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<p>My thoughts exactly.</p>
<p>Which reminds me of my FIL’s attempt at gender-neutral: Shim. She + Him. No thanks. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>Nothing convinced me more that gender identity is inborn – and not the product of a society construct – than becoming a mom.</p>
<p>Although my kid has a gender neutral name, I tried to get her to be just a little girly.<br>
She sneered at pink. She chucked the dolls and slept with the toy truck and hammer. (She wanted a tool set).</p>
<p>I surrendered.</p>
<p>Same with mine, silver. My D just knew that dolls were dorky and trucks were fun. I finally gave up in middleschool trying to dress her cool like the other girls. She wasn’t having any of it. She wanted baggy pants and big T’s. Motherhood taught me the opposite of what katliamom learned.</p>
<p>My D has always hated pink but is being daring and trying it on occasion these days at the ripe old age of 19. She’s been dressing herself since she was old enough to reach for clothing. She would wear frilly dresses to have swordfights and play with the trucks and dinosaurs and blocks. </p>
<p>Neither of my kids had any use for dolls but both S & D loved stuffed animals. Both were indignant when people guessed D was a boy but never guessed S was a girl (tho we had a lot of gender neutral clothing on him).</p>
<p>D is still infinitely better at understanding feelings and emotions than S, who is incredibly good at abstractions and analytical. (S tried at age 3 to help the preschool director improve the standardized entrance placement test she administered to all kids; D would come home every day at age 3 & tell me how each kid in her class felt & why–was always dead-on; S is much more clueless about feelings). I didn’t teach either of them this as both had these skills in pre-school.</p>
<p>My ten-year-old has always been a thuggy-type of guy. In fact, we’ve called him “thug-boy” from time to time. Plays with boy toys, walks like a boy, everything, despite the fact that I desperately wanted him to be a girl. Last weekend, it was raining again and he was sitting on the couch playing with a stuffed bear. He was holding it, cuddling it, talking to it and taking care of it. I was shocked. Never seen him with a lovey before. Perhaps there’s hope for that boy after all!</p>
<p>In my general sociology course and also in my Sport Sociology course, we had to read the article referened by SlitheyTove on page 1. It’s called “Baby X”. I don’t remember what source we read the article from, but I found it on a website after a quick search: [Baby</a> X - A Child’s Story without Gender](<a href=“http://etransgender.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=1850]Baby”>http://etransgender.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=1850)</p>
<p>We discussed it for a few days in both classes, and I found it pretty interesting. Would never do it to my kid, but covers some important concepts of how society wants to shape people.</p>
<p>I really think it is more than the “it” factor at work here. People often didn’t use the gender even when I told them. They would say something like, “Oh, aren’t you cute? What <fill in=”" the=“” blank=“”> you have!" It just seemed like they had an innate need to classify the baby by gender. I’m not saying my D (oldest, at least) didn’t have some very “girly” leanings early on (favorite colors gold, silver, pink, and purple as soon as she could express a preference!). Just that most people in our society seem very uncomfortable if they can’t ascertain someone’s gender.</fill></p>
<p>Might it be possible that this child has some kind of intersex condition and that the parents don’t want to assign the child to a gender and then later discover that the child’s inclinations clearly indicate that the assignment was wrong? </p>
<p>Just speculating here.</p>
<p>I know a few kids who have decided to become gender neutral as teens. This may become the new gender. Or gender will become a transient, changeable things. We are already going this way.</p>
<p>Stupid questions: how does one decide to become gender neutral? I can see parents imposing neutrality on babies and toddlers. But teens choosing it? That seems awfully late to try changing who/what one is.</p>
<p>Like it or not, gender is a large part of how humans identify themselves, and to try to eliminate that aspect of human identity will ultimately be unsuccessful and may seriously damage the child mentally and emotionally. That said, I think the parents should be free to perform this social experiment at their child’s expense.</p>
<p>When my S1 was a toddler, we lived in New York City. With the baby in the stroller, we went for a walk. An elderly woman stopped me to tell me what a beautiful little girl I had. When I corrected her, she said, “Oh, he’s too pretty to be a boy!”</p>
<p>^^Along those lines…we once went shopping with the kids to a home improvement center. Neither parent recognized immediately that the announcement over the loudspeaker looking for the parents of the lost girl was really about our male toddler. We each thought he was with the other. Happy ending fortunately.</p>
<p>Nothing convinced me more that gender identity is learned – and not inborn – than becoming a mom. </p>
<p>My son also had curly hair and nearly everyone thought he was a girl. It didn’t matter if he was wearing pink, yellow or blue. He had/had huge blue eyes and when he was a toddler he had a crown of golden curls with rosy cheeks. At first I would say, “Thank you but the baby is a boy” but it really seemed to fluster older people, so I just let it go. </p>
<p>We do know a family whose baby was born with genitals that are not clearly male or female. Years ago they would just take guess, then they started using DNA. Now they are encouraging parents, like our friends, to raise the child gender neutral for a few years and see where to go from there. There is no undoing the surgery, so I was very glad to hear that the standards have changed. It’s not as strange as you might think, now it just seems normal.</p>
<p>DB, I know many teens who are refusing to identify with just one gender and/or sexuality. They feel it’s restricting (they are right about that) and are trying to circumvent those restrictions. I think it’s interesting.</p>
<p>I recall an experiment where scientists dressed a baby in gender neutral clothes of a gender neutral color and the parents walked around with it . . . When strangers asked about the baby the parents were friendly, but wouldn’t tell its gender. Most people they met went through great lengths to try to discover the baby’s gender. It was as if they didn’t know the “right” way to talk to the baby without knowing its gender.</p>
<p>Personally, I loathed dolls as a little girl and longed for Transformers. No one ever bought me any, so I took Matchbox cars and Tonka trucks and pretended they were Transformers. I didn’t neglect all “girly” toys, though. I loved My Little Ponies. But instead of having tea parties, they tended to get enslaved by evil Barbie (who would chain them to imaginary sewing machines and force them to sew clothes made from their own hair), then revolt and have an epic battle, in which many would fall.</p>
<p>Several people have posted stories of sons who were mistaken for daughters by strangers, but once I was out with a friend and her 5 month old. The baby was wearing a black dress with hot pink flowers and had a black sally band with with a pink bow, but the baby had very thin, fine, light hair and appeared to be bald. The mom could not understand why people (especially older people) kept complimenting her adorable little boy!</p>
<p>If a teen chooses to be gender neutral, that is one thing. That is an informed decision by a young person who has thought about it for months or possibly, years. </p>
<p>But I do think that refusing to tell people what gender their toddler is would do more harm to the child, than good, in the long run. In terms of it being an interesting social experiment, we can all look back on BF Skinner’s experiments with the monkey in the box, too, but few of us would want to replicate it with our own kids.</p>
<p>I guess the question is, when will the parents choose to release this info? At age 3? 5? Ever? How confused will the child be, then? </p>
<p>If it is a situation with ambiguous gender, that is one thing - but I didn’t get that impression with this case. If that is true, than waiting and see how the child reacts to the world around him or her might be one thing. But I have two sons and a daughter, and none of them have consistently been true to the gender stereotypes all the time, and it sure didn’t happen as babies or toddlers. They have all played with dolls and trucks and been perfectly happy with both well into preschool and kindergarten. Just last week two of my teens were playing with legos - a boy and a girl! </p>
<p>I think as parents we would do a better job if we gave our kids the opportunities to explore being a kid and having the chance to play with kids of both genders, toys typical of both genders and teaching them to respect both genders, equally.</p>
<p>Perhaps those parents can start saving their money now for an excellent therapist. That child may need one, later.</p>
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A former boss of mine attended an HR workshop on gender issues. They differentiated among sex, gender, and preference – sex being the physical male/female difference, gender being whether one identified oneself as male or female, and preference being whether one is attracted to males or females.</p>
<p>Under this rubric, they explained, someone could have the equipment that would make most of us call him a man, but consider himself a woman, and be attracted to women. And that person (a man who is attracted to women) would be considered homosexual. This will no doubt make perfect sense to many people here… we just shrugged and said, :rolleyes: academia.
^ Yes. And I don’t see why that can’t be accomplished with the kid knowing whether (s)he is a boy or a girl.</p>