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I’m not exactly the youngest writer here at Townhall. I’m not the oldest, either. I am, however, old enough to remember tomboys.

These were the girls who would play war with the boys, climb trees, play baseball and football in the middle of the street, wear jeans and t-shirts, and otherwise fail to look particularly feminine. They might also prefer hunting and fishing with Dad to a spa day with Mom.

As they grew up, most would embrace some degree of femininity in their lives, though many never completely abandoned their more traditionally masculine pursuits.

As I grew up, I watched a lot of effort be spent conditioning us to accept that girls could do all of this if they wanted to and still be girls. That wasn’t hard for me to swallow. We were being taught that wanting to learn to cook wasn’t just for girls and wanting to play tackle football wasn’t just for the guys. These were just things, and they weren’t restricted to one sex or another.

These days, the tomboy is an endangered species.

Instead of being allowed to ride dirtbikes and shoot trees with BB guns, any young woman who shows these traits has a problem. Today, she’s taught that she’s probably transgender, that she should be a boy and should start the medical process of becoming one.

Meanwhile, boys who like to play in the toy kitchen and maybe enjoy My Little Pony are pushed toward accepting that they’re really little girls instead.

For decades, there was an effort to try to undermine the idea of some of these things being just for one gender or another, only to have the trans movement come in and argue that no, they were in fact only for one sex or another. They just follow it up by claiming that if you like these things, you can go through some medical procedures and suddenly it’s perfectly acceptable for them to like these things once again.

For all the sins of the trans movement and their aggressive assault on childhood, the idea of telling kids there is something wrong with them for not perfectly fitting into the box of what is masculine and what is feminine might be right up near the top. Actually sterilizing children who are too young to meaningfully consent is undoubtedly the worst, of course, but this is up there.

I don’t care what adults do to themselves. I do care about the idea that young children should probably be afraid of enjoying what they want to enjoy out of some fear that someone will try to convince them to be mutilated because of it.

There’s a reason some people refer to it as “grooming.” That reason is that it’s accurate.

But this is also as sexist as it gets, at least as the term was applied back in my younger years. The idea that someone can’t do a thing because of their gender or that it somehow indicates they’re really the other sex was darn near the epitome of sexism back then.

Now, it’s just an excuse.