality onto kids when someone says “you’re a girl because you have a uterus, also you like boys and will give them children” like susan?? how is saying “be yourself i support you” perverse but literally choosing and enforcing a sexuality isn’t?
Brooke, read my first poem. I’m saying children should be themselves. They shouldn’t have to fit a typical male/female stereotype. My entire point is that these days, if girls and boys don’t fit the stereotype they are in danger of being coerced into taking hormone blockers. Just because boys don’t have typical masculine traits doesn’t mean they’re girls and just because girls don’t have typical feminine traits doesn’t mean they’re boys. In a nutshell, if anyone decides to tread the hormone/surgery path they should make that decision as an adult not be coerced into it while still a child. Children shouldn’t make life-changing decisions concerning their bodies… they should be left to mature physically and mentally first.
Susan, due to the fact that gender does not exist i don’t see why it matters if kids chose a gender not assigned to them. hormone blockers aren’t a bad thing, and if they regret it they can just take hormones. again, there’s nothing in our biological makeup that determines gender so if a kid decides they’d like to be a gender opposite of them and even take hormone blockers, i don’t see why that’s an issue. it’s just as much of a decision to let hormones run their course as it is to block them. you’re deciding either way. kids should know they have a choice. also i’ve never heard of a kid coerced into hormones? letting kids know that it’s okay to not be their assigned gender is not the same thing as making a kid take hormones. it’s important to be informed and make informed decisions. i also agree that boys don’t have to have typical masculine traits and girls don’t have to have typical feminine traits, but it’s also okay to change your assigned gender all together if it doesn’t feel right.
to rephrase, in case you didn’t understand that, it’s just as much a decision to go through with bodily hormones as it is to block them. we’re just finally giving kids a choice. it’s reversible, in case they aren’t satisfied, and it’s 100% okay for everyone of any age to explore their gender identity and not just go with what false science and traditions say.
Brooke, I don’t think anyone should be stereotyped. Every person is an individual in their own right. What I am objecting to is children being told they have access to drugs to change their physical make-up. How can pre-pubescent children, who haven’t experienced a grown body with all the physical, hormonal, and emotional changes that go with it, decide that he/she wants to change their physical make-up to resemble the opposite sex when they haven’t experienced their own sex to it’s fullest degree? What I’m saying is puberty blockers should never be given to children. Puberty blockers aren’t candy – they’re potent mind-altering, body altering drugs.
What if a child wants candy for his dinner every night… should he have that choice? What if a child wants to pet a rattlesnake… should she have that choice? What if a child thinks he can fly… should he be able to test this out from a 20th floor balcony?
Children have no experience of life and the consequences of such decisions. That’s why there are laws in place to protect them from pedophilia. If they’re too young to have a sexual relationship under the age of eighteen, how is it that they’re old enough to decide what sex they want to be before they’ve gone through puberty?
susan,
all of the things you described were dangerous. but hormone therapy is not dangerous. i agree that hormone therapy should not be handed to children like candy, but if a child comes to their parent and tells them that they’re transgender, i don’t see why hormone therapy would be a problem. i agree that there should be an age limit to hormone therapy, like say 12 or 13, so this means informing kids from an early age what gender is. if you think that the child would not be sure or change their minds, then the way to go is the education about gender to children so that they can be 100% sure what confuses kids is that a gender is being enforced, being told there are options isn’t confusing. again, hormone therapy is easily reversible and not at all dangerous.
to rephrase again, because i know i’m all over the place,
eliminating gender as something that’s enforced would end the confusion, i’m sure. kids would just be themselves and take hormone therapy if they’d like. getting kids out of this brainwashing of “you’re a boy, you’re a girl” will take generations, so it’s not an immediate solution. an immediate solution would just be to listen when a kid has dysphoria and support them. people really do know themselves the best. and if you’re wondering how many adults regret the transition they had as a kid, it’s less than 2%.
actually it’s 8% of adults transition and regret it, my bad. should we deny 92% of people the right to be themselves?
From someone that has insider info:
https://quillette.com/2020/01/02/the-ranks-of-gender-detransitioners-are-growing-we-need-to-understand-why/
Brooke, “hormone therapy” is a blanket term that covers treatment for many things, including growth, menopause, etc. etc. I am talking about puberty suppression, which is one of the many types of hormone therapy. The side effects are numerous, dangerous and horrifying. It causes depression, and physical and sexual impairments that are irreversible, including infertility.
No child should make that decision. Read my first poem again. If I had made that choice as a child, it would have ruined my life. I am glad I had a family and friends around me to support my boyish ways without telling me that I had the option of being a boy… I would have said “Yes”.
Susan, I’m happy that you’re secure in your gender now, but you cannot speak for all of transgender people because of your experience. your case is a rarity. an overwhelming majority are happy with their choice to transition, because they were sure of themselves. i don’t know if you felt you were trans/gay still when you were 13, or how sure you were, but most people that get puberty blockers are very sure of themselves and have felt that way for a while.
Brooke, to get back to my original point, girls are girls and boys are boys, whatever feminine or masculine traits they may exhibit. This biological given should NEVER be experimented with… especially in still developing children. I have a feeling we are not going to agree on this, so I will stop here.
Brooke, this is my last post on this… I will give you the courtesy of a reply to your question about me. At the age of thirteen, I thought I preferred girls based on the fact that most of the boys in my class only came up to my shoulder, didn’t smell too good and were obnoxious. At that time, I hadn’t started my period and my own natural hormones hadn’t kicked in. I may have thought I wanted to be a boy based on my silly, immature premise alone. I’m glad I lived in an age where I didn’t have that choice. I was too naive to be given that choice – it would have ruined my chances of being happy and being a mother.
Please click on the link Mike Bryant has posted above. It may help you see where I’m coming from.
Dear Brooke and everyone else in these comments,
We will not have people saying that women can call themselves men or vice versa. Your comments may be deleted or you may be banned. It is a sickness and is self-destructive. What science can and cannot prove is, at a certain point, irrelevant. There are plenty of opportunities for different interests. Handel’s operas, for instance, have many castrato parts suitable for relatively effeminate men or women to play. But when people start messing up their own fundamental gender, or sex, then they indeed have a mental issue and are, frankly, less clearheaded than children. In the Eastern tradition, there is a clear differentiation between the yin (female) and yang (male), and in the Western tradition we have a clear differentiation going back to Adam and Eve, or Zeus and Hera if you prefer.
Evan Mantyk, Editor
Evan,
I’m relieved to see your response. Are there guidelines written somewhere on the site? It would be reassuring to read them if there are. Thank you!
–G
Gail,
There are not. This is the kind of thing I thought I would never have to say. The way things are going, pretty soon I’ll have to say no advocating child porn and consensual man-boy-love. What once was obvious now seems unclear. Regarding another of your comments, Darwin is indeed a significant source of these problem. Good point.
-Evan
Evan, you are aware of the origins of ‘castrato’, correct? The church-sanctioned practice of castrating pre-adolescent choir boys so their voices wouldn’t change and they would maintain their higher pitch range? I’m just saying that’s an odd thing to bring up as a justification for why people should not believe in the science of transgenderism.
I fully expect you to delete this comment because you disagree with it, but sir, you are an intellectual fraud and the bigotry run rampant on this site is an embarrassment to poets everywhere.
Dear Christopher,
I love Handel’s music, so it came to mind. People may have diverse tastes. That’s the point. Gender/sex, however, is immutable. The castratos were always regarded as boys, not girls. It’s not so hard to understand, right?
Poets everywhere have been enjoying the SCP’s website, so I’m not sure what you are referring to exactly. Certainly transgenderism is an embarrassment to humanity itself. If you don’t want to have a civil discussion and want to act like a bigot in your manner, then, yes, your comments may indeed be deleted.
-Evan Mantyk
I love the poems because they are beautiful and true and loving.
Putting sex and gender into a bit of historical perspective:
https://www.heritage.org/gender/report/sex-gender-and-the-origin-the-culture-wars-intellectual-history
Thanks, Mike! Did not read every word–the repetitive pattern of the thinking in the development of the movement is very readily apparent. They missed the biggest cause right at the outset. Darwin actually started the whole mess by compromising the truth of Scripture with his theories. A very big lie propounding more of the same.
Susan, it looks like America is waking up!
https://thenewamerican.com/the-beginning-of-the-end-of-trans-lies-60-minutes-tackles-big-gender/
“I’ve never seen anything worse than what’s happening right now. And that includes the sorts of things that were done in the camps in Germany. At least the goddamn Nazis admitted what they did was wrong. They tried to hide it. We trumpet it as a moral virtue…
These surgical procedures are so brutal and so experimental that they’re—I’m going to say it again—they’re worse than what the Mengele types did in the concentration camps in the thirties and forties. And that’s a pretty goddamn low bar.”
-Dr. Jordan Peterson 7/25/2024