Saturday, 25 August 2012

quote [ Storm's parents are keeping the infant's sex a secret from everyone but the immediate family and a handful of confidants in an effort to provide the child freedom to eventually decide on a gender identity, without the influence of societal expectation and narrow, traditional gender roles. ]

A perfectly reasonable social experiment to try on your kids. There is no way this could have negative side effects.

http://www.everydayfamily.com/blog/parents-raising-genderless-children/

[politics] [by satanspenis666@2:01amGMT] [+10 WTF]

Comments

Jaxon said @ 2:13am GMT on 25th Aug [Score:1 Underrated]
Wouldn't it be easier to have the kid be a gender and then just educate them on what their options are? This way the kid isn't an outcast until they are old enough to understand their parents are fucking idiots.

EPT said @ 6:06am GMT on 25th Aug
While research says that gender roles start being trained from infancy, they're far from fully formed or set in concrete by the time you start using separate toilets.

val said @ 4:51pm GMT on 25th Aug [Score:2]
Easier for whom?

These parents wish to liberate their children from hegemonic gender roles. Revolution isn't easy, but if there are forces that make this painful and difficult for the child, they reveal themselves as forces of oppression.

Given a healthy environment, their entrance into more traditional school environments as they grow (presumably), as well as encounters with peers, parents, teachers, friends, offer teachable moments which can begin to destroy those internalized forces.

mwoody said @ 2:17am GMT on 25th Aug
Someday this article will be a footnote in a court-ordered psychiatric evaluation.

ENZ said @ 2:19am GMT on 25th Aug [Score:1 Insightful]
This reminds me of that one case where a botch circumcision ended up with an impromptu sex change operation. The parents, at the behest of some psychologist, decided to perform a social experiment. Raise the boy as a girl. Everything was fine until the boy went through puberty, and his body kept telling him he was a boy when his parents and that psychologist kept telling him he was a girl. I believe he ended up committing suicide, though I can't remember if it was in his teens or 20's.

This is why I believe all that shit should be done voluntarily as an adult. Bother gender identity issues, and circumcision.

robotroadkill said @ 1:02pm GMT on 25th Aug
Aside from the circumcision thing, this also illustrates how pointless the parents' little experiment is. Their kid is going to figure out whether it identifies as male, female, or whatever, and tshirts with trucks or fairies aren't gonna mess that up. Can they really keep the secret until puberty? In spite of immense pressure, the kids figure it out, just be aware and accepting when they do.

GordonGuano said @ 1:52pm GMT on 25th Aug [Score:-2]
This. Since so many objected to my use of the word "faggotry", I'll guess I'll say it's retards like this who make liberalism look bad. These parents are the John Birchers of the left.

snowfox said @ 6:58pm GMT on 25th Aug [Score:1 Insightful]
And now you're bashing the mentally handicapped. Kudos.

tiemy said @ 9:29pm GMT on 25th Aug [Score:1 Funny]
'Handicapped' is a blatantly ableist hate-slur used to reinforce the kyriarchy.

theolypse said @ 11:56pm GMT on 25th Aug
If there were but a +1 Cute.

snowfox said @ 12:15am GMT on 26th Aug [Score:1 Insightful]
I read about ableism a while back. We should not discriminate against the handicapped, but to pretend they have the same advantages as everyone else is absurd. They are people as much as anyone else, to be sure. Anti-ableism, however, demands we not acknowledge the disadvantages these individuals face. The anti-ableism logic makes it ok for deaf people to ensure they have a deaf child, and I am just not sure it's ok. The anti-ableists would have you believe that being deaf or with hearing is the difference between blonde and brunette.

EPT said @ 3:01am GMT on 26th Aug
We should not refer to that demographic as 'handicapped' or 'disabled' people, but 'people with disabilities'. It's a subtle difference, but it means that you're no longer defining them by their disability.

It's a bit annoying to get used to, and for most SEers I imagine it wouldn't represent a change in actual opinion, but out in the wider population there's considerable stigma once that demographic is identified that way.

Naruki said @ 3:18am GMT on 26th Aug
Any person without eyesight can see that.

val said @ 4:57pm GMT on 25th Aug
Isn't every parent experimenting, figuring out how to raise a child as they go along? It is only that -- an experiment in parenting, not an experiment on the child.

The child is freed from gender roles, free to express as it chooses -- which will probably fall mostly into one camp or the other, but if it doesn't, does it matter?

This kid will get to pick for itself whether to be a he or a she.

That is incredible.

EPT said @ 5:13pm GMT on 25th Aug
The kid will have some pretty significant gender roles imposed as soon as it's old enough to use segregated toilets. If the parents really do keep it insulated from societal expectations until as late as that, then it's going to have to learn (and conform) painfully fast. Surely it's better for the kid to be exposed to expectations, but taught that it has more options than that?

an experiment in parenting, not an experiment on the child

These aren't mutually independent.

val said @ 5:19pm GMT on 25th Aug [Score:1 Insightful]
Certainly it will learn about the gender binary in the rest of the world, but I don't see why having to pick which toilet to use will be painful - or, at least, why that would be any more painful than a boy being told not to play will dolls or wear a dress.

Because there are more options than boy and girl, and segregated restrooms don't really serve any purpose except to reinforce a societal binary.

structured_spirits said @ 5:30pm GMT on 25th Aug
And hopefully, the other children this child interacts with will consider whether the binary world they know is really all there is, and whether they might want something different as well.

I went to a private college in California, and we had coeducational dorms, where men and women lived on the same floors, still segregated by room but no more than that. Later as an upperclassman I attended school in the south and found I could no longer go into a woman's dorm room because they were segregated. It struck me as very limiting and a hassle, you had to use a phone and call them down to meet in a common area. I asked other students how they felt about this, and they didn't see it as a problem, because it's what they were used to. I think most people don't really even realize how little freedom they have.

Barnabas_Truman said @ 3:20am GMT on 26th Aug [Score:1 Underrated]
The very idea of gender-segregated dorm buildings just seem so utterly bizarre.

Also, it bothers me when people refer to female college students as "coeds." Especially when Rush Limbaugh does it. He has an incredible ability to fit such massive amounts of hate into single words.

robotroadkill said @ 8:43pm GMT on 25th Aug
"segregated restrooms don't really serve any purpose except to reinforce a societal binary."

You really think that's the sole purpose of segregated restrooms?

zsander said @ 9:03pm GMT on 25th Aug [Score:1 Underrated]
Now I'm genuinely curious: what IS the purpose, then, of separating bathrooms by two sexes (as compared to, say, unisex lavatories)?

robotroadkill said @ 9:13pm GMT on 25th Aug
Ever notice how unisex lavs are a 1-at-a-time affair, whereas multiple unit ones are always gender-specific (at least in my country)? People have a hard enough time grunting farting and splashing turds into the can in front of their own sex. Plus there's the whole issue with creepers trying to peep into the gaps.

The thing I don't understand at all, though, are the single toilet units that are labeled male and female. That doesn't make any sense, unless one was to presume that one sex was less tidy than the other & you don't want to impose lower hygiene standards on the other.

theolypse said @ 11:50pm GMT on 25th Aug
Women's toilets. Blech.

EPT said @ 2:46am GMT on 26th Aug
Early morning, foreign city, heading for the bus out. Stop by the toilet first in a small posh mall. Wow, nothing but cubicles, this place is posh. Feminine grunt. Oh. Wander back out and into the next door past the semicircle of bemused teenage schoolgirls...

val said @ 11:08pm GMT on 25th Aug
Yes, I do. Can you think of another one? If you take the binary away, all the other prudish bullshit goes away, too.

The only one I can think of is urinals. But in a large enough restroom, you can still have an area for urinals (I, for one, am not on-board with the concept of urinal as male privilege).

theolypse said @ 11:53pm GMT on 25th Aug [Score:2 Insightful]
Nah. "If you take the binary away" is on the level of "turn the bedrock under New York City to ice cream and cake." Maybe it would result in an amazing improvement, eventually, or could have if the city had developed that way naturally, but it's worlds apart from a simple find--replace maneuver. Which parts, for instance?

Genital essentialism would be nice to kick out and give trans folk some breathing room. But to remove the real pressure of "creepers", as robotroadkill mentioned, you'd have to unwind so much androcentrism and acceptance of male sexual aggression that the social world would be unrecognizeable from this vantage. I simply don't believe you can readily predict what the full set of changes would be.

val said @ 12:08am GMT on 26th Aug
Well, yes. It's a thought experiment.

But there are places and institutions (read: progressive liberal arts colleges) that have the ability, and I suspect in a few years the willpower, to switch to full gender neutral restrooms.

foobar said @ 12:55am GMT on 26th Aug
I'd imagine there already are. It was a bit in Ally McBeal 15 years ago.

Won't change anything until people want it to.

EPT said @ 2:54am GMT on 26th Aug
It's not just creepers and harassment in terms of cultural training. A lot of women get really embarrassed talking about anything related to menstruation in front of men, and a lot of men would be really embarrassed to have their penis out in public (urinal) around women.

While less of an issue, you are also going to get a lot more sex in public toilets, methinks.

theolypse said @ 6:14am GMT on 26th Aug
Not with as bad as they generally smell.

robotroadkill said @ 1:32am GMT on 26th Aug
I listed a couple replying to Zsander. I bet it was more out of convention than someone or some group purposely deciding that the social binary needed reinforcing and that restrooms were a good way to do that.

mrcucumber said @ 2:48pm GMT on 26th Aug
Yes, urinals. It's based on type of occupancy: assembly, business, education, factory, institutional, etc. Security and privacy are factored in as well, but the driving force is based on basic human functions. Men stand to pee, women sit, but by a woman sitting it takes away the w/c for a man if he needs #2. It obviously depends on occupancy type, because assembly buildings (theaters, airports) have different needs than say, a warehouse.

On a side note : notice how the woman's restroom always has lines? Imagine men using the same facility. How long would the lines be then? Blame the lack of women's w/c on developers/contractors and building code writers. Why would you dedicate more money and S.F. than is required by law to provide toilets that remain unused for a good portion of the day.

I don't think it has anything to do with privilege or society forcing separation of sexes. If anything it's society asking for separation.

What gets me is the privilege of airplane first class - where you pay for the use of a first class specific w/c that was originally intended by design to service the entire cabin.

mrcucumber said @ 2:55pm GMT on 26th Aug
2003 NATIONAL STANDARD PLUMBING CODE (NSPC)
Published by the Plumbing-Heating-Cooling Contractors--National Association

7.21.4 Separate Facilities
Separate toilet facilities shall be provided for each sex.
EXCEPTIONS: [ deleted text ]

3. In businesses, occupancies with a total floor area of 1500 square feet or less, one toilet facility, de-signed for use by no more than one person at a time, shall satisfy the requirements for serving customers and employees of both sexes.
4. In mercantile occupancies with a net occupiable floor area of 1500 square feet or less that is accessible to customers, one toilet facility designed for use by no more than one person at a time, shall satisfy the requirements for serving customers and employees of both sexes.

Blah blah blah blah from here

structured_spirits said @ 9:54pm GMT on 26th Aug
I assure you society would not collapse if restrooms were no longer separate. And really that's the saddest thing I'm going to take away from this entire conversation. That there are people who are convinced of the absolute necessity of gender segregated restrooms to the continuation of their society. How the hell is humanity ever going to make any progress if we can't even redesign a bathroom.

mrcucumber said @ 3:44pm GMT on 28th Aug
I think you missed the point.

Barnabas_Truman said @ 7:24am GMT on 30th Aug
On a side note : notice how the woman's restroom always has lines? Imagine men using the same facility. How long would the lines be then?

If we also imagine women using the former "men's" facility, I presume the lines would be half as long.

EPT said @ 2:44am GMT on 26th Aug
I agree that there are many more options that traditional boy and girl. But I don't think it translates into being automatically wonderful to delay learning about those roles. With the boy-playing-with-dolls, that pain is unavoidable - the boy likes doing whatever, and will learn that it's a bit of a stigma. But with the segregated toilets thing, the pain is avoidable by prior exposure. I'm fine with some pain if there's a point to it, but this kind of thing seems needless given alternatives.

Also, while I agree that segregated restrooms are about the societal binary (after all, private homes don't have them), it's not something that's going to go away in this kid's lifetime.

My concern is that I've had some friends who grew up under similar 'parenting experiments' and it caused them some real problems. Children are malleable and much of what we are is cultural, absolutely. But I don't agree that 'it's a parenting experiment, not a child experiment' is enough to warrant glowing support. It's a thing, I'd cautiously support it, but I don't think it's fantastic.

robotroadkill said @ 8:42pm GMT on 25th Aug
This is an experiment on the kid because it's apparently not until the child is years old that the concept of gender even becomes meaningful to a kid. These parents will be refusing to refer to gender in public when the kid is old enough to understand, and it's going to notice that no one else's parents do that.

Finally, the kid doesn't get to "pick for itself" any more than you or I did. When it becomes relevant (onset of puberty) the wiring of your brain will manifest itself regardless of your own preference, or what people have been telling you. Whether it matches your body or the expectations of others is an unknown.

val said @ 11:17pm GMT on 25th Aug
By pick for itself to be he or she, I don't mean that the kid is going to magically decide to be a boy or a girl -- how we get gendered isn't a choice so much as the result of a lot of cultural and societal factors (and the parents are trying to shield this kid from those factors).

Rather, I mean that this kid will get to pick it's own pronouns as part of it's gender expression. That's something most people don't get to do until much later in life, because they're told it's for granted.

robotroadkill said @ 1:16am GMT on 26th Aug
I agree that some trouble could be saved for confused young kids if parents would be more open to the idea that their brain might not match their crotch, but I fell like this is an unnecessarily obtrusive and somewhat attention whorish act by the parents. Simply talking to the kid in private about being true to themselves & their feelings could be just as effective without having to do this weird semantic dance when out in public with their kids.
I have my first child on its way (too early to know if it's M or F), and I will do everything I can to make sure it feels comfortable in its own skin, but I believe the way it will ultimately identify is in its genes, not in what color booties someone buys for it.

theolypse said @ 11:55pm GMT on 25th Aug
the wiring of your brain will manifest itself regardless of your own preference, or what people have been telling you

That's a pretty strong claim to make. Are you, perhaps, a developmental neurobiologist? Friends with at least two of them? Extensively read on the current analyses of the field?

robotroadkill said @ 12:50am GMT on 26th Aug
No, this is based on anecdotal evidence from the popular media: people claiming that they feel like "women trapped in men's bodies," and the like: People who have been treated as one gender, and eventually realize they don't feel like they actually belong to that one. The case study mentioned above with the botched circumcision is an extreme example where a person's gender identity STILL came out after extreme lifelong pressure from family and medical professionals emphasizing the contrary, including gender reassignment surgery.

And maybe I'm completely wrong. Maybe gender identity is based entirely on social cues. Big fucking deal, the kid will turn out to be something or other, or something in between, just like everyone has, ever. Who cares, just treat them like a human & maybe they won't kill themselves.

The parents in the situation in question have lofty goals in mind, but I'm just saying it's unnecessary, and probably going to be confusing to a kid at an age that doesn't even think or care about these things.

foobar said @ 12:56am GMT on 26th Aug
Or maybe it's a wide spectrum effecting people in widely different ways.

robotroadkill said @ 1:27am GMT on 26th Aug
Right, and if it's a combination of both, then WHY wouldn't you want both to have input? It's like saying there's a right or wrong way for an individual to come to their gender identity. If a person is comfortable and happy being a female, who cares if it's because grandma knitted them pink socks or if it's because they have two x chromosomes?

val said @ 1:47am GMT on 26th Aug
That's a fine rhetorical example, but hegemonic. Let's try it the other way around:

If someone who was raised female turns out to be genderqueer, and is uncomfortable and unhappy as a female, do you blame the pink socks they were given, or do you blame the person for turning out that way*?

*I'm not read up on the biology/neuroscience/psychology behind trans and intersex.

robotroadkill said @ 2:01am GMT on 26th Aug
I'd blame the parents for not providing an environment where a child is comfortable addressing those kinds of concerns before they become a problem. How a person "turns out" and how a person is made to feel about themselves with respect to that are different issues, in terms of parental control (at least in my opinion).

robotroadkill said @ 2:10am GMT on 26th Aug [Score:1 Underrated]
Anyway, my point is that you can provide that environment in your home, and you can never ensure it outside your home. So, although the parents have noble goals, I think they are needlessly complicating the process by refusing to at least tell people the biological sex of the child. (As far as "let billy play with dolls if he wants dolls" goes, I am 100% on board)

robotroadkill said @ 4:51am GMT on 27th Aug [Score:-1]
I think this was a fair comment to make, especially since I spoke in such absolute terms (although perhaps the criteria for qualification are a bit extreme -maybe a couple college courses would suffice?). It's too late for me to, but would someone mod this back up at least to 0 again please? OTOH, thanks for having my back, kichijoii

theolypse said @ 12:34am GMT on 28th Aug
I'm really not trying to jump on you. It was an excessive claim, and the criteria were excessive alongside. I don't think you're a blowhard or nuffin.

robotroadkill said @ 1:10am GMT on 28th Aug
Right & thanks, but I'm saying whoever downmodded your comment was outta line.

robotroadkill said @ 1:14am GMT on 28th Aug
I guess it wasn't obvious because it was so far below the comment it was replying to. But I was trying to defend your comment (which was downmodded) calling me out on mine.

theolypse said @ 9:55pm GMT on 28th Aug
It was, dude. I'm establishing a cooperative context. Trying to. Failing to.

robotroadkill said @ 12:00am GMT on 29th Aug
Apparently we only understand each other when we're disagreeing.

robotroadkill said @ 12:07am GMT on 29th Aug
Anyway, no worries, I enjoy our interactions.

theolypse said @ 11:56pm GMT on 25th Aug [Score:1 Informative]
Would you prefer the "That's not all that was going wrong in his life" rebuttal or the "Plural of anecdote is not 'data'" one?

dangerm00se said @ 2:39am GMT on 25th Aug [Score:4 Insightful]
Like any other way to raise a kid is gonna net you a well-adjusted human being in 2012.

mechanical contrivance said @ 5:44am GMT on 25th Aug
Some parenting methods are worse than others.

GordonGuano said @ 3:15am GMT on 25th Aug [Score:-4 Troll]
I'm betting they're also vegans. It's pretty hard to attain that level of faggotry and delusion without being brain damaged from years of malnourishment.

damnit said @ 7:16am GMT on 25th Aug [Score:-2]
... or they're just delusional from other circumstances.

arrowhen said @ 5:23pm GMT on 25th Aug
"Faggotry"? Seriously?

pleaides said @ 2:58am GMT on 26th Aug [Score:1 Underrated]
What's with this new precious attitude toward language here? It's the internet for christ's sake.

Naruki said @ 3:21am GMT on 26th Aug
It's not new, not even here, and WHERE you are a douche does not prevent you from being a douche.

Cakkafracle said @ 8:41am GMT on 27th Aug [Score:-1 Unworthy Self Link]
you're such a fucking morality princess...

EPT said @ 3:46am GMT on 26th Aug [Score:2]
Open homophobic language has never been welcomed here. And back when matt was around, even the slightest hint of 'slut-shaming' would have him tearing you a new one - even just using 'slut', which is pejoritive. Sure it's occasionally used against men by a small amount of people, but it's still basically a shaming word directed at women, despite attempts at reclamation.

EPT said @ 3:47am GMT on 26th Aug
erg, finished too fast - meant to say that if anything, language on SE has loosened up over the long term.

Barnabas_Truman said @ 4:15am GMT on 26th Aug
+1 history lesson

pleaides said @ 9:15am GMT on 26th Aug [Score:2]
Sure, yeah, but it's clear to me that the word wasn't used 'substantively' as it were, just an unfortunate choice of expletive. Same with his use of the word 'retard' above, it was clearly just the linguistic equivalent of an exclamation point, yet it was modded down and snowfox accused gordon of picking on the mentally deficient, which is reading much more into the usage of the word than it justified imho. 'Retard' and 'faggotry' have become staples of internet discourse, and have become as divorced from their original intention as 'terrific' has. Both words have been thrown about here for years with 'gay' abandon, and it seems to me to be a bit rich to get stuck into gordon, a long standing SEer who's never been homophobic or discriminatory, for using these words when we're suddenly all aflame with righteous indignation. If we're going to change the rules of language usage for one post then we should do people the courtesy of advance warning imho. That Naruki, an enthusiastic linguistic combatant, can get upset about the usage of foul language without any of us bursting out laughing is a bit odd to say the very least.

Naruki said @ 1:05pm GMT on 26th Aug
To say that I get upset about the use of "foul" language is fucking retarded.

To say that in the current climate of extreme (to the point of violence) anti-gay sentiment in the US (and where it spills over into other countries) that I discourage terms derived from gay-bashing slang would be accurate, but that wouldn't make your point and wouldn't paint me as a hypocrite.

So I can see why you attempted to score double points. Too bad it backfarted on you.

pleaides said @ 1:14pm GMT on 26th Aug [Score:1 Insightful]
Perhaps it would have been better to say 'Naruki is the last among us who has the right to complain about foul language'

Which is a point you've rather proven for me, especially considering 'retard' is among the words that is at issue here.

Naruki said @ 10:05pm GMT on 26th Aug
And if you read what I wrote, you'll see that I am being logically consistent. Well, I hope you see it, otherwise I got some splainin to do.

dreamingzephyr said @ 11:05pm GMT on 26th Aug
I got it.

Naruki said @ 2:21am GMT on 27th Aug [Score:1 Funny]
I must apologize about that. Don't worry, my doctor says it's totally treatable, but next time I will wear some protection.

EPT said @ 1:35pm GMT on 26th Aug [Score:3]
'retard' is a hard one to fight, but 'faggotry' isn't common to SE at all, and goes directly against the founding spirit of the site. If someone else hasn't already marked it out in a comment, I certainly will if I see it. Admittedly I was away for a few months and 'faggotry' may have been used a lot then, but apart from that, I really haven't noted it much. I'll also mark out 'ghey' if I see it - it's plain 'dog whistle politics'.

Louis CK talks in his standup about 'faggot' being a meaningless word when he was growing up, and how it really doesn't mean anything particularly to him. Someone had a chat to him, because there's quite a lengthy piece in his TV show where he essentially pulls a retraction, and acknowledges the power of the word.

EPT said @ 1:41pm GMT on 26th Aug
http://youtu.be/v-55wC5dEnc (embedding disabled...)

This is the scene. The explanation starts at 5 minutes in and probably isn't anything new, but if you look at the context of the whole scene, it's pretty clear he's doing a mea culpa.

Cakkafracle said @ 8:45am GMT on 27th Aug [Score:-1 WTF]
oh noooo, Louis CK pussied out what with his new found mega-stardom. We should all change immediately!

pleaides said @ 6:45am GMT on 27th Aug
Fair criticism.

Barnabas_Truman said @ 7:36am GMT on 30th Aug [Score:1 Underrated]
I've never used "retard" or any variant as an insult, perhaps in part because my mom and my aunt both taught special ed and I learned from an early age that these folks may be a lot slower than I am but they are people and deserving of respect.

Having since learned that "moron" and "idiot" were once clinical terms for sufferers of mental disabilities, I presume that "retard" will someday be comparable to these. However, I'll still refrain from using it for personal reasons.

Naruki said @ 3:55am GMT on 31st Aug
For the record, I maintain a strict mental barrier between my use of "retard/idiot/moron" and anybody with learning problems or the mentally challenged. In part because of that linguistic progression you mention.

I have no desire to insult such people, nor to compare others to them.

But there are people who want to prevent all insults, and they will use the etymology of those words as a tool to enforce their particular brand of PC in those cases. Whatever it takes, as it were.

I doubt that most people have the same internal guidelines I do, so I understand if I am doubted. But I really don't give a shit if so. I think it is important to have terms that highlight the significant difference between a fully capable person's mental ability and the level of behavior he or she actually displays.

arctan said @ 9:09pm GMT on 28th Aug
When the typical gay person no longer cares about the word "faggot" then it's okay to use it. Not before. These things get decided by the people the words were originally aimed against, not bystanders trying to make a show of how badass they are.

I also remain opposed to the whole SE love-in where people get the benefit of the doubt for saying shitty things because they've been around here a while.

pleaides said @ 11:44am GMT on 6th Sep
Ok, that's fair.

yevishere said @ 3:28am GMT on 25th Aug
Eh... not child abuse, don't care.

ENZ said @ 3:36am GMT on 25th Aug
Pretty sure this level of psychological mindfucking would be a violation of the Geneva Convention if done to a POW.

theolypse said @ 11:58pm GMT on 25th Aug
It'd be pretty brutal to subject an already-calcified identity to this, yes. You can't really carve a full-sized tree into bonsai proportions, either.

lilmookieesquire said @ 3:31am GMT on 25th Aug
"A Boy Named Storm"

snowfox said @ 5:04am GMT on 25th Aug [Score:3 Insightful]
We treat babies differently based on gender from the start. If you tell people a baby boy is a baby girl, they'll say how pretty she is, and vice versa how strong he is. So much of our gender identities seem to be handed to us by the world from the moment we are born. Emotional state and experience mold the form of the brain.

Are we so sure gender brain differences are inherent? Or could they be the result of environment? Are girls really better at sitting still or is their aggression discouraged while boys' aggression is praised?

I can't be the only one here who questions the conventional wisdom.

ENZ said @ 5:09am GMT on 25th Aug
Found the guy I was talking about in my above post.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer

Dang, he was 38 when he killed himself? Maybe I was thinking of two different people at the same time or something.

kimbo said @ 5:21am GMT on 25th Aug
And yet transgendered people exist.

People who feel that despite a lifetime of social conditioning, they identify as the opposite gender. Making gender seem inherent to some degree.

EPT said @ 5:59am GMT on 25th Aug [Score:4 Insightful]
In the epic nature vs nurture debate, only crazy people inhabit the purist extremes. The general consensus is 'a little from column A, a little from column B'. How much from A and B is the real argument to be had, but it's an amazingly complex picture.

Adam said @ 8:56am GMT on 25th Aug [Score:3 Underrated]
Sometimes my daughter wears frilly pink dresses. Sometimes she wears t-shirts with guitars and skulls on them. You should see the horrified reactions I get from people at the notion that I would put a little girl in "boy's clothes." Not to mention having to smile and nod and then throw away the piles of princess crap people give you as gifts for the baby. Like I want my daughter to have useless fucking princesses as role models.

I don't know if there's anything inherent about gender differences. But I'm also pretty damned sure that I'm not doing the kid a favor by willfully ignoring a factor that's awfully important for her social development and ability to exist in our world.

structured_spirits said @ 5:06pm GMT on 25th Aug
So by all means, teach your kid to be a good little slave to society so she'll have an easy life. I mean everything that society teaches you is for your own good right?

Adam said @ 8:41pm GMT on 25th Aug
If you have a precious fucktard experiment you want to perform on someone's life, do it on your own. Not on your kid's. One day I'm going to be dead, and if I haven't left my kids with the ability to function in the world without me then I didn't do my job.

But I'm sure your ideas, which will leave your kid as a basement dweller cursing against the "domination of the patriarchy," will serve her very well indeed. Because you should rebel against anything and everything, at all times, and if you don't then you're a "slave."

foobar said @ 8:47pm GMT on 25th Aug [Score:2 Insightful]
You're performing experiments on your kids no matter what you do.

Adam said @ 9:07pm GMT on 25th Aug
True-ish? But most of the stuff I do, I do because I'm concerned for her welfare. Not because I've got an ideological axe to grind or because I'm trying to prove something about society at large by using her upbringing as a test case.

foobar said @ 10:54pm GMT on 25th Aug [Score:2 Interesting]
I'd wager these people think they're acting in their child's best interests, and might argue that you've got an ideological axe to grind in maintaining the status quo.

Naruki said @ 3:14am GMT on 26th Aug [Score:1 Underrated]
I'd wager you and structured_spirits let your ideological axe grinding blind you to the part of Adam's original comment where he says he throws away the princess crap, or where he says he willfully ignores the status quo.

cache22 said @ 9:29am GMT on 25th Aug
I don't think I've ever heard anyone call a baby strong, regardless of gender.

quaint said @ 2:10pm GMT on 25th Aug [Score:1 Underrated]
I think it refers to grip. "My, he's got a grip on him!", "He's a strong little fella isn't he?"

Personally, I generally refer to all children under the age of about 5 as "it" - not because of any desire to be gender neutral, but because they're not really people until they gain the ability to hold something at least resembling a proper conversation.

cb361 said @ 11:07am GMT on 25th Aug
Boys and girls do generally develop differently psychologically. There's stuff society lays on top of that, fashion and societal obligation, but for most people, male or female is a basic part of who we are. I think I'm pretty well in touch with my feminine side - probably more so than my masculine side, but I've still got much more in common with other men than I would sometimes like to have.

val said @ 4:42pm GMT on 25th Aug [Score:3 Underrated]
Contemporary feminist/gender theory says that gender is distinct from sex.

Sex as physiological. Gender is a societal construction in the abstract, and a performance of identity in the concrete. This is a huge distinction, and contrary to popular belief.

Judith Butler is the leading proponent of this theory, writing on it extensively since the late 80s. If you're interested, read her books Gender Trouble and Undoing Gender (a follow-up book which re-examines her theory and the case of David Reimer, mentioned elsewhere in comments).

"Gender is not passively scripted on the body, and neither is it determined by nature, language, the symbolic, or the overwhelming history of patriarchy. Gender is what is put on, invariably, under constraint, daily and incessantly, with anxiety and pleasure, but if this continuous act is mistaken for a natural or linguistic given, power is relinquished..."

Some of this quickly becomes obvious, bullshit about pink and blue. Yet baby clothes are more gendered than ever. Cupcakes and flowers for girls, trucks and dinosaurs for boys. What is a parent to do?

But it's really much more radical than that. This idea undermines an awful lot of power structures in our society: from the "born this way" statements of sexual identity, to the male/female dichotomy that is built into almost everything.

Keeping the sex of this child secret is an attempt to embody this theory -- because we don't live in a gender-queer world, revealing the sex of the child means that people will begin to gender the child, giving it a script on how it should choose to perform, rather than let the child gender itself.

Adam said @ 9:03pm GMT on 25th Aug [Score:1 Insightful]
My problem with this stripe of feminist theory is that it's not science. It *should* be science, because it is ultimately dealing with the effect of physiological sex on brain development and gender identity, but by making ridiculously dogmatic statements about gender being an imposition from outside (something that should be subject to proof, not taken for granted), it undercuts itself. Every time someone says the word "patriarchy," take a shot.

If feminist theory were science, it would allow for the possibility that its underlying assumptions are wrong. So an experiment based on some aspect feminist theory could come to the conclusion that, yes, gender is mostly based on uterine brain development (for example) and that the social construction part is merely a set of external trappings. That's certainly the kind of result we see from neuroscience research, but we don't really see feminist theory subjected to experimental evaluation one way or the other. Why? Because it's not science, it's dogma. And its proponents won't put the theory's core assumptions to the test.

If you could find enough parents to repeat this experiment and they determined that the children "gendered themselves" in roughly the same queer/straight proportions as society at large, that would prove that letting the kid be "scripted" by the outside world, if indeed that's what happens, doesn't actually have much of an effect. But you could never receive permission from an ethics committee to do something like that, because no one could predict what the negative effects on the kid would be. The failure (or refusal) to consider those potential negative effects are what bothers me so much.

val said @ 11:03pm GMT on 25th Aug [Score:2]
You can't write it off just because it's interdisciplinary. Feminist theory (and queer theory, gender theory, performance studies, black studies, etc) lies at an intersection of biology, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, psychology, and so on. They are, almost by definition, critical studies of other fields. (And if you read the quote, gender is, very specifically, a performance, something 'put on,' not something which is 'imposed').

There people out feminists out there, applying theory to their experimental research, their careers, etc. It's not a field limited to Women's Studies professors. On this subject for example, Cordelia Fine, a psychologist, has written about neuroscience and gender.

Your argument about the neuroscience does nothing to challenge Butler's assertion: that gender is a different thing than developmental neural physiology affected by sex (although Butler challenges the sex binary, too. See: trans* individuals). I shall restate the premise in an attempt to clarify:

Sex does not equal gender. That's the idea, and it's a widely accepted one: it is one of the foundations of queer theory. There are cultures where the gender binary doesn't exist. How can that be? Because the gender binary (and gender) is a societal & cultural construction, not something that is inherent in nature.

The problem is that the entire history of western science, and most contemporary science, ignores this question altogether and presumes not only that gender is essential and innate, but that the gender binary is as well. And that is dogmatic.

And who examines the ethics of our societal constructions? Critical philosophers who challenge it's hegemonic assumptions.

Perhaps it's better that we don't ask questions about how much damage is caused by a culture in which trans people have everything working against them?

Note: I'm not a queer theorist, so I may be doing the theories a disservice, but I hope that I'm still breaking this down to layman's terms.

theolypse said @ 11:47pm GMT on 25th Aug [Score:1 Good]
You're doing a really good job of it, actually. I'd have been ineffectively strident.

val said @ 12:50am GMT on 26th Aug [Score:1 Good]
aw thx

azazel said @ 6:48pm GMT on 25th Aug [Score:1 Interesting]
My girl is *really* bad at sitting still. If you're lucky you might get a minute out of her, tops. Then she's off again. Ever since she took her first step she's been on the move, and I don't expect it to change.

I remember one day when my gf had put red ("girly") socks on my boy -- mainly because we didn't have any other clean ones, but also because I decided early on to challenge the gender-based colour schemes and let my kids wear what they want (within reason). And even though I knew that it was society that told me over and over again that red, and pink and other "girly" colours are for girls, I didn't expect my reaction to be so strong. When I looked at him and saw the socks my first thought was "those socks look really wrong on him." That's how conditioned I've become. It's rather scary, actually.

I just got up, and the place where I create words seem to be lacking caffeine right now, so apologies for a badly written reply.

chold_numa said @ 9:15pm GMT on 25th Aug
Red seems gender neutral to me. Spartans, Romans, British soldiers all wore red (to hide the blood when they were bleeding). Sports teams often wear red (and a study showed that teams that wore red were slightly more successful than those that didn't).

If forced to choose, I'd associate it with being an aggressive masculine colour.

theolypse said @ 11:44pm GMT on 25th Aug
This is why boys used to be dressed in strong, ruddy pink, leaving delicate blue for girls.

snowfox said @ 12:03am GMT on 26th Aug
And before that it was pink for dark eyes and blue for light eyes. This meant you could probably use the same clothes for all your babies, and that was unacceptable to a certain department store.

lilmookieesquire said @ 11:54pm GMT on 25th Aug
Ya. Guys can wear red.

Anyway, back in the day, pink (bold) was for boys and blue (soft) was for girls.

It's all social construct subject to change.

I don't think the details matter as long as the kid is exposed to an open environment.

EPT said @ 5:06am GMT on 26th Aug
Depends on the culture. azazel is Swedish, perhaps red is different there?

In Anglo culture, black is for mourning. In Japan, it's white.

Here's an interesting table with some coarse cultural comparisons for colour.

chold_numa said @ 12:53pm GMT on 26th Aug

chold_numa said @ 10:03pm GMT on 26th Aug
That was supposed to be a +1 Interesting mod, but I messed that up...

azazel said @ 7:01pm GMT on 26th Aug
Well there were also frills and bows on the socks. Maybe I should have mentioned that :P

CapnSilver said @ 10:20am GMT on 26th Aug
Traditionally blue was representative of the Madonna while red/pink was about blood, and there's nothing manlier than making someone else bleed.

mechanical contrivance said @ 5:06am GMT on 25th Aug
I first read that as Genderless Chicken. I was intrigued.

bruceski said @ 5:19am GMT on 25th Aug [Score:3 Underrated]
I'm all for expressing your creativity and exploring the world and society around you, but don't do it through your kids. Don't name them Z or Pancake Excitement or anything like that, and ESPECIALLY don't pull this shit.

damnit said @ 6:28am GMT on 25th Aug [Score:1 Hot Pr0n]
This is really bad. What's to prevent the kid from becoming like her?

fz75 said @ 9:54am GMT on 25th Aug
What's up w the pig tails?

EPT said @ 10:37am GMT on 25th Aug
Surely a ponytail would be more appropriate?

buzhidao said @ 10:57am GMT on 25th Aug
i used to do this. (not in a horse ring though). my brother and i would build jumps in my grandparents basement.

DarkShadowRavenDragonGrrl69 said @ 12:05pm GMT on 25th Aug [Score:2 Underrated]
Well, the title translates to "Olcia;** (whatever that means) My master."

I'm willing to believe this is some sort of BDSM thing.

theolypse said @ 11:57pm GMT on 25th Aug
Willing? Pony play with gates-jumping.

swiggy said @ 6:56am GMT on 25th Aug

oxyrosis said @ 10:42am GMT on 25th Aug
guys!

i read this when i was a little child.

check it out!

Baby X (a short story i read and somehow found with the magic of Google

NickelJoe said @ 3:57pm GMT on 25th Aug
Holy crap I remember this.

cb361 said @ 11:16am GMT on 25th Aug [Score:2]

eggboy said @ 11:34am GMT on 25th Aug
I vaguely remember that from high school sex ed.

cb361 said @ 10:56pm GMT on 25th Aug
Being changed in a girl?

assbastard said @ 3:31pm GMT on 6th Sep
It was a very thorough class.

graham said @ 4:28pm GMT on 25th Aug [Score:4]
( o_o)>⌐■-■
You don't just not choose a gender for your child.
(⌐■_■)
Unless you have something to hide.

Fenny said @ 9:53pm GMT on 25th Aug [Score:5 Funny]

oranges said @ 12:36am GMT on 26th Aug [Score:2 Insightful]
It gets funnier EVERY TIME!

structured_spirits said @ 4:46pm GMT on 25th Aug
I've said it before and I'll say it again. Why the fuck is it anyone else's business to know your personal information. It's your personal information. Neither the government, shady businesses, or nosy neighbors have any right to know your name, age, birthday, address, gender, likes, political views, genetic predispositions to diseases, spending habits etc etc. It should be your choice to share that information. Good for this kid's parents. I wish I had parents that had taught me the value of owning my own information, because when you give that information away, it gives others power over you. All parents should be like this.

EPT said @ 5:18pm GMT on 25th Aug
Governments certainly have business knowing your age and gender, and in some cases even your race. Census data is extremely useful in planning infrastructure and services.

structured_spirits said @ 5:21pm GMT on 25th Aug
I know it's useful for them to know it, but you should have a choice in whether you supply that information. Are we free citizens with a government created to provide for our welfare, or are we property of the government much like serfs were the property of lords in feudal times?

theolypse said @ 11:59pm GMT on 25th Aug
If your choice in whether to supply that information were not subject to propaganda one way or another, I'd agree with you. Frankly, though, most of the people in my environs aren't equipped to make decisions like that rationally.

EPT said @ 3:18am GMT on 26th Aug
You do have a choice. You can lie on the form. You can say you were elsewhere on the day. But what we're talking about here is whether the government has legitimate business in knowing this information, and it does. In properly spending the tax dollar it receives from you, it is reasonable - if not expectd - for it to have at least some basic knowledge of your demographics.

structured_spirits said @ 10:03pm GMT on 26th Aug
That's not really much of a choice. It implies that you have no right to privacy, and in a subtle way recognizes the government's position as correct. To invoke Godwin's Law, it's like saying the Jews had a choice in whether the Nazis persecuted them, because they could always just lie and claim to be good aryans. Silly Jews, going to the death camps just because they refused to hide their beliefs.

Mad March Harris said @ 6:37pm GMT on 25th Aug [Score:1 Insightful]
I hate this "let your children decide their lives" parenting strategy. It's fucking hard for a 20 year-old to manage their life and decide their identity. Asking a 3 year-old "so, how do you want to shape your entire life? We won't give you any guidance or tell you how anyone else might respond when you have to integrate into society so don't worry!" is not doing them a favour.

the belt said @ 6:56pm GMT on 25th Aug
My wife's parents wanted to give their children gender-ambiguous names so that they could define their own sexuality. Early on she was teased meanly for having a "boy's name", then as she grew up (and probably because she is cute) gently. Now she is in women's healthcare and has lost potential clients because they assume she is a man before meeting her. Thanks hippie parents!

kimbo said @ 2:13am GMT on 26th Aug
I'm a man with what is usually seen as a girl's name (not because my parents were hippies - they were from the country, and just named me after a beautiful part of Australia).

It's pretty common for me to get mail addressed to 'Miss' or 'Ms', if I use my full name.

However, these days noone calls me by my full name, but by the common male abbreviation/nickname of it.

Not sure if there's a moral to the story.

CapnSilver said @ 10:23am GMT on 26th Aug
Nah Kimberly is one of those names that are really male that somehow got turned around. Much like Shannon.

Barnabas_Truman said @ 7:28am GMT on 30th Aug
"Artemis" seems to have taken that in the reverse direction.

EPT said @ 3:25am GMT on 26th Aug
There's a journalist in my hometown called Clementine Barstow. She started out as a freelancing music journalist and couldn't get a foot in the door, so she shortened it to Clem... and the work rolled in.

Then of course there's the Chinese way of having a second, Western name for use in English.

Names are pretty important, and an incongruous name can cause significant problems for the person. I'd say let the person themselves make a stand on whether they want to have an incongruous name, don't make that decision for them. If you were to call your son 'Betty', you'd be making him suffer just so you can score a political point.

maryyugo said @ 7:40pm GMT on 25th Aug
I'm all for letting children develop whichever sexual preference and gender identity they are born with but doing it this way is ridiculous. b For the large majority of children, penis still means male identity and females for sexual preference while a vagina means the opposite. If there is a variation, it will become obvioussooner or later and when it does is the time to be concerned about dressing and teaching the child appropriately for the way he or she has developed.

This is just as bad and just as stupid, for the typical child, as repressing natural gender identity and sexual preference.

ckfahrenheit said @ 10:17pm GMT on 25th Aug
Don't let kids watch Batman TOS until they're over 18

devilsad said @ 10:43pm GMT on 25th Aug [Score:-1 WTF]
Are they also going to hide the child's dick/pussy in a drawer until it's older too? Because as soon as he/she figures out that what they have down there matches one half of the population, they're already not going to 'decide for themselves' which gender they are. They then belong to a group and group conformity pressure shapes their behavior.

It's as dumb as raising a child in an opaque full body suit so they can decide for themselves later which race they want to be.

theolypse said @ 12:00am GMT on 26th Aug
And yet some children who are labeled still manage to decide to join the other group. Ergo, your shit tank, it is full.

skainsmate said @ 6:08am GMT on 26th Aug
Fuck you.

Go read up on the difference between sex and gender.

"Group conformity pressure" can jump off a bridge after watching its peers do so.

Barnabas_Truman said @ 7:33am GMT on 30th Aug
I've been wondering about this for some time. At what point did the words "sex" and "gender" start meaning different things, and why? I had always assumed that they were synonymous until told otherwise in the teaching credential program by the instructor in a course on diversity in the classroom.

(Before this turns into an angry argument over no actual disagreement, let me declare that I am totally on board with the idea that one's physical maleness/femaleness/otherness does not necessarily match up with one's mental maleness/femaleness/otherness, and that's just fine; all that bothers me is the word choice.)

theolypse said @ 1:43am GMT on 31st Aug
When it became important to differentiate between the concepts, I suspect. We had two words available. Voila.

chobichobicho said @ 9:27am GMT on 6th Sep
No, fuck you. The evidence of biological substrates for gender and gender preference is overwhelming and is directly linked to sex. Exceptions will always exist, as they always do in nature. Funny thing about exceptions: they do not disprove the rule. They highlight it.

Pseudo-scientific bilge to push ideological agenda--a staple of feminist propaganda.

pleaides said @ 11:54am GMT on 6th Sep
I think you underestimate Skainsmate's familiarity with this issue by a long shot. I doubt very strongly that what you're hearing is 'feminist propaganda', moreover I'd say that what we're hearing is the result of intimate and well considered personal experience the likes of which most of us couldn't possibly emulate.

Skainsmate is a lady of exceptional courage, insight, poise, and candour, and you disregard her opinions at your peril.

aciel2 said @ 11:21pm GMT on 25th Aug [Score:1 Informative]
I'm intersexed and transgendered. Ask me about it.

theolypse said @ 12:01am GMT on 26th Aug
Good luck, here.

mechanical contrivance said @ 2:25am GMT on 26th Aug [Score:1 Funny]
Tell me about Loom.

Barnabas_Truman said @ 3:36am GMT on 26th Aug
I'm Bobbin Threadbare. Are you my mother?

aciel2 said @ 4:43am GMT on 27th Aug
I liked it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loom_(video_game)

spite48 said @ 1:06am GMT on 27th Aug
Okay. Why is that important?

aciel2 said @ 4:37am GMT on 27th Aug
Well, your question is very general so I can't address it in whole, but my intersexed/transgendered identity and experience are important for a lot of reasons.

One is that a bunch of homophobic assholes equate being intersexed and/or transgendered with being queer, which is not necessarily correct and certainly not accurate.

Another is that if we have an extended and thorough conversation about my experience of gender, I'm likely, with most folks, to end up getting at least one shock reaction. You may not have noticed this personally, but in generally folks aren't real good at handling their own shock and tend to lash out, sometimes violently, sometimes physically. The movie "The Crying Game" sort of narrated and legitimized violent reactions to transgendered/transsexual folks, and there have certainly been other high-profile cases of transphobia that have done more to imply that I can expect pretty much only violent reactions as I go about my business in the world.

From a personal liberty viewpoint, then, my transgenderism makes my general expectation of living in the world pretty bleak.

There are also laws explicitly against my sort being able to do things like marry. The laws specifically in Texas were designed to keep the transgendered/transsexual from marrying, but they also affect the intersexed. What's ludicrous about those laws in particular when they apply to the intersexed is that a lot of folks who are intersexed don't know they are. They live their lives as conventionally gendered people, with genitals and identity homologous to their assumed biological sex and then they try to get married in Texas and are denied on the basis of the law that was designed to keep the transfolks from marrying (presumably on the assumption that transfolks are queer - but one of the problems lawmakers have with transfolks and transfolks have with lawmakers is that one of the interesting things about being trans is that one's identity sort of dismantles the idea of dual gender systems, so it's hard to define terms or even define what is a man and what is a woman). It's just hard, odd, strange, queer, challenging.

So that's a sampling of why it matters.

val said @ 1:18am GMT on 26th Aug [Score:1 Informative]
Hey how about some sources on this that aren't secondary commentary?

http://jezebel.com/5806733/mom-says-baby-storm-is-not-genderless-after-all

http://jezebel.com/5804667/can-you-really-raise-a-child-without-gender

Yes, I realize Jezebel is also secondary -- However, regardless of how you feel about their commentary, they do a great job of providing links to their primary sources.

val said @ 1:23am GMT on 26th Aug
also, a followup piece:

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/1105515--the-genderless-baby-who-caused-a-storm-of-controversy-in-2011

EPT said @ 3:31am GMT on 26th Aug
Interestingly, the article illustrates one reason to know gender: structure of the language: "A few teeth have popped through his/her gums". Referring to the kid as 'it' is distancing and alienating for a lot of people, making it feel more like an object than a human.

val said @ 6:04am GMT on 26th Aug
Easy enough to call a baby it, but this is a problem that exists for some adults who don't identify as strictly male or female.

The most elegant linguistic solution seems to be use of the singular 'they.'

biblebeltdrunk said @ 12:23am GMT on 27th Aug
This is what me and my friends who haven't transitioned yet prefer, mostly because it doesn't draw attention to someone's gender and doesn't need to out them if someone outside their circle of friends overhears. Just be aware its considered rude to purposefully refer to someone who has transitioned in a way like "Back when you were a guy".

val said @ 1:58am GMT on 27th Aug
Re: "back when you were a guy"

Someone I knew at college had transitioned before college -- I never knew him as anything but a he. But one of my friends grew up with him, and told me a story about publicly outing him:

At a party, this guy slides down a railing and lands painfully, exclaiming , "Ow my balls!" My friend is there and she declares loudly to the party, "But ____, you don't have any balls."

Presumably everyone involved was drunk.

Barnabas_Truman said @ 7:56am GMT on 30th Aug
They is not elegant.

robotroadkill said @ 1:37am GMT on 26th Aug [Score:2 Good]
Just wanna say I love you people. I don't often get drawn into discussions on this site, but when I do I find it exhilarating, even if it's something as dumb as how 2 people I don't know should refer to their kid in public.

Cakkafracle said @ 8:38am GMT on 27th Aug

as long as they still spank 'it'

we'll all be safe

edga alunpo said @ 12:26pm GMT on 27th Aug
I feel sorry for these kids. They're going to be really lonely when they grow up not knowing what group(s) they belong to.

"When will we live in a world where people can make choices to be whoever they are?"

Ha ha, when did we ever live in such a world?

How naive these "parents" are. Have n't they ever heard of social mores and there are even laws that demand that you fit the standard character/social mold.

Wait - perhaps these parents are still children who have n't decided who they are yet.

chobichobicho said @ 9:22am GMT on 6th Sep [Score:-1 Troll]
3rd wave feminist ultra liberal ideologues fucking society up one child at a time.