An unexpected conversation with our kids about mentally ill men and a sick society
‘Mum, why was there a man at the pool in a wig and women’s bathers today?
Our 8-year-old daughter innocently piped up as we were driving home from ballet last week. My wife had already been filling me in on the sight that was a man in a blonde wig, parading around our local capital city swimming pool whilst my wife, in her role as a sports teacher, was seeking to help kids learn how to be safe in the water, and even better swim!
I wonder how you’d answer if your child asked you this question? I decided to go theological and began to explain to her that sin isn’t just something that impacts our behaviour but it can also impact our thinking. I carried on to try and explain to her that without Jesus many people in our world get so deceived by sin they don’t even know that men aren’t women. As I was halfway through explaining the noetic effect of sin to my 8-year-old daughter she interrupted me.
“Dad, that’s silly. You don’t need to be a Christian to know boys aren’t girls. That’s crazy it’s so simple.”
I paused… You know, darling, you’re right—it’s pretty basic, isn’t it? But our world is so confused, and people are so lost, that somehow—what makes no sense to you or me is actually happening—a man can wear a wig and women’s bathers and call himself a woman.
She sort of laughed. It was so ridiculously and obviously wrong, from the most basic of 8-year-old levels of understanding about what it means to be human and male and female, that she couldn’t make sense of what she had seen and what I’d tried to explain. It was too stupid to be explained. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t happening and for the remainder of the week and a half of swimming lessons, I got more updates from my daughter (and wife) about our creepy man friend.
“Dad, today he was wearing a black wig. I wonder if he went to the hairdresser to get it cut and dyed haha”.
Of course, it might’ve stayed a funny story about how from the mouth of babes comes forth wisdom (Psalm 8:2) but our wigged man in female bathers was at the pool almost every day my daughters were there swimming. Not only that, some friends of mine who were free went down to watch the swimming lessons and keep an eye out for this bloke and saw him on multiple occasions, on multiple days, and he was seen several times availing himself of the members’ female change rooms.
When the issue was raised with staff, there was nothing that could be done after all the bloke with a wig was a woman, and to suggest otherwise well… that’s bigotry. Worse to attempt to stop this mentally unwell man undress near women is against the law here in Tasmania. For all I know pointing it out on this substack might make me guilty of discrimination or hate speech because we live in the most crazy of worlds.
Shame on every single politician who’s let it come to this. Shame on every person who thinks ‘kindness’ somehow means we must jeopardise safe public spaces. It wasn’t just in the changing rooms that this man’s cross-dressing parade at the pool caused issues. Many people were forced to politely avoid him, moving out of the spa when he entered, out of the lane, and guiding children to another location to avoid him looking at them. This is not transphobia it’s an appropriate risk calculation.
If my 8-year-old daughter knows the truth about what’s going on here why don’t our political leaders? Why won’t they do anything about making our public spaces safe? At this point they and their ‘kindness’ enablers are complicit in the erasure of safe female spaces and in fact, safe public spaces more generally!
I think I’m with my daughter. It’s obvious how wrong this is. What makes no sense is why nobody is doing anything about it??
Source: Chris Bowditch substack