quote: 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? ...).”
Their announcement was met with stony silence. Then the deluge of criticisms began.
My own personal opinion is that I have no problem with this. But I know plenty who think it's stupid and some who think it's a form of child abuse.
posted
I understand their intent and can appreciate it. However, I don't think it will really work like they want it to. They say they want their children to make their own decisions about who they want to be, which is great, but they're still imparting their views on their children as much as they may not want to admit it.
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I am highly in favor of this, although I do not think it's necessarily the best choice for all parents, for reasons outlined here.
Are they imparting their views on their child? Sure. But letting their child make up their own mind is far less of an imposition that telling them from birth to conform to a huge array of societal standards. The bullying issue is the only area where it actually becomes a problem for Storm erself (damn, I keep typing female pronouns by accident!), and I think it'd be pretty easy, fairly early on, for Storm to decide for erself whether its an issue.
(In my school's film program, I helped produce a documentary about children born with ambiguous genitalia and cosmetic surgery done on them at birth without their consent, often with lasting, harmful effects. In general, society's obsession with children's genitalia is ridiculous.)
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I think you could continue with this up until the kid started to interact with children outside its family. Then, it would probably start showing its bits to all and sundry (as children do) and be influenced by what the other kids of its gender were doing. This is just not going to work long term.
After all, Storm knows whether it's a girl or a boy.
This is rather extreme, but I don't think there's anything wrong with, for eg. putting little kids in gender neutral clothes, or getting them gender neutral toys for the first few years. But later you just have to let them decide what they want - I think it would be impossible to raise a twelve year old as gender neutral without some form of abuse. But babies, sure.
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quote:But later you just have to let them decide what they want - I think it would be impossible to raise a twelve year old as gender neutral without some form of abuse. But babies, sure.
The point is not to keep the child's gender hidden forever. The point is to let the child decide for erself what er gender is. I'd give 95% odds e decides pretty quickly upon contact with other kids around kindergarden.
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Visceral response, here, but I'd have less of a problem with it if the kid wasn't named "Storm." Makes me feel like the parents thought, "How can we stir society up and get everyone to notice us?"
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quote:Originally posted by Raymond Arnold: The bullying issue is the only area where it actually becomes a problem for Storm erself (damn, I keep typing female pronouns by accident!)
You could always use "ze" and "hir". Which brings up the question, what are the parents going to do?
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quote:Originally posted by PSI Teleport: Visceral response, here, but I'd have less of a problem with it if the kid wasn't named "Storm." Makes me feel like the parents thought, "How can we stir society up and get everyone to notice us?"
Yeah, the problem with their plan is that it can only work if you give your kid a douchey name.
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I assume they have some set of pronouns picked out, although "what is everyone else in society going to do" is a bigger question.
I have a gender-fluid friend who wishes "what's your pronoun?" would replace "what's your sign?" as a beginning-of-conversation question.
quote:Visceral response, here, but I'd have less of a problem with it if the kid wasn't named "Storm." Makes me feel like the parents thought, "How can we stir society up and get everyone to notice us?"
I admit that does bug me slightly, but how many gender-neutral standard names are there to choose from? Not every gender neutral kid can be Pat, Chris or Alex.
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I think Jesse, Casey or Kelly are good compromise names. I've known both males and females with these names and they sound pretty normal.
Well, for gender neutral, English is great because it has a built in answer - 'it'. The parents may not like this, (the kid sure won't) but that's what people are naturally going to use unless someone can provide a nicer answer. They could just decide to use the child's name all the time until it wears out. 'Storm says that Storm thought that Storm had left Storm's books on Storm's bed...'
Still, in a lot of languages it would be pretty much impossible to even try referring to someone in a gender neutral way, because even the verbs and adjectives etc would have to reflect male or female.
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I'm against it and against what they're trying to accomplish, but I just roll my eyes at those that call it child abuse.
For neutral names, there's a lot of names that started out as male names and have now become more common as, but not exclusively, female names, like Taylor, McKay, and Alice.
quote:Well, for gender neutral, English is great because it has a built in answer - 'it'.
'It' isn't quite gender neutral -- it's genderless. Instead of not saying what the gender is, 'it' says that there is no gender.
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Thinking about it today, it's pretty obvious to me that Storm is a girl.
They have two boys who's gender identity they are apparently not worried about. It would make sense that they would change their child raising habits for the new addition if it was different from the first two.
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I think people are missing the fact that Storm is 4 months old.
The parents, who, aside from being crazy hippies, aren't entirely deluded about what they're doing, which you will find if you read only what they quote and the actions they have taken, and how the story was picked up, but ignore the two cents that every journalist, etc. has tossed in.
Basically, they sent out the birth announcement and said that they were not going to tell people right away whether their baby was a boy or girl, though, obviously, those who have seen Storm without a diaper know. They didn't say for how long nor that it was going to be a state secret forever. They don't particularly care if Storm runs around and says that Storm has a penis or vagina, but the point is that Storm can't say anything coherent.
Aside from specific treatments geared toward the parts inside a baby's diaper that produce urine, and avoiding getting hit in the face with pee if you have a male child, there is no practical difference between the needs of female and male infants. None. They don't like sitting in their body fluids, they like being fed, they like being held, and they want to learn English. They also want to sleep all night, but they don't know it yet. They have no idea they wanted those nasty shot things, but they do, as it turns out. Don't try to tell me that you would let a male child cry longer to toughen him up, or girl babies need more cuddling because that's just how they are, because that's crap.
Yet as soon as someone knows the gender of the baby, they start treating it differently, even talking to it differently. The fact that people are so bothered by this, that they don't know how to react towards an infant whose gender they do not know is testament to that, don't deny it. But, really, babies only need the stuff I mentioned above. They don't care. They don't have friends. The rest is just dressing up a doll that doesn't talk and hoping that person won't be too mad when the pictures get show to a prom date 17 years later.
Even if you slathered a baby in pink and cooed at it and told it was a girl, the baby still won't know it's a girl until it's old enough to walk and talk. So why shove a bunch of pink or blue kitsch in the baby's face when no one needs to?
Yes, people treat kids differently. When Tova was little, she didn't have much hair on her head until she was more than 2 years old, and what there was was both very short and very light.
One day, we were at a pizza place with her, and she was wearing overalls. This guy (from a boy scout troop that was there) came over and started talking to us and to her. He was all, "Hey, little man," and sports and stuff. And then we said, "She's a girl." And without a blink, and probably without realizing what he was doing, he instantly shifted to "Aw, what a sweet little princess!"
But so what? I hate the pink and blue aisles at Toys Я Us as much as anyone, but this is just pathetic and in-your-face.
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quote:Originally posted by Raymond Arnold: The bullying issue is the only area where it actually becomes a problem for Storm erself (damn, I keep typing female pronouns by accident!)
You could always use "ze" and "hir". Which brings up the question, what are the parents going to do?
A: use female pronouns, because storm's mom is obviously projecting more than she thinks she is in this 'experiment'
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quote:Originally posted by mr_porteiro_head: I'm against it and against what they're trying to accomplish, but I just roll my eyes at those that call it child abuse.
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when you're against what they're trying to accomplish, what specifically does that mean you're against? I want to know if it's more about gender neutrality stuff, or how these parents specifically are acting.
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Speaking for myself, not Porter: I happen to think there are hardwired gender differences, even in an infant. (Which have nothing to do with blue or pink.) So I disagree with what it seems to me they are trying to do.
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I assume you mean hardwired differences in sex — there are, though none of them seem to suffer any detriment from typical gender-neutral raising strategies. Gender identity isn't exactly important to a baby or toddler's well-being, same as it turned out they don't need a mom and dad as parents specifically to be able to 'type' themselves to the appropriate gender role, and 'two moms' or 'two dads' work fine. (cue the sturm und drang from the Family Traditionalists who insist otherwise)
At the same time, what these people are doing is hardly a typical gender neutral strategy. This isn't so much a case of "Let's allow our child to develop their own way" as it is "Let's satisfy our own agendas by experimenting on our child." Storm is an experimental subject for his Poe's Law crazy hippie parents.
Other fun depressing happy time things about this story!
1. Jazz is ALREADY experiencing issues from said experimentation.
quote:Jazz was old enough for school last September, but chose to stay home. “When we would go and visit programs, people — children and adults — would immediately react with Jazz over his gender,” says Witterick, adding the conversation would gravitate to his choice of pink or his hairstyle.
That’s mostly why he doesn’t want to go to school. When asked if it upsets him, he nods, but doesn’t say more.
Instead he grabs a handmade portfolio filled with his drawings and poems. In its pages is a booklet written under his pseudonym, the “Gender Explorer.” In purple and pink lettering, adorned with butterflies, it reads: “Help girls do boy things. Help boys do girl things. Let your kid be whoever they are!”
When asked what psychological harm, if any, could come from keeping the sex of a child secret, Zucker said: “One will find out.”
well then
2. These kids are also being 'educated' in the most wholly worthless homeschooling system possible! A straight ticket to the most profoundly diminished employment opportunities I can think of, unless you find a middle management position that accepts resumes in the form of interpretive dance or something uhh
quote:Witterick practices unschooling, an offshoot of home-schooling centred on the belief that learning should be driven by a child’s curiosity. There are no report cards, no textbooks and no tests. For unschoolers, learning is about exploring and asking questions, “not something that happens by rote from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. weekdays in a building with a group of same-age people, planned, implemented and assessed by someone else,” says Witterick. The fringe movement is growing. An unschooling conference in Toronto drew dozens of families last fall.
posted
Gender isn't a pure social construct - there are hardwired traits that generally correlate with particular genders. But they do not always correlate with genitalia, and you can have genitalia and/or genes that do not fall neatly into the male/female spectrum. I think they stated Storm has normal genitalia, but that doesn't mean e's not transgendered, or gender neutral or fluid or whatever.
I suspect the more relevant issue for them is that even if Storm is completely gender typical, that doesn't mean that the heavy socialization children receive from birth is healthy or necessary.
I think it's debatable exactly how society as a whole should treat gender. Assuming Samp's post is accurate (he didn't source anything - he mentioned in another thread he's used to that happening automatically on another forum), I definitely have issues with some of the ways they're raising their children, but the simple act of raising them gender neutral is not one of those things.
The "letting the boy dress in pink and then use that as an excuse to homeschool him" is definitely questionable. I think gender stereotypes are worth breaking down so that boys who genuinely want to wear pink (among various other more significant things) can do so. Attempting to do this has an inherent cost on some children. No, it's not fair to those children. It's also not fair to children today who have to conform. I'm not sure whether I think the cost of changing is worth it.
If you think it isn't, I won't argue with you. But I will argue with you if you claim the current setup doesn't have its own downsides. There are more than two sexes and more than two genders, and there are consequences to the narrow boxes that society shoves them into.
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: when you're against what they're trying to accomplish, what specifically does that mean you're against? I want to know if it's more about gender neutrality stuff, or how these parents specifically are acting.
I'm against gender neutrality stuff in general.
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quote:Originally posted by Raymond Arnold: Assuming Samp's post is accurate (he didn't source anything - he mentioned in another thread he's used to that happening automatically on another forum),
My quotes are from the link in the OP. I sincerely recommend reading the whole thing, because it's just full of eyebrow-raisers like them.
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I'm less worried about the idea of 'trying to avoid conditioning a child in the normal way' than I am about the fact that these parents seem to be completely daft.
quote: “Everyone keeps asking us, ‘When will this end?’” says Witterick. “And we always turn the question back. Yeah, when will this end? When will we live in a world where people can make choices to be whoever they are?”
Needless to say, the response to this "gotcha" statement is another "gotcha" statement:
"Your child isn't making that choice here. You are."
I mean, it isn't their baby who chose to hide his or her sex.
Anyway, I'm sure there are differences between men and women that are hardwired in. At the same time, I can understand not wanting to force your child into a path they don't want.
There's still social things to keep in mind, and culture is always going to be slightly arbitrary. Still, greasing the wheels of society by going "when in Rome, do as the Romans do" is not an innately terrible thing either.
Hey, the culture I've grown up with is in many ways completely arbitrary. I follow some of those conventions solely because it's what we as a society have decided upon.
For instance, I write in complete sentences here on Hatrack.
I'm rambling now: The thing is, conformity isn't always bad. There are times when conformity is a very good idea. Many times, when you really think about it. We usually just do it unconsciously.
At the same time, there are things I can agree can be avoided. Rearing a girl so that she focuses solely on stereotypically girly things, when she might actually like math, science and/or physical things like football doesn't seem optimal to me. Rearing a boy so that he shuns "girly" things like poetry, sewing, or I dunno what else (I was reared as a boy with action figures, video games, basketballs and toy cars. I was also an only child. So I'm less intimately familiar with the things girls are given to play with, sorry.) in and of itself isn't necessarily good either.
Pushing a child so that they fit the stereotype of the other sex doesn't help matters, anymore than trying to make them conform to a stereotype of their own sex. And then there's other kids, and learning to deal with other kids, and by extension society at large, is important too. And the parents here don't seem to be doing a good job of imparting those important lessons. Their experiments with their older children give the impression, in the article, of hurting rather than helping.
And how strange that both their older boys seem more feminine than normal. If it was truly just their choice, what would stop at least one of them from being quite masculine? It seems hard for me to believe that two kids in a row are naturally just that feminine.
But then, that last bit is speculation, nothing more...
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quote:And how strange that both their older boys seem more feminine than normal. If it was truly just their choice, what would stop at least one of them from being quite masculine? It seems hard for me to believe that two kids in a row are naturally just that feminine.
As I touched on before, it's because the mom's telling herself that she's developing them 'genderless'-ly while overtly impressing feminine choices on them through her 'gender explorer' motivational lessons. 'Help boys do girl things!' is a huge tip-off; might as well be written by the mom as 'you have a minimum quota of girlyness to achieve for me, or you aren't a real gender explorer, you're a filthy normative.'
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Megabyte, this is also just speculation but perhaps ALL boys are naturally more "feminine" than boys today. After all, there's nothing inherently feminine about having long hair and liking bright colours.
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I wonder how the perspective would shift if her older children were girls with "masculine" tendencies. Perhaps they preferred short hair and spent their time playing sports and collecting toy cars.
We've come to view once "masculine" features and behaviors as more gender-neutral. We don't care about young girls wearing pants but a boy in a skirt results in a scene.
Maybe the female revolution came first. As a gender, we've enjoyed "Rosie the Riveter" and "Take Your Daughter to Work" day. Maybe its time for guys to get in touch with their softer feminine side. Maybe in ten years, Tommy Hilfiger will be stocking skirts for men without any kind of commotion or judgment.
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*nod* It's hard to tell how much superficial femininity and masculinity are imparted by normative parenting, and how much Storm's parents' style is artificially going in the other direction.
I don't feel like I am remotely qualified to critique earnest, well-meaning parenting. I worry - just a bit - about parents who are so invested in their ideals that they are blind to how they affect their children. But no parent is perfect, no system works for everyone, and no answer is always right - probably including "don't push your ideology too hard."
I'm glad enough when kids are born to parents who want them, feed and nourish them, and try to teach them to be good.
IF this is any kind of a problem with social weight, it's so far down the list of problems we need to address that it can wait a good long time.
*I think rigid gender roles and sex+gender identification are probably problems worth present concern. I mean the problem of swinging too far in the other direction is not really something I think we have to worry about at this point.
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No parent is perfect. But it's sometimes really, really easy to spot when a parent is projecting their fixative causes and beliefs onto their children, to the extent that using the children as an advertised advancement of the ideal is going to come at the detriment of just raising the kid to be functional and happy.
In this case, the focus of the story isn't even really the big thing. Their gender experimentation is just icing on the cake. It's not more important than the fact that these children are going to remain functionally uneducated.
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My wife and I have decked out our children's rooms in different themes, underwater blue/brown for the boy and flowers white/pink for the girl. But, every single piece of nonblue clothing that was too small for the boy went into the girl's closet. We often give her toys which are his and in male color and themes, because they are easily in reach. Sometimes the boy ends up sleeping with a pink blanket with flowers because the blue underwater one got puked or peed on. And when the boy picks up his sister's soft first dolly doll and totes it around for awhile my wife and I shake our heads and smile...I think he likes the bell in it.
I told my wife before we ever had children, that no mater their gender, once old enough, they are taking two after school classes, one would be self defense and the other would be one of their choosing. If my son wants to do dance, then that's fine, if my daughter wants to play sports, that's fine. They both will be able to defend themselves though.
These parents have made a political statement and are trying to push it into people's faces at the likely detriment of their children, as Samp said, more from lack of education then any gender experiment. I think they are more interested in pushing their views on everyone else then raising their children to be the best most well adjusted adults they can be, and that seems sad to me.
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I am not sure how it is worse than parents pushing traditional gender roles onto their children - or any of a number of beliefs or agendas that parents foist onto their children. It is what parents do.
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I tried to be less gendered with my daughter. She still got the beautiful dresses but I tried to get toys that were neutral. When picking out toys now, she is into very girly toys. She won't even go down the boy aisles. Her train set was ignored until I got her the pink accessory set. Regardless of what we did, my daughter realizes what a girl should do and since she is a girl, that is what she does. One thing that was really hard for me was soccer. My church did a soccer clinic for kids so we signed her up. Only 2 other girls and like 15 boys showed up. She barely played because there were too many boys and she didn't want to play with them. When we tried the soccer drills at home, she was awesome- better than all the boys. But she wouldn't play with them there. It was the first time I thought, ok, I can understand the girls only preschool. With my daughter, she would be more willing to try new things and experience more in that environment.
I bought a lot of blue and green dresses. My second daughter has amazing blue eyes and so I dress her in blue a lot. She is 7 months old and if there isn't a bow in her head, I am congratulated on my beautiful boy. When I correct people, they say, oh, I saw the blue.
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We've known the gender of each of our children before they were born and acquired clothes accordingly. However, I don't recall ever pushing much of a gender agenda on any of them. Our oldest daughter never played with dolls but quickly took a liking to building things and reading science books. One of our boys gravitated to cars--he really, really likes them. Our other boy never had an interest in cars. They all had the same toys as babies. I suppose we've treated each one differently, but more according to their personalities than to some fixed gender roles in our heads. I'm content to let my kids develop according to their own interests. However, I believe their gender is an important part of who they are, and I'm certainly not going to ignore it or suppress it.
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quote:It's not more important than the fact that these children are going to remain functionally uneducated.
Is this criticism leveled at Jazz or Storm's parents, or at unschoolers in general?
Unschooling can be done well. It depends largely on the child and the person doing the teaching. I don't see it done well frequently; but I have seen a few children and parents for whom it really does work.
EDIT: "Work" being defined as 'producing a young adult capable of competing with and functioning alongside peers in a society that values education, industry, and self-reliance.'
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The kids have a bedtime or if they can stay up as long as they want
The kids have to eat their vegetables before they can leave the table
The kids have to look both ways before crossing the street
The kids are allowed to take candy from the stranger in the green van
The kids are potty trained or if they are able to go wherever they want.
I mean, the parents said they want their kids to choose everything for themselves right?
I'm fine with them not telling anyone what gender their baby is. To be honest it isn't our business. I do think it is stupid though. If the kid has a penis he is a boy, if the kid has a vagina it is a girl. If the kid decides to change that down the road fine, but right now he is one or the other. Posts: 1937 | Registered: Nov 2006
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This reminds me of a joke...a pair of hippy dippy parents want to challenge gender roles so for Xmas they buy their daughter a tool set and get their son a pair of dollies. After congratulating themselves on breaking through the gender stereotypes they go to check on their children, to see how they are doing with their new toys. The girl is sitting in her room playing with a hammer and a screwdriver. The hippy parents smile, until they hear how she is playing. "Mr. Hammer, would you like more tea?" "Why thank you Miss Screwdriver, I would love some tea." So the parents go to their son's room and are pleased to him playing with the dollies, until they hear how he is playing. "Okay Sergent Barbie, you take the shoe gun and assault the compound, I'll cover you with tea cup grenades."
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It gets less funny when the child doesn't happen to fit gender stereotypes his parents and society expect and ends up committing suicide.
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quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: I am not sure how it is worse than parents pushing traditional gender roles onto their children - or any of a number of beliefs or agendas that parents foist onto their children. It is what parents do.
Well for one, there 5 year old son seems to be having significant social problems and gender identity issues. From the article we learn
quote:Jazz doesn’t mind. One of his favourite books is 10,000 Dresses, the story of a boy who loves to dress up. But he doesn’t like being called a girl. Recently, he asked his mom to write a note on his application to the High Park Nature Centre because he likes the group leaders and wants them to know he’s a boy.
Jazz was old enough for school last September, but chose to stay home. “When we would go and visit programs, people — children and adults — would immediately react with Jazz over his gender,” says Witterick, adding the conversation would gravitate to his choice of pink or his hairstyle.
That’s mostly why he doesn’t want to go to school. When asked if it upsets him, he nods, but doesn’t say more.
And the mother says:
quote:“When I was pregnant, it was really this intense time around Jazz having experiences with gender and I was feeling like I needed some good parenting skills to support him through that,”
How many people, even transgender people, have really intense gender issues before the age of 5?
Its certainly possible that Jazz is one of those rare people who have serious transgender related issues as a child and that parents these parents are struggling to find a way to deal with their oldest sons challenge. But from what is given in the article, it seems more likely to me that the sons gender struggles are being exacerbated by this unusual parenting style. And if their parenting choices are causing difficulties for Jazz, should we expect things will go better with Storm?
I think most people at some point in their life have difficulty finding a balance between their individual desires and interests and societal expectations based on gender. I'm a woman engineering professor so I have some experience in what it means to pursue something that's not gender traditional. I had some difficult times back in my teens trying to balance my natural proclivities against the gender norms of a conservative LDS society. But even with that, I really can't comprehend why anyone would have sex reassignment surgery. I have to presume that the biological and psychological factors involved in transgenderism are something fundamentally different and not just a more extreme of normal struggles.
I understand that gender and genitalia don't always match, but they do an overwhelming majority of the time. It's hard to get good statistics on this. The best I've been able to find is that 1/30,000 men and 1/100,000 women seek sex reassignment surgery. I know that this is just the tip of the iceberg, but even if there are 1000 times as many people struggling with transgender issues, we are still talking about only a couple percent of the total population.
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I am not entirely sure that the problems Jazz has are internal or external. How much of that is due to what people expect a boy to be?
Honestly, I don't know how many people have issues with gender before 5. I know plenty who have issues with it later - all the way from wanting to be a different gender to stifling a love of "boy things" (math, sports, science) because they weren't ladylike. One needn't have gender reassignment to want to flout gender stereotypes. It shouldn't have been a struggle for you to be a woman engineer. You should not have had to work to balance your nature against gender norms. I am sorry that you did, and glad that you prevailed, and sorrier still for the many, many who mightn't have been as strong as you are.
ETA: I should add that I do think that these parents are goofy and that there well may be problems down the line. I have also, though, seen people struggle with (and be terribly damaged by) the "normal" expectations of their parents as well.
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And how strange that both their older boys seem more feminine than normal. If it was truly just their choice, what would stop at least one of them from being quite masculine? It seems hard for me to believe that two kids in a row are naturally just that feminine.
But then, that last bit is speculation, nothing more...
Rather not strange at all, I think. From what I understand little boys (pre-school age) who have interests in girly activities are pushed hard away from them and told "no, you can't, that's for girls" very very harshly.
Anecdotally, my female college roommate was pretty bald until preschool age at which point her mom put her in hair-bows and barrettes constantly. Her little brother asked one day if HE could wear some barrettes to school. The mom was warned her son against it, but he begged for them so she sent him off to preschool with barrette in his hair. They were not there when she picked him up after school. To answer the follow-up question, he grew up to be a frat boy with a girlfriend, last I heard.
I also read a story in this book about another boy who (in the 1960s) insisted on wearing barrettes to preschool. Apparently another boy told him that wearing barrettes made him a girl. The boy replied back that he was a boy because he had a penis. But the anti-barrette boy, though completely wrong, convinced his peer that barrettes made people girls. In conclusion, four-year olds don't always understand gender. By the way, the the book is very good (just read it last week), and I think the most important conclusion that the author is that highly gendered play separates boy children and girl children from each other even more than they already do.
My third anecdote is from a blog post that got a lot of attention a while back. Here's the original post. Basically, pre-schooler wants to be Daphne from Scooby-Doo, but is worried other kids will say stuff. They don't. Their MOTHERS do.
Anyway, my point is that it's not unheard of for little boys raised by "normal" parents to want to play with girly things. In fact, wanting to dress up with shiny, obnoxious stuff is probably more of a pre-schooler trait than a little girl trait. So no, I'm not surprised that when given the chance the boys are looking a bit like little girls. Admit it, who gets more attention, the prince or the princess? In our society, the women are the peacocks, not the peahens. They get all the shinies! But the fact that tomboys are ok and boys who do girl things are not is troubling.
Posts: 1757 | Registered: Oct 2004
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quote:It gets less funny when the child doesn't happen to fit gender stereotypes his parents and society expect and ends up committing suicide.
The humor lays in that despite the parents trying to push their ideas onto their children, the children are who they are.
Personally I think we are in a much more forgiving and understanding society then...say...any other time or place in the history of the world.
I think Eddie Izzard is hilarious, dress and all. I think the funniest Monty Python is when the boys throw on a dress and some make up. I have no problem with RuPaul, I think he is scarier when dressed as a male.
My point is that the problems they are creating for their children far out shadow the ones they are trying to overcome in this day and age.
Posts: 6683 | Registered: Jun 2005
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It loses the humour when, instead of children getting to choose, parents choose for them. This is true even when the parents make more stereotypical choices for their kids - trucks and guns for boys, dolls for girls. We just don't notice that or think it is funny.
We are much more open and forgiving, but we still have a long ways to go.
I am not sure how you thinking drag is funny is a good thing.
Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
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quote:I am not entirely sure that the problems Jazz has are internal or external. How much of that is due to what people expect a boy to be?
I don't know either. I doubt anyone could know. But from a purely statistical standpoint, its highly unlikely that Storms biological sex doesn't match his/her psychological gender and its equally highly improbably that pretending there is no relationship (as his/her parents seem to be doing) will be overall beneficial in this child's development.
quote:One needn't have gender reassignment to want to flout gender stereotypes.
I fully agree. I just don't agree that transgenderism is that closely related to the feelings that motivate typical people to flout gender norms.
quote:It shouldn't have been a struggle for you to be a woman engineer. You should not have had to work to balance your nature against gender norms.
I don't know. There are certainly benefits to living in a society that allows greater individual freedom. But at the same time, our human desire to "fit in" is to some degree hard wired. We are by nature social animals and a great deal of our happiness in life is derived from forming bonds with other people. In every human society, grooming and fashion (among other behaviors) have been used to indicate belonging and status. It's naive to believe we can eliminate that aspect of human behavior.
Finding a balance between meeting social expectation and pursuing individual desires is part of being human.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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quote: "Rather not strange at all, I think. From what I understand little boys (pre-school age) who have interests in girly activities are pushed hard away from them and told "no, you can't, that's for girls" very very harshly."
Eh, maybe. Or maybe the mom invests so much emotional energy into the gendered behavior of her sons, that it confuses them and pushes them into adopting attitudes they think will please her. I don't feel I was ever repressed as a child, and I was very much into guy stuff. That's the story you're going to hear for about 98% of people, I imagine- maybe we were pushed into a certain gender role, but for most of us, that "push" was as much a source of comfort and guidance.
I think that's an aspect of gender people don't want to talk about anymore- that for a lot of people, it's comforting and feels very natural to have their families *show* them how to behave in a way that society and peers will expect. Because if most of us fit exactly the gender that we were born into, don't most of us appreciate at least a little help earlier on getting to know what that means to other people? I understand that makes things difficult for the unsure, but many of us are very sure; why make things complicated?
quote: I fully agree. I just don't agree that transgenderism is that closely related to the feelings that motivate typical people to flout gender norms.
Bingo. This is no coincidence. And while the opposite case, of a transgendered person in a conservative traditional environment being stifled and repressed is horrible, this is not the appropriate remedy.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote:It loses the humour when, instead of children getting to choose, parents choose for them.
That is the essence of the joke, the parents attempted to choose for their children, and their children overrode their choice, by being who they are.
quote:We are much more open and forgiving, but we still have a long ways to go.
There is always a "better" state to be achieved, but there are many many way more deserving causes needing improvement in the world, like children dying of hunger, or aids.
quote:I am not sure how you thinking drag is funny is a good thing.
You missed my point, that is, for Eddie Izzard, he isn't in drag, he just likes wearing a dress. He is a he, he is male, and funny, and wearing a dress. For Monty Python, again, it is the content of their humor which is so pleasurable, not the fact that they are in drag.
Posts: 6683 | Registered: Jun 2005
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quote:but there are many many way more deserving causes needing improvement in the world, like children dying of hunger, or aids
I hate, hate, hate this argument. Just because something isn't the worst problem in the world doesn't mean that it's not worth addressing. Yes, there's such a thing as outrage fatigue, but enthusiasm counts for a lot too. If you care more about fighting aids or hunger, by all means spend your time and effort doing so, but that doesn't mean it's wrong for somebody to spend their time and effort on something else.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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posted
I hear you mph...I'm not saying that all other endeavors should be abandoned for these two. But I do think that people make "lessor" concerns out of proportion at times and sometimes a little perspective is helpful.
Posts: 6683 | Registered: Jun 2005
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