Gender Identity: A step forward?

[monster]

Not so sure about this, but I sort of get it.....

A Toronto couple are defending their decision to keep their infant's sex a secret in order to allow the child to develop his or her own gender identity.

We didn't tell anyone the sex of our babies in advance, even though we knew. We treated all three the same. None of them wore pink or pastels, they all wore purple and flowers. (that was the cutest pair of dungarees/overalls). And they all loved princess dresses, "click-clack" shoes, Thomas trains and Hotwheels/Matchbox cars. Now we have two typical boys and a not-so-typical girl, .......but still very much a girl. Moreso by the day, it appears.....

It never occurred to me to continue to keep it secret. I wonder if we would have if we'd thought of it? And why is it creating all this hoo-haa -who really needs to know at this age? Why do people care if this couple won't say what sex their baby is?

[wolf]

They are weird.

And Canadian.

Which may not be mutually exclusive.

[Ibby]

i'm, obviously, all for it.

[Aliantha]

Sounds like some kind of social experiment.

Are they going to tell the child when it's old enough?

[monster]

Maybe it will tell them?

[Clodfobble]

When I heard about this it was in a different article that included more information on the couple's other two children. The 5-year-old, a boy named Jazz, is very unhappy. He's having "emotional problems" and an "identity crisis" (according to his own mother.) It's one thing to let your kids be whoever they want to be. But these parents clearly have something to prove, and I'd be willing to bet they actively pressure their kids to be androgynous--which is, of course, just as bad as pressuring a kid to fill a traditional gender role. When I was growing up, my mom made it repeatedly, exceedingly clear that she would be "okay with it" if I were a lesbian. Even as a young kid I had the distinct impression that she wanted me to be a lesbian just so she could show the world how tolerant and progressive she was. But I knew I was not a lesbian, and for a long time I felt guilty that I wasn't living up to her expectations.

Not telling other people your baby's gender? Sure, whatever. 50% of strangers are gonna get it wrong even if your baby is dolled up in a pink dress, makeup and heels. But the older kids are proof that there's more going on, and that these parents are forcing their children to be a social statement rather than actually giving them freedom. It's gonna be sooo awkward when Jazz gets caught with straight porn in his room.

[Sundae]

Did any of you read The Wasp Factory?
Super smashing great boook is all I'm saying.

[Trilby]

God, I hope, I hope, I hope that kids last name is Hans.

[infinite monkey]

For all we know the kid is a hermaphrodite (more prevalent than we think) and instead of choosing for the kid they want to see what the kid thinks. I'm only slightly kidding. *shrugs*

Maybe the kid will tell them. We don't know everything.

[Ibby]

the rather more PC term is intersex.

the huge prevalence of intersex births that are "fixed" neo-natally is by far the best argument, to me, that binary gender is, at best, insufficient, and more likely than not utter bullshit and just a societal construct. there are NOT "two sexes", so arguing that since there are two sexes there must be two genders is utterly fallacious.

[DanaC]

I agree Ibby. It oversimplifies something incredibly complex and individual.

I can see what they were trying. Brave move, but a risk. There are definite differences in the way people treat male and female babies in general. Right down to how they are held (boy babies tend to be held facing outwards, girl babies facing inwards, i think i have that the right way around :P) and there is a good amount of evidence to suggest that it is this difference in how babies experience the world from the start that leads to gender distinct brain development in some areas.

That said: first off, no matter how much they try to keep it a secret, they cannot keep it secret from themselves. The parents are as much a product of their environment as anybody else, and will almost certainly have acted differently in subtle ways around the girl and boy babies. They may not realise it, they may be consciously treating them alike; but unless they are 100% conscious and aware of every verbal and non-verbal cue they give off, they will have given gender clues along the way.

It's a nice idea, that we could somehow remove the social constructs of gender entirely from a child's development and allow them to form their own anew. But the reality is that we live in a gendered world. And we seek gender confirmations from our parents, siblings and peers. Little girls want to know what big girls are supposed to do, and little boys want to know what big boys are supposed to do. Whether the child then feels that relates to them is another question entirely. But they need to know.

And as Ibs points out: gender is more complex than a simple set of male and female binary poles. Kids growing up intersex face confusion and a kind of hostility towards their uncertainty is woven into the fabric of our culture. Anything that eases that confusion and allows them to find themselves without the negative connotations society would place on them if it could, is a good thing. But actually instituting gender confusion and ambiguity in your child's life seems cruel to me.

The truth is, despite the evidence I spoke of for the elasticity of 'brain gender' at the start of life, and the likely impact of culturally agreed gender norms on brain development, we don't fully know. This sort of thing can only be experimental. We have no way to kmnow for sure that we haven;t been barking up the wrong tree for the past 30 years of neuro-science when it comes to gender. For the very simple reason that it is all but impossible to test.

These kids weren't raised in a vacuum. The rest of the world exists and they interacted with it. Even if the people they interacted with weren't told the kids' gender. Even if that gender was disguised. The other people in the equation have a gendered understanding of the world and will have arbitrarily assigned a gender to the child in question and interacted according to how they would with a child of that gender. Even if they, like the parents, made a concerted effort not to. This stuff happens at too deep and fundamental level to just think it away like that.

I'm sure they had very laudable reasons, but it seems far too much of a child-development experiment to me.

To me, a better idea is to just not foist too much social baggage onto concepts of gender and make a conscious effort to minimise the extent to which interaction is gendered.

I was raised with clear notions of gender. But those clear notions allowed for girls to play with guns and boys to dress up the family dog.

[Undertoad]

Twin studies have proven gender is not a social contruct.

[DanaC]

No they haven't. They have strongly indicated some areas in which there appear to be innate gender distinctions. But there is also evidence to show a great deal of what we understand as gender distinctions are not innate.

[skysidhe]

I think growing up in the country with lots of farm animals is very non gender specific. Everyone has an even playing field. Everyone hauls the feed, everyone gets chased by the crazy rooster, gets jumped on and eaten by the randy goat, stepped on and bucked off by the horse. You wear your grungy clothes too that by the end of the day are as smelly and dirty as anyone.

With land and the responsibility of farm animals, a persons identity isn't tied up into being what a female or a male does or doesn't do because if you want to be a contributing member you do it all.

At that point whether you have dolls are trains in your bedroom becomes moot because it isn't what defines you.

It's only when you hear of someone spending too much time with the sheep, then and only then is sexual orientation is in question. :P

[Griff]

I know that people have to push the envelope for social change to take place, but it is a safe bet that this child will be more fucked up than if the parents took the simpler route of easing expectations... it just makes me think of Pete's uncle raising a daughter without using the word no. The results were easily anticipated.