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It just goes to show that it’s hard to fit real people into neatly-sized boxes. In my opinion, much of the current “gender” kerfluffle is due to our society’s making the “masculine” and “feminine” boxes far too small and cubical.

I’m not “feminine” in this culture, not even in my long skirt as a stay-at-home mother of ten children. A less grammatical person might, instead of considering, “Sex: female,” to be adequate, decided she needed to build her own “gender” box, stick a unique label on it, and live in it.

"...our society’s making the “masculine” and “feminine” boxes far too small and cubical."

Exactly.

Take the matter of dress, for instance. When a 5-year-old laddie says "I like to sing and sway and wear sequins and blue eye-shadow," why do people assume he's "a girl inside"? Why don't they say "he's a little boy who likes music and glittery things and Celtic face paint?"

That's why Little Boy Blue ends up saying, "I always felt like a girl inside." How would he know that? How would even get that idea? All he knows from experience, is that he's a boy who has a certain boyish (why not?) sense of style.

PRESIDENTIAL BABY PICS

Theodore ("Teddy") Roosevelt

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Social convention of 1884, when FDR was photographed at age 2 1/2, dictated that boys wore dresses until age 6 or 7, also the time of their first haircut. Franklin's outfit was considered gender-neutral.

It was, first, a matter of practicality. For babies/toddlers/tykes, hey, diaper, food, and grass stains are universal, but you can bleach white cotton. And if the little boys and girls wear the same clothes, you can use the same hand-me-downs for your whole brood.

Plus: saying a boy is "girlish" for liking poetry or ballet or playing kitchen, is like messing with a black lad's mind and telling him he's "acting white." p> Same for telling an athletic, or math-loving, or hair-style-indifferent, or take-charge girl that she's boyish. Not at all. Quit saying that, people. She's a girl, and she is who she is.