A future without tomboys and lesbians?
Discussions about gender expression tend to get very intense very quickly. We see it happen a lot in AfterEllen.com comments, as people react to certain words or misinterpret another comment. Frankly, the level of anger that often comes up makes me shy away from writing about certain topics.
But something recently came across my feed that is so outrageous — and so frightening — that I have to write about it. And in this case, I invite you to be outraged along with me.
Advocate.com reported the release of a new study from Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine that details some dangerous experiments in fetal engineering. Doctors have been using a synthetic steroid to prevent female babies from being born with "behavioral masculinization" — which means lesbianism, bisexuality, intersexuality, and tomboyism. (Yes, "tomboyism" is a thing.)
Let that soak in for a minute.
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http://www.afterellen.com/content/2012/08/future-without-tomboys-and-lesbians-new-study-explores-ethics-gender-difference
= new reply since forum marked as read
I thought being gay was a lifestyle choice. Now I'm confused.
Yikes!
"LGBT people are a part of humanity and have a unique cultural and social role on the planet."
Native Americans have often held intersex, androgynous people, feminine males and masculine females in high respect. The most common term to define such persons today is to refer to them as "two-spirit" people, but in the past feminine males were sometimes referred to as "berdache" by early French explorers in North America, who adapted a Persian word "bardaj", meaning an intimate male friend. Because these androgynous males were commonly married to a masculine man, or had sex with men, and the masculine females had feminine women as wives, the term berdache had a clear homosexual connotation. Both the Spanish settlers in Latin America and the English colonists in North America condemned them as "sodomites".
Rather than emphasising the homosexuality of these persons, however, many Native Americans focused on their spiritual gifts. American Indian traditionalists, even today, tend to see a person's basic character as a reflection of their spirit. Since everything that exists is thought to come from the spirit world, androgynous or transgender persons are seen as doubly blessed, having both the spirit of a man and the spirit of a woman. Thus, they are honoured for having two spirits, and are seen as more spiritually gifted than the typical masculine male or feminine female.
Therefore, many Native American religions, rather than stigmatising such persons, often looked to them as religious leaders and teachers. Quite similar religious traditions existed among the native peoples of Siberia and many parts of Central and southeast Asia. Since the ancestors of Native Americans migrated from Siberia over 20,000 years ago, and since reports of highly respected androgynous persons have been noted among indigenous Americans from Alaska to Chile, androgyny seems to be quite ancient among humans.
Rather than the physical body, Native Americans emphasised a person's "spirit", or character, as being most important. Instead of seeing two-spirit persons as transsexuals who try to make themselves into "the opposite sex", it is more accurate to understand them as individuals who take on a gender status that is different from both men and women. This alternative gender status offers a range of possibilities, from slightly effeminate males or masculine females, to androgynous or transgender persons, to those who completely cross-dress and act as the other gender. The emphasis of Native Americans is not to force every person into one box, but to allow for the reality of diversity in gender and sexual identities.
this is how i truly feel 
Maybe instead of calling it the "LGBTIQ spectrum", we will someday just call it the human spectrum.
