I was a victim of bad, bigoted parenting
June 4, 2014
In light of this story, about a girl who became a boy at the age of five, I resisted the temptation to rearrange the word 'lunatics,' 'asylum,' and 'have taken over' to make a well known phrase or saying, and instead spent a moment or two reflecting on my own childhood.
I well remember one afternoon at age three deciding that I was not a human being but actually a monkey -- to be precise, a common marmoset. Consistent with my identity, I ran round the house making monkey noises and climbing on the furniture. I subsequently refused to eat chicken nuggets, preferring fruit and raw nuts.
Tragically, my parents were a pair of reactionary bigots. Rather than facilitate my self-realisation by handing me over to the zoo or taking me to a rain forest in order to release me into the wild, I seem to remember my mother physically and verbally abused me (by clipping me round the ear and telling me not to clamber all over her nice furniture). I know, I know: It sends shivers down the spine to imagine the psychological damage wreaked upon me by the imposition of what Insider Movement advocates would no doubt call the Greco-Latin-European concept of 'human nature' on a common marmoset trapped inside a three year old human body. But those were dark, ill-informed times.
It is good that we now live in a more enlightened age, is it not?
I well remember one afternoon at age three deciding that I was not a human being but actually a monkey -- to be precise, a common marmoset. Consistent with my identity, I ran round the house making monkey noises and climbing on the furniture. I subsequently refused to eat chicken nuggets, preferring fruit and raw nuts.
Tragically, my parents were a pair of reactionary bigots. Rather than facilitate my self-realisation by handing me over to the zoo or taking me to a rain forest in order to release me into the wild, I seem to remember my mother physically and verbally abused me (by clipping me round the ear and telling me not to clamber all over her nice furniture). I know, I know: It sends shivers down the spine to imagine the psychological damage wreaked upon me by the imposition of what Insider Movement advocates would no doubt call the Greco-Latin-European concept of 'human nature' on a common marmoset trapped inside a three year old human body. But those were dark, ill-informed times.
It is good that we now live in a more enlightened age, is it not?
