Transgender Clownfish Raises a Stink at Oakland Elementary School

[Julie Marie]

Transgender Clownfish Raises a Stink at Oakland Elementary School

At Oakland's Redwood Heights Elementary school, a cute and seemingly harmless lesson on gender diversity has provoked the religious right in to action. The hour-long lesson, part of a requirement that all state schools take on the subjects of gender identity and sexual orientation, used examples from nature to illustrate to fourth and fifth graders that things can be more complicated than just boys versus girls. Unfortunately that's what the Pacific Justice Institute, defenders of your religious freedom to deny what you saw on the National Geographic Channel, have latched on to.

Oakland school's lessons in gender diversity

A one-hour elementary school lesson on gender diversity featuring all-girl geckos and transgender clownfish caused a stir in Oakland on Monday, with conservative legal defense organizations questioning the legitimacy of the topic and providing legal counsel to parents who opposed the instruction.

"If we don't have a safe, nurturing class environment, it's going to be hard to learn," she said. "Really, the message behind this curriculum is there are different ways to be boys. There are different ways to be girls."

[Medusa]

If someone at elementary say me that I could be a girl if I want to everything could be different and protect me form feeling so strange and alone and escaping to fantasy and dreams for long time

[~RoadToTrista~]

The part that gets me is that they question whether it's possible to have sex-changing clownfish or all female geckos. Those questions are only because of their morals, I'm sure they wouldn't react like that to something that didn't offend them. Ugh, morons.

[Julie Marie]

I kept a salt water reef tank for years and it always had clownfish in it.  They are fascinating to watch as they dive into their anemone.  Once you introduce a second clownfish into the tank, one of them becomes the male.  And it grows proportionately.  And if you have several clownfish and the only male dies, one of the females will transition.

Back in the early days I also used to grow marijuana.  That too is transgender.  As any knowledgeable pot grower will tell you, the female plants produce the most THC, especially when there is no male around to pollinate them.  And if enough time elapses and the females are not pollinated, one of them will turn male.

I wonder if they teach that too?