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I was recently at a Faire type event and briefly saw a family I've known for a long time. The mother was a part of my college-aged social circle, and the older daughter is my son's age. They live down the street, and we have little contact for reasons that will be made abundantly clear.
The younger child, chronologically 5, biologically a son, was clad in a full Faire style Faerie Princess regalia, complete with wings. His long hair was plaited, and every article of clothing was not even unisex, but just straight up girl's clothing and sandals. Anyone seeing a picture of the lad would have thought him a girl, and anyone seeing him as I did, in the minute before I made hurried excuses and fled, would have suspected he was a boy by the way he reached insistantly for an ornate foam weapon, like the song in his blood knew his hand was made to grip a sword. He was stymied in his efforts by the gentle chiding of his blue-haired pussy cuck "father" (I use the scare quotes because I'd bet 5:1 odds that the kid is literally not his).
In the time I've known them, in all my observations, I've never seen the boy hold a ball. Pick up a stick. Have a single instant of non-supervised or mildly rambunctious fun.
I feel so bad for that boy, and so angry at his Devouring Mother, who homeschools both children because our Blue State curriculum isn't woke enough. That situation seems at least as bad as gay conversion camp, and I would call it flatly worse if and when it progresses to medical interventions.
And yet.
I'm not going to violently free the poor oppressed child. I'm not even going to call out his mother. I might say something to the daughter's father, a close friend. I feel a deep aversion to so overtly criticizing the way other people raise their kids, even when I find it abhorent. I might try to slip the kid some ball games, and maybe leave a few High Quality Sticks in his yard, but I probably wouldn't even risk a socially awkward conversation for the sake of it.
Where do you all draw the line? At what point would you intervene? When should the State intervene?
If we're going to allow people to teach their kids there is an invisible man in the sky who judges them, then you're going to have to allow this. You can brainwash your kid into almost any belief set.
Personally I'd take banning this in exchange for banning exposing kids to religion until they are 18, but I don't imagine that would be too popular.
I think part of the reason the sight was so viscerally upsetting to me is that I think early childhood is a critical time to develop core physicality. Beyond the forced feminization, the forced passivity feels more akin to foot-binding or raising a vegan cat than religious beliefs.
But I don't think the comparison is entirely invalid.
My grandparents were raised in a super pacifist offshoot of Christianity, you also have Jainism and the like. Passivity is also part of what people get to indoctrinate their kids into. And of course I am sure the other way round, you can put your kid in boxing and martial arts at an early age if you want.
It's possible the US would be more cohesive if public education was centralized and everyone was taught the same value system, and parents were not allowed to go against it. But I'm not sure it would be the US at that stage, quite.
I kinda feel the same way about my sister in law (who is Catholic and has huge problems with Catholic guilt which she incessantly complains about), raising my nieces and nephews in Catholicism. I think she is causing them significant damage. But if my brother is ok with it (he like me is an atheist) then I keep my mouth shut. People get to raise their kids in ways I find stupid and damaging.
The alternative is you giving swords to their kid secretly, me telling my nieces and nephews that God doesn't exist and is made up, and so on and so forth. But that's not likely to be any better I don't think in the long run.
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