Okay, a friend sent me a fascinating article that I have not been able to stop mulling over.
Check This Out. New, but not first time, parents Kathy Witterick and David Stocker of Toronto, Canada have decided not to tell anyone the sex of their new baby, Storm. Not even the child's grandparents. "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?)... If you really want to get to know someone, you don't ask what's between their legs."
They say that kids receive messages from society that encourage them to fit into existing boxes, including with regard to gender. "We thought that if we delayed sharing that information, in this case hopefully, we might knock off a couple million of those messages by the time that Storm decides Storm would like to share...In fact, in not telling the gender of my precious baby, I am saying to the world, 'Please can you just let Storm discover for him/herself what s (he) wants to be?!." She wrote in an email.
After thinking it through for a few days I have decided to call a very loud "Bullshit" on this one. I am absolutely a proponent of blowing the boxes that society places us in to smithereens. I agree that every human being should get to decide who they are and who they want to be. But every human being is also born with either a penis or a vagina. That is not a choice - it just is. We are born a specific gender whether we like it or not. The issue is what it means from that point on. We all get to decide what kind of man or woman we are going to be - if we feel drawn to the more classical version of our gender or not. Or if we even want to physically remain the gender we were born into. But that is up to US to decide. Not anyone else - including our parents.
I absolutely believe that it is a parent's job to celebrate their child's gender, not to erase it. To open and offer every opportunity for that child to explore their mind, heart, personality and, yes, gender. If a parent says, "You are a boy or you are a girl and it's amazing and incredible and let's explore all the possibilities that holds," it is a huge gift. I think that parents that try and remove their children that much from "society" and raise them that disconnected - that far on the fringe - they are not raising people who, as adults, can positively change the way the world views and values gender, they are raising people that might spend far too much time just trying to figure out who the hell they are. They may rebel, act out and become a version of themselves that may not be who they actually are, or want to be, but one that will best assist them in individuating from, and punishing, their parents. That's not freedom. Not by a long shot.
The article said that the baby is not one that was born with both sex organs. That baby has a penis or a vagina - that is just a fact. I can't help wondering what the parents say to those kids about their genitals in private. If not careful, they could seriously mess with those kids sexual identities. I think they may be robbing them, not giving them a gift.
The article also stated that "During Witterick's pregnancy, her son Jazz was having "intense" experiences with his own gender (Ya think???), [that the couple's] choices haven't always made life easy for their kids. Though Jazz likes dressing as a girl, he doesn't seem to want to be mistaken for one. He recently asked his mother to let the leaders of a nature center know that he's a boy. And he chose not to attend a conventional school because of the questions about his gender. Asked whether that upsets him, Jazz nodded." I think that they are creating FAR more gender issues with these kids than they realize. Hell, it's already a huge issue. Instead of gender being something free and comfortable that is without boundaries and completely beside the point, which seems to be their goal, it is already something that is confusing, embarrassing, larger than life and is taking up a lot of emotional space.
As for his mother, she's not giving up the crusade against the tyranny of assigned gender roles. "Everyone keeps asking us, 'When will this end?'" she said. "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?"
While I applaud that last line and the goal of raising gender-roll-free kids, I think that going about it this way is incredibly fucked up and may turn around and bite them in the ass one day. Or not. What do I know? I don't know them personally - I only read an article about them. But it seems to be more about control, making a social / political statement, and their own inner shit than what may be best for their kids.
Yep. I'm calling bullshit.
5 comments:
I dunno, I'd rank this in the same category with other intriguing-and-harmless-yet-perhaps-misguided experiments like raising your kids speaking only Esperanto. Why not try it out if it's something your family is interested in? It's nowhere near the routine abuse and neglect that so many kids are raised with as a matter of course.
OK, I just read the article, and -- to say something really, really, really non-PC on the Internets -- I think their decision to homeschool is far more irresponsible than their gender-free experiment.
...What does it mean to celebrate a child's gender, if not to celebrate the social construct of what we think that gender means? The problem is that many of us have issues with what society thinks gender means. The constructs pidgeonhole and oppress. We have problems with what we are taught "men" should be or are, or what "women" should be or are. And some of us dare to subvert and oppose some aspects of the construct.
It just seems to me that to oppose some aspects of the construct while at the same time favoring some other kind of essentialism is defeating the purpose. (nevertheless, a lot of people do it, but oh well.)
Not saying I agree with Witterick and Stocker's approach, though
Thank god you disagree with this. Haha. I get so frustrated with the overly progressive attitude with zero boundaries and rules. You're absolutely right that you're either born with a penis or vagina (of course sometimes both..maybe neither?) but with those distinctions comes differences, ones that are clearly physically different. I had a friend who said it pissed him off when baby girls were given bows at the hospital because it already assigned her a gender..I was like dear god, she's like 8 hours old and has a VAGINA. She likely will love pink shit and all things girly, including bows. On the off chance that she doesn't, well, she can decide that when she's older. Until then, that vagina packin baby is sporting a pink bow damn it. Sorry for the novel. It's just that I've had many a frustrating discussion about this topic and I completely agree with your take on it.
So, it's one thing to make this decision for a first child. (and I think it's more bizarre than the people who now have a FB page for their fetus)
The idea that they have expected their children to LIE to people about something that is just what it is: a penis or a vagina.
Sheesh....neither of them were gender neutral when they made those children were they?
But hey, I could be wrong.
I could also think that the former governor of Alaska is qualified for any public office.
Mebbe not..
P in CA
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