Gender neutral

language gone mad is the only way to describe it.
There is now a demand in a neighbouring state that any book which does not have gender neutral characters should be removed from library shelves. 
Goodbye Thomas the Tank Engine... and how many other books? 
I think I am a "girl". I think the Senior Cat is a "boy". I think you need both to make a baby. Yes? Have I got that wrong?
How in the heck do you teach children about sex if you aren't supposed to differentiate between girls and boys? 
I get the "equal" idea. Perhaps I get the equal idea because my father, and even my paternal grandfather mid-Victorian though he was in many ways, think and thought women are and were equal but different and demanding of equal respect. That doesn't mean to say that they don't and didn't see differences.
I see differences - and not just outward differences of appearance.
My teaching experience told me that boys and girls are different in their learning needs and patterns. It has absolutely nothing to do with language which isn't "gender neutral" or expectations. It is something much more subtle than that. 
We are attempting to stifle diversity and impose sameness on everyone. We are doing this even while we supposedly celebrate "multi-cultural values" in an "ethnically diverse" country. 
"Girls should be allowed to be on the football team!" comes the cry. Really? I don't doubt a girl can football just as well as boy - Middle Cat was rather better at it - but should a girl of slender build and 150cms in height go up against a man twice her weight and 50cms taller in a game which requires close and often dangerous physical contact? Should we allow it  to happen in childhood just in order to teach "gender neutrality".
Is it simply old fashioned of me to think that you can be "feminist" and "feminine"? Do we really want everyone dressed in uniform?
I actually believe you can learn something from books that are not gender neutral. I don't think they necessarily need to confirm stereotypes. There is no doubt in my mind that someone is going to haul Peter Rabbit off the shelves because it is the "boy" rabbit who is naughty and not Flopsy, Mopsy, or Cotton-tail.  But, children can learn about the consequences of not behaving from it.
If Ann Holm's book, "I am David"  had been a book about a girl rather than a boy would it have even been close to believable? Pauline, in Margaret Storey's book of the same name is definitely a girl. Her cousin Paul is another finely drawn character but a gender reversal simply would not have worked. 
I could go on...and on. I won't. Could we just think "different but equal"?