The genderless baby

[kairparavel]

So, this news story has made the rounds this week: Parents keep child's gender secret.

While there's nothing ambiguous about Storm's genitalia, they aren't telling anyone whether their third child is a boy or a girl.

The only people who know are Storm's brothers, Jazz, 5, and Kio, 2, a close family friend and the two midwives who helped deliver the baby in a birthing pool at their Toronto home on New Year's Day.

"When the baby comes out, even the people who love you the most and know you so intimately, the first question they ask is, 'Is it a girl or a boy?'" says Witterick, bouncing Storm, dressed in a red-fleece jumper, on her lap at the kitchen table.

"If you really want to get to know someone, you don't ask what's between their legs," says Stocker.

When Storm was born, the couple sent an email to friends and family: "We've decided not to share Storm's sex for now — a tribute to freedom and choice in place of limitation, a stand up to what the world could become in Storm's lifetime (a more progressive place? ...)."

I somewhat admire their attempts to raise a child to simply be rather than a child built on societal expectations but, as is pointed out in this commentary

It should take people about 30 seconds to figure out the fallacy here: If you keep the sex of a child secret, you are making it the most important thing about that child, not the least.

So what's between that baby's legs, whether it is XX or XY is all anyone cares about, when they aren't being bashed as hippy freakster parents.

The other thing is, they're conducting social experiments with all their children. They could be doing more harm than good because they will have raised kids so totally against the grain from the rest of society AND put them right in the midst of bullying and isolation because they are so bloody different. Yes, the ideas on gender and associated roles and expectations need to go away, but it only works if all the families these kids interact with are doing the same. But they're out there, on their island, and I feel the children will be damaged because of it. Will it ultimately be worth it? I see these parents as still pulling the strings and making radical (and potentially harmful) decisions for their kids (the very thing they apparently don't want to do) by making no decisions at all. Can that ever work in our society? It's been suggested by Toronto Star readers and others that these parents are guilty of child abuse but I don't see it that way. They clearly provide all the things a child needs to thrive - shelter, food, love, support and acceptance. Guidance, however, seems to be lacking. And does not knowing your gender to avoid gender roles really help you establish your sense of self? It's not like gender isn't going to be around them out there in the big bad world while they are growing up.

[Happy Ent]

I somewhat admire their attempts to raise a child to simply be rather than a child built on societal expectations [...]

I find it utterly disgusting.

(Not that it’s going to make much of a difference for the child. It’s not like the horrifying stories of children raised without language to see what they’d speak.)

[S John]

Really, I don't care what they do. The kid isn't going to do anything but eat and shit for the next two years anyway. But if they are trying to make a point, they're making it for their own sake without any real benefits to the kid. It doesn't care. And by the time its old enough that it matters, it will have figured out whether it has a wiener or a hooha and blow the whole god damn experiment. Sure, its an interesting approach they're taking, interesting enough for me to post on it at least. But they are using their kid to draw attention to a pet issue of theirs. That kid should have the right to decide if they actually want to be an attention whore, and now the whole world wants to know what kind of equipment the kid is sportin' down there. Way to fly under the radar, mom and dad.

[kairparavel]

I find it utterly disgusting.

(Not that it's going to make much of a difference for the child. It's not like the horrifying stories of children raised without language to see what they'd speak.)

To be clear, I admire the notion. It looks great on paper - child built without societal constraints! But lives are not lived on paper. I don't find it disgusting, but I think it misguided and wrongheaded for here and now.

[Repman]

It's utterly stupid. Gender has a impact on role in society, sorry whether people like it not.

[Dornish]

It's utterly stupid. Gender has a impact on role in society, sorry whether people like it not.

But it shouldn't. That's the point.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

How long before evolutionary biology is an issue in this thread?

[Sad King Billy]

It's utterly stupid. Gender has a impact on role in society, sorry whether people like it not.

I'd be very interested to see if they can shut down their own gender-based roles (I doubt it very veeerry much). Do we give the kid playmobil or dolls or Legos. Does it get a blue napkin or a pink one. Shorts or a dress. Etc. This 'experiment' won't survive the first year.

[Demosthenes]

I'd be very interested to see if they can shut down their own gender-based roles (I doubt it very veeerry much). Do we give the kid playmobil or dolls or Legos. Does it get a blue napkin or a pink one. Shorts or a dress. Etc. This 'experiment' won't survive the first year.

Well, their other two boys are very "free to be you and me" (which is a compliment of the highest order, in my book), so I don't think they'll have too much trouble with this. I actually thought the whole family was rather adorable, even if it's the kind of experiment that really only looks good (or good-ish) on paper and is sort of awful in real life.

[Happy Ent]

To be clear, I admire the notion. It looks great on paper - child built without societal constraints!

I don’t even understand what’s so great about that. Would it be great to build a child unconstrained by gravity?

It’s a perversion, born out of some idea that society is not “natural”, and all Nature in some sense is Holy and Good. But it isn’t! The whole mindset is purely religious. To think that somebody wants to implement genetic determinism!

But, as I said, the child is probably safe. Most boys play with trucks and most girls with dolls before they are aware of what society expects them to play with. So will this child. Those who cry “abuse” have, like the parents of this child, a mistaken impression of the power of societal norms.

[Happy Ent]

But it shouldn't. That's the point.

Why not? Sex has. Do you thing everything should be biology? Is culture bad and nature good? Wherefrom comes this pronouncement that morals can be attached to the forces of the (artificlal) nature–nurture dichotomy? Is not this just an appeal to Holiness, dressed up in the vestments of Naturalism?

[jurble]

Bah, genderless babies won't accomplish anything. Lack of a notion of gender is equal to a notion of gender in binding a person, I'd imagine. Unless the child is a genius, capable of intellectually understanding gender, combined with its perfect ability to mimic others, the lack of gender is an issue. There are very few people in this world capable of understanding human interaction on a wholly intellectual level, and then mimic it to prevent any social disadvantages. These people also tend to be sociopaths. Or Dunyain.

Odds are, the kid is not a super-genius. If it's not raised with a notion of gender, it'll be hard to adapt to a world where everyone else does have a notion of gender. Even if the kid has an intellectual conception of gender as an adult, it won't be able to keep that information in mind at all times, and refer to it, in order to explain situations that arise around it.

[Matrim Fox Cauthon]

How long before evolutionary biology is an issue in this thread?

Evolutionary biology or evolutionary psychology? It's typically the latter that's the greater focus in similar threads.

[Dornish]

Why not?

Because imposing gender roles is inherently sexist. I respect the idea that children should be protected from it but cannot fathom a means that doesn't seem problematic once the child is old enough to understand biological differences.

Sex has. Do you thing everything should be biology? Is culture bad and nature good? Wherefrom comes this pronouncement that morals can be attached to the forces of the (artificlal) nature–nurture dichotomy? Is not this just an appeal to Holiness, dressed up in the vestments of Naturalism?

I have no fucking clue what you're rambling about here.

[smegma]

Fuckin hippies.

[Prue]

How utterly stupid. Unless the child is a hermaphrodite, it *has* a distinctive gender and will start acting accordingly eventually. What the parents actually mean to do is that they don't want to treat the child as would be typical for its gender. OK. That could also be achieved if the gender is known, though.

In fact, in the 1970s, many parents already tried raising their children more gender-'neutral' by e.g. allowing boys to play with dolls or girls with cars. And that is OK, allowing them to choose.

If I remember correctly, *forcing* girls into boy behaviour and vice versa was a failure though. E.g. many girls ended up treating the cars like dolls as they preferred 'girly' stuff even if the parents wanted them to grow up 'gender neutral'.

edit: Thinking about it: maybe the baby *is* a hermaphrodite and they want to have a look what gender it will grow up preferring instead of choosing for it? Maybe they don't want to make the wrong decision by having it surgically altered already.

[RWHamel]

I wonder what is going to happen when the kid finds out they are not the gender they think they are. Are the parents going to do gender reassignment surgery? Or are they going to tell they well you better save up for it?

[Prue]

I think I've read about cases where transsexuals found out as an adult that they had been hermaphrodites as a baby and that their parents had chosen a gender for them, including surgery and hormone treatment. And then they had to reverse that by surgery as an adult when they preferred the other gender.

[Brienne the Beauty]

These parents: Hippies. :rolleyes:

However

I've got to take issue with the "boys naturally play with trucks" meme that crops up everywhere. How on earth could that be natural, since trucks have existed for less than 200 years? The Wheel as a concept has only existed for 6000 years or so - which is short in the span of human evolutionary history.

I can get that girls naturally play with dolls (practice for motherhood) and boys, weapons (practice for war) but a truck is a toy with no in-built gender correspondence outside the context of our present society.

It is quite possible that in a future society, truckers might become a predominately female profession, and if that becomes the case, I expect little boys to shun them as a toy, and little girls to start playing with them. Little boys are not genetically programmed to like trucks - they see men driving trucks and identify with them. Even when very little, children notice a lot about expected gender roles.

[Happy Ent]

Brienne, even male monkeys play with trucks, female monkeys don’t. (Nobody claims that we played with trucks in our early environment.)

Start here: Baron–Cohen, The Essential Difference