In the English city of Brighton, secondary school pupils received a questionnaire. Among other things, the teenagers had to indicate which of the 23 gender options they most identify with. The list began with girls and boys but continued with variations: male, female, neither, in between or flexible.

The German publisher Gabriele Kuby (author of “The Global Sexual Revolution”) thought she was well acquainted with all the indications. Until she stumbled on “cis”. “It is the same as heterosexual. By using new words for normal things, the gender movement wants to break through the bipolarity of man and woman. And that has to start with children”, she says in a telephone interview.

Questioning is creating insecurity

In The Argus, Brighton’s local newspaper, columnist Katy Rice complained that the school creates insecurity by asking such questions. This will “unnecessarily make all teenagers question their basic identity”, Rice wrote.

She hit a nerve with this. The school was heavily criticised, but it turned out that the school was not responsible for the list. It came from the British Child Protection Agency. The government organisation admitted: this was a mistake.

Now Brighton is a modern city that likes to lead the way when it comes to sexual rights. The government strives for an “inclusive and tolerant society”. No less than one in six of its inhabitants counts as LGBTQI (the still-growing abbreviation for a particular sexual minority).

Let children enjoy innocence

In April, therefore, a new action followed in the coastal city. The city council asked parents of upcoming toddlers to help their child choosing the correct gender. Of course, the box could also remain open if the child was not yet ready to choose.

Parents reacted furiously. “Four-year-olds do not generally have fixed views and often don’t fully understand that their sex, colour or even species is fixed.” Others called it dangerous to expose young children to this kind of ‘big people stuff’. “They are not adults – let them enjoy the innocence and creativity of their childhood”, the Daily Mail recorded.

Simon Calvert of The Christian Institute in England also reacted to the publicity. “To feel safe, children need to know there are some simple boundaries in life. The basic biological categories of male and female are amongst the most simple and fundamental boundaries of all”, according to Calvert.

According to progressive thinkers, however, Brighton is a shining example. In the past, you received a form to fill in with your name, date of birth and gender. Today, parents must guide the child in a choice. After all, now that they are at an age where gender can still go either way, it is not good to expose children to stereotypes.

Neutral language in Sweden

The ‘mother’ of feminism, Simone de Beauvoir, already said it in 1949 in her book “The second sex”: “You are not born a woman, you are made a woman.” Against this background, many parents today prefer a gender-neutral upbringing.

In Sweden, the leaders of a group of progressive crèches address the children as “friends”. The use of “boy” or “girl” is taboo. The leaders do not speak of “he” or “she” either but use a new neuter word in Swedish.

This approach gives children “a fantastic opportunity to be who they want to be”, said one of the leaders in the media. In other words, the realisation that they are boy or girl is a hindrance for the child.

But critics say that in Sweden, this approach actually misjudges children’s identity.

In Sweden, too, not everyone is enthusiastic about this principle of neutrality. “Research in Stockholm has shown that highly educated parents keep their children away from it,” says Swedish Maria Hildingsson, who works in everyday life for the French Federation of Roman Catholic Family Organisations in Europe (FAFCE). “Less educated people are more susceptible to modern views on education, I suspect. Higher educated people are harder to convince”, according to Hildingsson in a telephone interview.

Advocates of gender blindness complain a lot about the stereotypical pink and blue clothes for girls and boys, of which sweet advertising brochures are full of. On the other hand, the idea that all children’s rooms have no different colours is, of course, quite stereotypical either.

Make an end to the pigeon-holing

With children, gender blindness is perhaps still reasonably harmless. A boy is an Indian today, a dinosaur tomorrow and a woman the day after. Some adults think they have this flexibility too, but it is expressed differently.

An example of such an adult is the Dutch-Egyptian Monique Samuel, who said on TV that her name changed to Mounir last year. Was she a man now? Eva Jinek asked. No, not at all. “I want to think outside the box. I want the freedom to find out who I am”, Samuel said.

Publicist Asha ten Broeke (author of the Dutch book “Het idee M/V”) recognises herself in Samuel. She experiences male and female seasons in her life. She is married, and the mother of two daughters but has always felt more like a man than a woman, she writes on her website. “How strong that feeling is changes over the years.” As soon as the boy phase returns, she asks the hairdresser for “boy’s hair”. “I’ve never felt the need for a male body,” she writes, “but when I wear a skirt, I feel like I’m taking part in a costume party.” She calls herself gender fluid. Her message: “Make an end to the pigeon-holes”.

Those pigeon-holes (in technical terms binarity, or: bipolarity of man and woman) are something from the old days when people still counted on the biological sex. In our age of gender thinking, everything is fluid.

Creators of self-chosen identity

Gender today is a self-chosen identity. The gender movement says that it is completely arbitrary to refer to a son or daughter on a birth announcement to family and friends.

The pattern m/f (male/female) is too restrictive. Someone said in a message to Facebook in 2015: “As someone who does not identify with female or male pronouns, I feel excluded by FB.” And with success. Facebook members can choose from as many as 60 variants. If that is not enough, they can add new ones. The idea is that people are their own creators. Of course, you can change your gender also.

Changing birth certificate

Of course, this has political consequences. For example, the Dutch government is currently considering whether to ask for gender when registering births. The background to this is that some political parties believe that this would place too much of a burden on the child.

In the Netherlands, transgender people can also change their birth certificates without sex reassignment surgery. The Netherlands is not entirely at the forefront of this, as a doctor’s statement is still required to guarantee that this is the person’s permanent wish. This is no longer necessary in other countries, such as Denmark, Ireland, Colombia, and Argentina. So, there it may happen that a civil servant must register someone with a beard and a tuft of chest hair as a woman.

Transgenders are riding on the success of the gay movement. And that success is enormous. The new Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau, for example, now wants to expand the legislation that protects gays with measures that make insulting transgender people a punishable offence.

It strikes Mrs Hildingsson with all these initiatives that politicians are not really critical. “They find it difficult to ask questions about the rights of homosexuals and related groups. That is why these kinds of group rights for sexual minorities are at the top of the agenda at the European Union and the United Nations these days. The Netherlands is an important advocate for it.”

“No one has a gender, everyone has a sex”

The whole gender debate also arouses strong resistance. The small, conservative paediatrician group American College of Paediatricians (ACPED) speaks of an ideology that is not rooted in facts. “No one is born with a gender. But everyone has a biological sex”, the college says. “People who identify as “feeling like the opposite sex” or “somewhere in between” do not comprise a third sex. They remain biological men or biological women.” According to ACPED, this movement mainly brings uncertainty and therefore longer queues at the gender clinic.

There is also criticism from the gay movement. David Berger, former editor-in-chief of the German magazine Männer, believes that the “gender thing” is misleading. It makes people think that they can throw off the “shackles of biology”. “The goal is to achieve a society without gender”, he said during an event of the Christian Democrats for Life in Berlin (the CDU’s pro-life movement), a speech that got reflection in the press.

According to Gabriele Kuby, the gender movement promises freedom but brings slavery. “It is a frontal attack on family and motherhood. The forced sexualisation through education in German schools is also an attack on childhood. It is the worst thing there is. The result is a demographic crisis.”

Genesis: Male and female He created

In reactions from Christians worldwide, one text recurs regularly, namely Genesis 1:27: “Male and female He created them.” Together, man and woman radiate God’s greatness. Being a man or a woman is a privilege and not a sad fate.

The Scottish pastor David Robertson, the moderator of the Free Church, recently made headlines when he called gender politics “a state-subsidised indoctrination”. “Teaching children they can choose their own gender is itself arguably a form of child abuse”, according to Mr Robertson on his personal website.

German theologian Prof. Rainer Mayer sees in the gender vision an “inner contradiction” regarding homosexuality. Mayer: “Those who call homosexuals to change are dismissed as frauds today. But gender mainstreaming says that we cannot fix anyone’s sexual identity and that every person can choose and change their sexual orientation as they see fit.”

Future of gender movement difficult to predict

Mayer is supported in this by the publicist Asha ten Broeke, an advocate of the gender theory. She disputes the idea that sexual preference is fixed for life. On her internet page, she seeks debate with the famous Dutch brain researcher Dick Swaab, the infamous ‘gay swab’ discoverer.

It is difficult to say where gender thinking will end up. What is clear is that the objectives are in line with gay rights and that politicians in many countries are determined to advance their acceptance. At the same time, there is a lot of doubt everywhere. Hildingsson: “Especially when children come into play, people are very protective. That makes it difficult to predict the future.”

This article was published previously in the Dutch Reformatorisch Dagblad on June 1st 2016.