Raising a Baby to be Gender-less
 

Hmm. I totally and absolutely agree with not raising a child by gender stereotypes. But I think there's a world of difference between not behaving like, "This is a girl, so she has to wear pink and be giving dolls and toy vacuum cleaners to play with!" and basically messing with a child's head.

If a child is going to turn out to be transgender, that will come out probably before they start school anyway. If the child's being raised in a sympathetic environment that should be no problem. But I almost feel like situations like this would cause more confusion than anything else. Needless confusion, at that.

I agree. I would most likely dress my little girl in a flurry of fluffy pink and sparkly outfits when she was a baby, but if she started showing a preference for less frilly things, then that's fine--I won't hold her back. I think the main issue here is that the parents won't even admit to a biological gender. At least tell the child what it is biologically, and then proceed to let it do whatever it wants with its tastes and inclinations.

It's also true that you can usually have a pretty good idea about whether or not a child will grow up to be a transgender when they're young. I think more-so with boys than girls, though, because it's far more acceptable for girls to be tomboys than for boys to be femboys. For example, I'd say it's less weird, in most people's minds, to see a girl playing with toy cars and only wanting to wear pants than seeing a boy who plays with dolls, wears dresses, and has a favorite color of pink.

I kind of think boys have it harder than girls now when it comes to social constrictions in several ways.

Wait they actually mean gender and not sex? oO Not sure how a child would really comprehend the difference.

In general, after studying psychology, it's a combination of both nature and nurture. A person will usually gravitate to their sex role and the best supporting physiological argument for those who deviate from the sex gender wise have a difference in one section of the brain being bigger in males and smaller in females. And so they tend to gravitate to the wider gender role based on that. This is still debated here and there though but it's the most widely studied area so far.

This whole thing actually reminds me of David Reimer.
Him and his sister were twins but due to a botch circumcision, he lost his penis and they raised him as a female. The lifelong experiment found that he was actually depressed with this assigned gender and when the truth came out he went back to being a man. Eventually he killed himself though.

I agree that it's fine not to constrain them to the stereotypes but not to outright tell them can be an issue.

Children absolutely HATE androgyny, so I think it'll be an issue when these kids try to make friends outside of the family. "Hey, Storm, are you a boy or a girl?" to which he replies, "Mommy says I can be whatever I want to be." I can't imagine a traditionally raised child will like that answer very much.

(I did take a liberty there calling Storm a boy. That does not look like a girl to me with that large of a head.)

Yes! I've been finding that very interesting, recently. I believe they've been postulating that the difference is that men have a bigger hypothalamus than women.

Actually, David Reimer was from a set of identical twin boys. The doctor castrated him at the age of around 8 months during a circumcision procedure that was necessitated by the boys not being able to relieve themselves anymore. He basically used a wart remover (I believe) and froze/burned off Reimer's penis. The doctor convinced the parents to give Reimer a sex change at the age of two where they removed the testes and raised him as a girl alongside his brother. They advertised it as a success, but it never was. Reimer grew up to be a boy, but later committed suicide due to depression.

I think that it's wrong, honestly. Yes, give the kid some say in how they want to act, but do it by letting them choose their own toys and clothes (once, you know, they can speak and stuff.) rather than completely messing with their heads. Can you imagine school swimming?

"Uhh, teacher, which changing room do I use?"

I'm gobsmacked by that doctor doing that!! How the hell does chopping off a kid's testes, to try and cover up a mistake that you made, turn a boy into a girl? What he did there was create a eunuch.

I should say that the doctor who accidentally castrated him was not the doctor who convinced the parents to cut off the testes. Anyway, it was a psychologist who convinced the parents to give the boy a sex change--he told them that gender was based on nature, not nurture, and that something similar had happened in the past and had been successful, but that was a lie. He used the kid as a guinea pig.

Also, they actually gave him a vagina. >.> Both the doctor who castrated him, and the psychologist, were trying to give themselves names in the medical field/scientific fields. The doctor wanted to create a new form of circumcision, and obviously the shrink wanted to prove that gender had no basis in nature.

This was back in the 60's when people thought that nature didn't really play any role in anything that had to do with humans. Still not an excuse. The psychologist never admitted he was wrong for what he did to Reimer, either.

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@Carzee: Yeah, someone brought that up in my class. I have no idea how these parents are going to handle it/handled it when their transgender son gets into trouble for going into the girl's bathroom.

Yup. The reconstructed his penis though it wasn't working. I think he didn't feel like a man to his wife and kids (stepchildren). The fact they were identical twins made it a really viable experiment though cruel.

Yeah, the psychologist in charge was an ass for never apologizing or even admitting that he was wrong.

The thing that shocked me and my class at the time was... oO we all heard for the first time of electrical circumcision (which was Reimer went through). X_X

Mmhmmm. I've heard some nasty things about how that reconstructed penis "worked" as well.

Identical twins :lol:--you can always sell yourselves to science if you need money.

Yeah, that doctor was screwed up, too, using that circumcision technique. They had been doing the simple procedure for thousands of years, a new one was not necessary.

Oh what happened with the penis? I never got the details.

Well, the doctor tried to do the procedure by cauterizing the skin off...he basically burnt the penis off.

Some people just become doctors so they can play god, don't they? I'd say they must have huge inferiority complexes to conquer if they're going to do awful things like that to another human.

I consider myself neither "male" nor "female" and I love it. I wouldn't say that making a child be the same way is right or wrong but it's probably not something that I would do. I do believe that gender identity is important to establish but I also believe that parents should not force it on their kids. Being between genders is hard to deal with as an adult and I personally wouldn't want a young kid to go through some of the things that I've been through.

The thing with changing rooms/bathrooms is confusing when there's no gender established. I've been yelled at for going into the ladies' room before because people thought I was "male". I'm biologically female and honestly, public bathrooms scare me because I have a hard time with what one to use.

I do agree with letting the child pick what they want to be when they get old enough though.

@Jelly: I think you hit the nail on the head. Psychologists like the one that destroyed Reimer's lives give everyone who wants to go into psychology a bad name.

@Ikuto: That story does that to everybody who hears it. :XP It makes it worse that the same thing was done to other children because that psychologist lied and said that it was a success for 30 years before the boy's family came forward and released the real story to the public.

Yeah, what these parents are doing is hard to understand. From my point of view, I think that they're really raising the child as "having no gender" until it's old enough to say which one it wants. If it ends up gender fluid in the end, they'd probably consider that a major success.

@Mystic: I think your personal experiences sum up the problem with this case. I feel like the parents could raise children who reject gender stereotypes without ostracizing the child from society.

I can kind of see the point of hiding their gender from them and the people around them. We are very gender
focused when it comes to clothes or toys. Saying things like "Oh that's a girls toy" and vice versa can effect the
child negatively. Would I hide my own child's gender from them when I have a child? Probably not. But, I wouldn't
limit the toys they want to play with, or the clothes they want to wear. If I have a boy and they want a pink toaster
toy, then they can play with that pink toaster toy. Haha, sorry about the specific example, that's something that has come
up recently. My friend's son is living with her mother because of some personal issues of hers. She just bought her son a pink
toaster toy because he loves cooking and wanted the toaster when he was out shopping with her. However, her brother/his uncle, threw a fit, saying he was going to throw it away. He also likes to play with baby dolls, which her brother also hates. And since he lives with his mom and she doesn't, he basically forces "boy toys" on him and hides anything he deems "too girly." So I think, there is nothing wrong with raising a child without giving them a gender, but I don't think it needs to be hidden from them. If the child asks, then I think it's alright to tell "well you were born a girl/boy." And let them identify with whatever gender they identify with.

In many ways, our concept of gender in children is a new idea. If you look at it historically, children we're often refered to as "it" rather than "he" or "she" in the first years of life, and often wore similar clothing and hairstyles for quite some time:
http://sotospeakjournal.org/wp-conte...osevelt-21.jpg
That's Franklin Delono Roosevelt

I always thought that tradition was more of an upper classes thing..

Which one? Well, we are talking the historic, and in the past it was the ways of the upper classes that got the most... Press.

The idea behind raising children to be "gender-neutral" irritates me. I get it somewhat, but, I've also seen a parent or two try to put it into practice and end up with a kid getting severely bullied and another where the parents in an effort to make their boy a gender-neutral child...would only buy him pink clothes or dresses or princess dolls, and when he asked for a truck they refused because it was "for boys." x__o

I think there is probably a balance somewhere that includes teaching the kid once they can understand abstract concepts about sex vs gender. I don't think limiting what they can or can't do based on their sex before their gender really has time to develop is a good way to go about it. I also think that there is too much worry over gender, I realize that a gender identity/role can be important to people, but, instead of worrying about raising a "gender-neutral" child, why not try to raise a happy, healthy one who can make decisions for themselves based on what makes them happy or works for them? (ie be supportive of their choices, let them make mistakes, ect)

additional ambling: I think that you should use the bathroom of your biological sex, if you're a transsexual, use the restroom that matches your genitals.
I also think that gender is a bizarre and abstract concept. Biologically, I'm female. But I don't do a lot of things that feminine women "usually" do. And I'm not incredibly masculine either. I don't make a big deal about it, and I'm pretty happy with my sex, and pretty happy to just not think about my gender. I do what I do, regardless of my vagina.

and I'm going to bet that some of that doesn't make sense, if you have questions ping me to ask.

I disagree with using the bathroom that fits the biological sex because of harassment that can and does happen. It can range anywhere from people just saying something to violence. It also depends on the area that one is in at the time since some communities are more open with gender queer/transgendered people and the bathroom thing isn't an issue in places like that, while other places someone who is gender queer/transgendered would face harassment and violence on a daily basis.

In my personal experience, I've had some older lady complain to security about me being in the "wrong" bathroom. When I came out they said something and I just told them that they should have a bathroom where people aren't going to be harassed for their "gender". I've also had people whispering things about my gender behind my back and things like that, which is annoying. I mean I don't mind being asked about it but whispering stuff behind my back is just annoying. Plus the fact, I'm in the washroom to pee, not cause a scene.

I'm lucky and am from an area where in most places I'm left alone but I can't even imagine living in some place with a more conservative community.

I think part of the reaction you got from that lady is caused by media rhetoric about how the LGBT community is full of sexual deviant people who are out to molest children and be generally perverted, and the reason THEY think you are in the "wrong" bathroom is to do something perverted.

I'm not saying that it's accurate (since it's clearly not) but I think that just shows how dangerous this homophobic mindset that has been brewing can truly mean. Of course it's absurd to you and I that you'd do anything other than use the bathroom as a bathroom, but there are people who are genuinely terrified of and believe you will do something horrible in that bathroom.

Personally I think we should just have unisex bathrooms. Or, if people REALLY want separation, one bathroom with just urinals and no toilets, and one bathroom with only toilet stalls. You still get privacy within the stall and women don't have to have their delicate sensibilities ruined by accidentally seeing a penis. :roll:

Keyori: Yeah, the way media portrays the community isn't always good. Thankfully, it seems to be a more outdated way of thinking. I don't know if it's the area I'm from or if it's like this everywhere but it seems like in the younger generations being gender queer/flexible with your gender is being more socially accepted. Granted there are always going to be those people that think it's "unnatural" or that it's a "sin" or "morally wrong" but you can't do much to change the minds of people that choose to live in ignorance.

I use Family restrooms if they're available or just go with whatever is closest if I'm in a place that's more trans friendly. Other times I ask my sister what gender I would most likely pass for then use whatever restroom based on her answer.