All a-tizzy over gender bender

western baby, you can’t tell what sex it is, since many consider it evil to dress girls in pink and boys in blue.

You have to say something like: “What a cute little, er, offspring, it looks just like one or other of its, er, begetters.”

In several western countries, you can now change your sex by clicking an online form.

It was revealed in recent days that an Argentinian man named Sergio Lazarovich got his pension money paid five years early by changing his sex to female.

Lazarovich’s relatives are quoted as saying that he is the sort of man who makes homophobic comments and has a string of girlfriends, including after his, er, “sex change”.

Now, if this column was being written in the West, I would have to refer to this guy as a woman, because journalists are required to follow their subjects’ selfchosen sex, even when it is patently idiotic to do so.

Meanwhile, schools in Sweden are instructed by the government to “counteract traditional gender roles and gender patterns”, the New York Times reported approvingly recently.

One Swedish couple was unhappy when their daughter came home having been taught to be rude, loud and untidy (that is, to be more like a boy).

The teacher was, naturally, unapologetic.

“This is what we do here, and we are not going to stop it,” she told the reporter.

I think making girls behave like boys may qualify as ‘the dumbest idea in history’, beating even Chairman Mao’s ‘let’s kill all the birds’, or British India’s ‘let’s lubricate bullets with pig fat’, and even Hollywood’s decision to finance a film called Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.

Meanwhile, I am updating my all-purpose answer to my children’s questions, from “ask your mother” to “ask your other begetter”.

Nury Vittachi is an Asia-based frequent traveller. Send ideas and comments to lifestyle. nury@thesundaily.com.