Genderless Baby

[Quintease]

There are lots of ways to screw up what would have been perfectly normal, gendered children. I don't think this is one of them.

The mainstream world is just afraid of what's not 'normal'.

I'm actually quite offended by the outrage How do they think the regular 1.5% of the population with an unidentifiable gender manage every day of their lives? And the so-called 'experts' throwing their opinion out there as if it were fact. Grrr..

[Nat]

I think it's far more challenging for adults to deal with than anybody else.

[EnderD_503]

Originally Posted by Quintease

There are lots of ways to screw up what would have been perfectly normal, gendered children. I don't think this is one of them.

The mainstream world is just afraid of what's not 'normal'.

I'm actually quite offended by the outrage How do they think the regular 1.5% of the population with an unidentifiable gender manage every day of their lives? And the so-called 'experts' throwing their opinion out there as if it were fact. Grrr..

Agreed. Also makes me think of the shitstorm some parents in B.C. made over an anti-discrimination policy drawn up for schools in Burnaby. They go on about how it is "sexualizing" schools and looking at some of the signs from the protest, they said things like "don't put labels on children" and so on. Except that they are the ones putting labels on children and assuming that children are born within the "norm" and can be influenced into falling outside of it. It's easy for them to say that talking about homophobia, transphobia and heterosexism in schools is "sexualizing" the curriculum, yet schools, parents and society as a whole already are operating under the assumption that children are default heterosexuals/non-transgender. Sex ed is already taught fairly young in Canada, yet somehow talking about homophobia is "vulgar"?

And that's similar to what's going on with the people who are criticizing these parents in the newspapers who decided to raise their children as genderless, saying they are placing their own beliefs on their children etc. etc. These parents are assuming that every child is heterosexual and falls distinctly into a certain gender by default and that that default needs to be maintained. They, then, come to believe that raising a child as genderless endangers that supposedly "natural" default. Like others have said, it is all about the comfort level of adults, not that of young children.

Edit: and that makes me think as well as how people view raising a child as genderless is introducing children to the idea of being genderless prematurely... But it seems the whole argument is based on maintaining their own gendered worldview. How is it that we live in a world where enforcing gendered norms on children is not seen as "sexualization" or "inappropriate," yet introducing them to the concept of non-gender or a fluid gender or perhaps ignoring gender entirely is seen as "inappropriate"? It's almost like society fetishizes anything that is not the "norm."

[Quintease]

The problem is, people inside the 'norm' can't see that. They can't see that they themselves have a label that other people see as 'different'. It's like an English speaking person seeing English 'as the norm'. Or a person in a binary (gay/straight, black/white, male/female) seeing that as the 'norm' and all else is other.

[NJFemmie]

I grew up in a gender-defined free household and I turned out alright.

*nervous twitch*