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I put a news piece about this in the Friday Links a few weeks ago, but I wanted to give it some more blog space because I think it's wildly interesting and would love to hear what other people think about this. A couple has chosen to raise their child without telling anyone the sex of the baby.
Now, just to clarify in terms of vocabulary: your sex is the junk in your pants, your biological parts. Male/female. Gender is a range of characteristics ascribed to one's sex, usually divided in terms of masculinity/femininity. The child in question here, named Storm, does not have an ambiguous sex, but their parents are choosing to keep their sexual identity secret to allow the child to grow up without having to fit into a gendered box. Got it? Good. Onto the meaty stuff of this situation.
I think this family is obviously very brave for bucking one of the most standardized and accepted binaries and social categorizations of most human societies. To attempt to dismantle that is a biggie, and I applaud them for having the guts to entirely re-think a lot of our assumptions about gender identity. And if more people start to do this or at least consider it a legitimate choice for a family, this could lead to very real and awesome social change. For many people, gender is a category full of inane and negative associations that their lives are far better without, and maybe this baby Storm will grow up better and more balanced than most of us for having been raised without the assumptions of gender cast upon them.
But.
Is it fair to make one individual child into a social experiment? I'm not sure. Clearly, we are all raised with our parents' personal biases politically, religiously, socially, and so on. I struggle all the time with a much less intense but related question: as a vegetarian for most of my life, should I raise my possible future kids as vegetarians? Sure, that fills them with my particular ideology but so does allowing them to eat meat. Parents constantly construct their child's idea of what is normal, healthy, and acceptable in all aspects of life, and this is no different. This couple is doing what they see as best for their kid, and trying to build a new idea of normal where a baby's gender is not the most important thing about them or the primary facet of their personality from which we build assumptions of their preferences and attitudes (for an example: you see a baby in blue and say he's a handsome, strong, little man versus a pink-clothed baby and saying how sweet and cute she is and buy her toys that enforce a sweet, cute image. Innocent commentary that builds our lifelong ideas about masculinity and femininity...unless people question them!). But will this help the kid thrive in a world that demands gender conformity? I can't say for sure, but with supportive parents, I do hope that if Storm encounters any serious teasing or is socially ostracized that they'll be better equipped to deal.
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If baby Storm decides to confine to the gender binary and is abundantly masculine/feminine in a way that fits with the societal expectations of their biological sex, will their parents be supportive? If Storm falls in love with ballet, princesses, Barbie, and makeup, will they indulge these interests or push her towards Tonka trunks? It's interesting to wonder about, though clearly there aren't any real answers.
Whatcha think about this? My opinions are clearly ALL over the place, so I'm really curious what other people think of this couple's choice to raise a baby without a known gender.
Much love,
The Sheriff
They aren't really raising Storm without a "known gender" I don't think - at least they aren't doing so with their other boys (they're just not telling us what Storm is, genetically/biologically speaking (and the media have been using the word "gender" a lot because many people still feel uncomfortable using "sex" when not referring to one of "the acts"). They are raising the other kids as kids with "boy parts" but like "girl things." In other words, I highly doubt they'd be okay with those kids playing hockey (I hope the kids will grow up, become rebellious, secretly join some sort of youth league (by forging an adult's signature) and then be talented enough to be drafted by the NHL) and feel like it's ballet (or whatever is traditionally feminine) or the highway. At least that's the vibe I got. And no, I don't think, emotionally speaking, that it's a great thing for these kids. It's okay to be a little different from your peers, but to be *THAT* different is very, very tough.
ReplyDeleteThe parents' behaviour towards these kids is all the more reason I think Storm is a boy. In our society, it's okay for girls to do most "boy" things - no one blinks an eye if a girl wants to play hockey (at least not in my circle) and it's definitely okay for girls to wear pants and t-shirts. Boys don't wear skirts and dresses (and no, kilts don't count because they're etho-cultural-specific). As adults, we still have a lot of problems getting men interested in teaching, especially at the elementary level (ok, so they have it tough getting women into teaching "hard sciences" at the high school level, but I think there are more women teaching AP Physics than men teaching kindergarten) but have been quite successful in having more women apply to law school or medicine - most schools at about 50% or slightly higher.
I applaud the parents' decision, in part because very young kids often don't really have a preferred gender, and if they do it might change as they grow. For the most part they parrot what their parents, peers, and the media tell them is appropriate for a person with their genitalia (or they rebel against it and are often punished for doing so). I think it is best to give kids a chance to explore various gendered activities, clothing, behaviors, etc and see what they authentically enjoy.
ReplyDeleteSome kids do have really strong preferences for stereotypically "girly" or "boyish" things, and this could be an indication of a strong gender identity one way or the other, or it may not be. It might be a phase, it might be admiration of an older sibling, who knows?
I don't think it's wrong to dress a female child in pink or to decorate a male child's room with trucks, necessarily, but some behavior actually is harmful. Piercing a female baby's ears, for example, really pisses me off on a number of levels.
If I have kids I intend to raise them pretty gender-neutral until they are old enough to express their own interests and pick out clothes and such for themselves. At that point they can do whatever they want, gender-wise. I think it would do a lot of good to dress a young male child in pink and take him out and about, just so he gets exposure to being sweet-talked and cooed over the way that female children do. I wouldn't correct people who referred to him with female pronouns.
@CynthiaC: "It's okay to be a little different from your peers, but to be *THAT* different is very, very tough."
It's already very very tough to grow up in the gendered system we have. It fucks up a lot of people for life (trans* or cis). It's much better to be raised to understand the system, to cope with existing within it, and to fight against it, than to blindly follow expectations just because you might not get picked on quite as much by kids whose parents are ignorant or careless. I got picked on a fair amount for being an atheist, and yes it was tough, but that doesn't mean my parents should have raised me as a Christian just so I would have fit in better.