Category: News and Views
Toronto couple names their latest addition gender nonspecific "Storm". Previous additions to the family are "Jazz" and "Kio". They want only themselves and the doctor who delivered the baby to know the gender. Anyone know if Canadian birth certificates list the sex?
When did it become a crime to teach that boys and girls have their differences? One isn't superior to the other, they're just different. It doesn't mean that maybe boys shouldn't get to play with dolls or girls with trucks, or either sex wanting to at least try a sport that usually favors one or the other is wrong, but at least such children know they are male or female. What are the parents going to teach these children about the body part between their legs, that it's just extra? Ornamental?
The first time I heard this story I heard they wanted the latest addition to "choose which gender to live out life". Huh?! How are they going to react if they choose to live one gender and use that bathroom and the people in the bathroom its gender actually is react negatively? What about when you get to stuff like medical testing, as some tests have different norms for males and females? "Well, he's a he, but choosing to live life as a female, so couldn't we plead normalcy based on the choice of living as a female, as these values are normal for a female?" Now I respect treating each individual with the dignity of a human being whether male or female, but to blur the distinction is iMO complete lunacy.
Sex is biology, gender is construct. You can be biologically male and gender-female, biologically female and gender-neutral, and so on. The point this couple is trying to make, I suspect, focuses on not pressuring their child to "quit acting like a girl" or "quit being such a tomboy."
Squid: Canadian birth certificates do in fact list the sex.
C.
I think its mean. You raise a boy as a girl or whatever what happens to him when he has to go out and deal with the real world? How about the girl that doesn't relize what issues she must deal with as a femaile as far as sexuality goes? She sees her brothers going for example without a shirt, so she does and becomes a teen. I guess the only way they'll make it stick if they don't send them to school or have them live in a controlled place?No I don't feel that women should be harrassed because they don't have their brest covered, but I'm not society.
Miss M hit on it:
They're trying to make a point.
People who try and make points by how they raise their kids shouldn't be parents, but political activists. Doing a good job at parenting isn't about proving your parenting skills, your political or social aptitude for what's either fashionable or contra: it's rather a drudgerous affair at many times: work, feed 'em, pick up after 'em, teach 'e the ways of survival and being a decent human being.
E is correct... Canadian birth certificates do indeedily do include the gender of the person on it... I know this for a fact, as I'm looking at my Province of British Columbia birth certificate as I type this.
I could not agree more with Miss M's post.
I have no problem with what this couple is doing. Gender identity usually occurs by the age of three or four, if I'm not mistaken. Children realize and decide around that age if they feel they should be a boy or girl. I'm proud of these parents for choosing not to force a gender down their children's throats like so many parents do. I feel terribly for the people who are born a certain sex and are looked down upon and mistreated for feeling they should be a member of the opposite sex.
As for changes the body experiences as life progresses, there are steps to take to eliminate it as much as you can. But I'm not sure if a person can have complete sexual reassignment surgery under age 18.
I would like to see the gender-sex connection weakened and the gender dyad completely obliterated. In many Native cultures, for example, there are way more than 2 genders, sometimes up to 5 or more. It is possible in any life to be a male who is a woman, a hermaphrodite who is a man, or a female who is in part both a man and a woman, etc., and I wish it didn't make people so uncomfortable to accept this.
I understand the couple is trying to prove a point, but I don't agree with how they're going about it. this is beyond sad, in my opinion.
How should they go about proving this point then? and what is so sadd about it for the children?
post 10, really? *shrugs*.
what's so horrible about it? lemme see, the fact that the parents in question are refusing to instill in their child that both sexes have their differences (which is ok). in turn, that won't allow said child to fully embrace who they are. that's a pretty big no no, in my opinion.
and, as LeoGuardian said, they should prove their point by becoming activests...NOT parents.
Noe one ever outright told me that boys have penises and girls have vaginas, or women grow breasts and men grow facial hair, or both can happen no matter what your sex is. I was raised as a female and was never taught the difference between boys and girls. I did see that women had breasts and men had beards and mustaches and no breasts. When kids talk about getting hit in the balls and so on, one realizes, oh, they have different parts. We eventually realize who has what and why through perceiving people with our senses, experiences, conversations, and media. . Some people are told, while others are not, and both end up learning the same things. If these parents shelter this child, then that is disgusting. But letting them decide is unconventional, not wrong.
This child will not always be genderless or gender neutral so to speak. once the child chooses its gender, then their parents will go by what they decided. The people who oppose to this couple's idea hope the children choose to identify with the gender according to their sex.
I'm just glad a couple decided to be open-minded about this because parents who go through this are absolutely floored when their little girl Stephanie tries to cut her breasts off, or when Justin is wondering when his penis will fall off. Some parents of these children suffocate their child with psychiatric help and gender specific behavior, toys, and activities, while others embrace it because they love their child and want them to be happy and live the way they choose.
that's the thing, though: the child in question was born a specific gender; the parents are choosing to claim he/she can choose. that isn't right.
if the boy was born a boy, he'll always be a boy.
Personally, I think the way they're going about this will cause more confusion with the child than anything else. I've heard of people wanting sex changes as an adult, but usually these people have tried their best to live as the gender they were born as, and it just didn't work out for them. I agree with Leo. their intentions are good, I think, but they should be proving their point via activism and not parenting.
What will the child be confused about?
I don't think growing up is a piece of cake for anyone, especially for transgender children. Yes, transgender people go through hardships because society does not accept them for who they want to be and somehow thinks mistreating such people solves the problem. People disown their children, and transgender people are often rejected by their own family and experience thoughts of self-mutilation because they don't have the right bodyparts.
It is highly unlikely that this child will be transgender, but who knows? It's not even known how many transgender people there are because so many live in secrecy. It's interesting to see how this person turns out, though I'm pretty sure they'll be just fine.
I'm saying that when the child goes to preschool and/or school, most of the other children around will have a clear idea that because they have certain parts, this means that they are either male or female. This poor child is going to go into this wondering what their physical parts mean, if anything. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with discouraging conforming to society's views just because they exist, but the parents should at least be educating their child that if they have female parts, they will have female hormones, eventually have a menstrual period every month, have the ability to bare children, and yes, that most of her female peers will talk about boys, wear makeup, and wear a certain type of clothing. this doesn't mean they should make their child partake in these behaviors if it doesn't feel right, but that he or she should be aware that they exist.
Guess I'm old fashioned. I believe that gendedr and gender roles are important for society stability. The people that have sex changes never really become total male or female, but have to try to act the part. Seems to me there is more to gender than the sexual role, so a child that is biologically one or the other should be raised as its gendedr. If she or he decides later to act differently it will be a choice not a confusion issue. Plus no matter what they belive as I have written, if they don't live in a closed comunity that child we'll get exposed to life as it it. Children have enough issues sometimes blending in, so why give your child a cross to bear already? I really see it as an act of selfishness.
I agree with Jess and Wayne.
I don't think the child will be confused. No one had to tell me whether I was a boy or a girl. Parents don't have to say to a kid, "You're my beautiful little girl," or "Your my little man," in order for a child to decide what their gender is because a parent could say such things to a child, and the child could feel the exact opposite.
Children get exposure to other people through media and outings with their families. Two-year-olds I've encountered have no trouble deciphering a man from a woman. Just because the parents gave their child what they believe to be a gender neutral name doesn't mean this kid will not know what gender to identify with. Children make that decision between ages 3-5, and unless the parents shelter the child, the kid will decide too.
I don't think most children learn about puberty until they're closer to adolescence. By then, the child will know what they are without confusion.
Okay, but when a parent decides from the top that they don't want a child to have a gender, don't you think that thought is going to go in to that childs teaching? Now sure, as you point out, and so have I, soon as that child is exposed to society it will know what gender it is, but these people seem to want to change that natural progress. No, I have no idea how, but there you go. Why have such an odd idea you can't make stick, unless you live in a closed, and like minded comunity? You have to think if they are going so far to hide the gender what else do they have planned?
While rigid gender roles are absolutely counterproductive, what does it prove when one lets a child "choose which gender to be", and even let them choose their behavior and how they dress and present themselves based on what they've chosen to consider themselves? A baby or toddler is capable of making a choice?
Rigid gender roles serve no purpose. For example, in adulthood, if you convince women they should strictly mind the home and not think of any work outside the home, how are the going to survive in a worst case scenario? Widowhood? Divorce? Never marrying? Or husband loses income due to major illness or disability? In my husband's native part of the world, learning to cook is considered effeminate. Who does that serve if the men are unemployed (big problem there) thus eliminating any chance of marriage? Or if the marriage fails?
On I believe it was Anderson Cooper's program on CNN, a "family" submitted to "psychotherapy" to possibly undo their son's potential for homosexuality. What behaviors made him possibly homosexual later on? Stuff like playing with dolls and even enjoying caring for their hair. This little boy was rewarded with poker chips every time he chose a masculine toy, like G I Joe dolls, and brutalized by beatings with his sperm donor's leather belt if he dared play with the toy of his choice.
While this young man went on to academic success as well as professional success in the U S Air Force, he hanged himself at 38 about three years back. Teach a child their loathsome from the very beginning, no one can convince me that child won't have problems later, and I believe the sperm and egg donor should have been prosecuted for submitting their son to bogus science and brutalizing him in such a manner.
I think it's neat when boys want to play with dolls and girls express interest in disciplines that traditionally boys gravitate towards, like building stuff and taking it apart to see how it works. But to tell a young child they can choose their own sex and have to find out from others' reactions this isn't acceptable behavior, for example, when a much older boy is still going in the womens' bathroom? As others have pointed out, this is more making a point than about parenting.
I don't think gender makes you play with dolls or not play with dolls. There is something about being a woman, or a man that is different. I am sure that people go over board with the gender thing, but this is a case of going the other way in the extreme. Most children if left alone will make the gender choice naturally. Nature for the most part decides gender, and gender is not necessarily based on behavior, but does have much to do with it. A woman's or mans bodies no matter what you do to it is different, and mentally we are different. We have different feelings about things and react to things differently, so trying to change what nature has decided seems counter productive. You are trying to decide for your child its nature and that to me is selfish. Even people that decide to be gay don't necessarily give up their gender. These that decide sex changes are in order are the few and also extreme, and I feel they don't really ever make the change 100%. As you pointed out that story on CNN this is simular and you don't know how extreme these people might be to try to get the child to not have a gender. Leave nature alone and it takes care of itself.
OK two points:
Parents choose a lot of things, including tell young, spastic, eeewing pre-teen girl that she will wear a raincoat no matter how unfashionable, because otherwise she will get sopping wet, catch a cold, be very uncomfortable. In fact parents will go so far as to slide said slithering, eeewing and protesting young child into said raincoat to protect her.
I have known a few transgender people in my time, and they wouldn't wish the complexities on anybody. They are dealing with something that frankly, the rest of us basically can't get our heads around. It's astronomical. Why saddle a young child with this?
To me they are paying more attention to gender roles than the rest of us, who basically let kids play with what they enjoy, encourage them to try new things outside their comfort zone, etc. Many who are trying to de-gender society are paying a lot more attention to distinctions than yesteryears's patriarch could have.
Kids aren't ruined by McDonalds asking if the happymeal toy is for a girl or a boy: parents just ask what the two toys are. And, if asked by the kid, just say the McDonalds people are being silly.
Gender isn't something to be ashamed of, or hidden away. Once you make something undiscovered or secretive like this, kids will just make up their own theories. Said theories are often wrong, often they blame themselves for what they perceive went wrong, whether or not something is wrong at all.
And, FYI, at least in the U.S. on the birth certificate the term is 'sex' not 'gender'.
I would like to point out that playing with dolls or trucks is not a sign of your gender. having a penis or a vagina, having the ability to give birth, or the ability to give sperm, is what denotes your gender. I grant you that we tend to fall into a clique with our roles based on our gender, but a boy playing with a doll is not a girl, its a boy playing with a doll. The longer we confuse that, the more troubled our children are going to be.
Many cultures have different roles from ours when it comes to the responsibilities of the genders, but no science can change a gender. They can give you the parts, yes, but covering shit in chocolate and crushed nuts, doesn't make it a candy bar, its just a more desireable piece of shit. I realize that many people choose to have an operation to quote unquote "become a woman" or "become a man", but your not. A transgender male cannot give sperm, a transgender female cannot give birth. Your covering shit in chocolate and calling it a candy bar to feel better about yourself.
I think if we'd not been so strict on telling our children what they could or could not do when they were growing up, they wouldn't be quite as apt to go do something so useless as get a sex change.
SilverLightning, at one time I agreed with you, that it was all superimposed by parents and society enforcing role stagnation.
And, that has some merit: we want sons to be exposed to housekeeping and daughters to be exposed to things mechanical. There are very apolitical and practical reasons for doing this. Not even when the child is small. Even a couple years ago, when my daughter was a teen, I had her at least learn to use a hand saw, at least experience it. Who knows? Had she been a boy, she might have been equally flighty about the experience.
But I doubt that you or I will ever understand the transgendder types. I have known several, really known them personally and not just in a bar someplace at a distance: worked with a few, socialized with a few. Not many, it's most probably rather rare. But those I have personally known have spoken of it the way you or I would speak of some incredibly intense inner turmoil, something surpassing abuse, grief, and all other catastrophes of the human mind we know of. It's all anecdotal, of course, but I have been left with the outlook that we really don't know. It's apparently far more complex than a simple set of answers provided by one ideal or another.
I don't know, but it seems the best hope for them is in the life sciences / mental health professions, any way to iron this out for them.
But the bitter irony of Post 1 is that while these parents would saddle this baby with extra and compounded gender identity problems for their own political gain, my wife knows a family whose parents are going through a process far different than any of us: they are grieving the loss of a son and learning to accept a daughter. They are no textbook phobic types, booting out their offfspring because it doesn't suit the need bubble they wish to live in. People at both extremes have dismissed their grief and processing. But people at the extremes are indolent fools who understand very little anyway.
Reminds me of the horrible experient, which ultimately ended in suicide, where a boy was gender-modified at 18 months old and was forced against his will to grow up a girl.
I'm not denying the fact that transgenders have some tough issues to go through, they have troubles and need to work it out. However, I am saying that just because a doctor cuts open your penis and forms it into a vagina, that doesn't make you a girl. Just because you take pills to help you grow larger breasts, and talk in a high pitched voice, that doesn't make you a girl. The pure and simple truth is, your still a guy, you just have an extremely oddly shaped penis. medical science can't change the inner works, just the outer equipment, and that doesn't change the nature of the beast.
I do have to wonder on a tangent though, what happened to the people who would have become transgendered, before plastic surgery was available.
I, too, wonder that. And is it, as some say, more prevalent now, or do we just understand it more. I've not seen anything definitive, just speculation on the effects of hormones in food, hormones dumped as waste into the oceans, etc. Probably more figuring as to what makes up this whole gender business is in order. In my opinion, said figuring should be done by the hard sciences, rather than glorified humanities / soft sciences or religions, because the answers could at some point be concrete and non-anecdotal in nature.
Transgendered? That's something that's always confused me. Sex reassignment surgery can give someone new sex organs if you can put it that way, but I don't think it's going to get rid of that 'y' chromosome you guys have that makes you guys, and it doesn't seem to me too many females, Chaz Bono notwithstanding, choose to get male parts. It also can't add that 'y' chromosome.
To me it's sort of like trying to alter output from a printer in the output stage with White Out and manual handwriting or typing. Who isn't going to notice an alteration made in this manner when the writer could have gone into the saved files, done the alterations to the input, then printed it.
I've never known any transgendered people, but I did hear a humorous story about one some years ago. A guy named 'Efrem' in Florida decided to I guess surgically alter himself to a woman named 'Alicia'. Must have saved up a ton of money as insurance in those parts doesn't usually cover sex reassignment. Alicia was, from the one account I heard, a stunning blond woman with an Adam's apple. What female has an Adam's apple? Even with any hormone therapy, it seems to me the basic male or female programming is still there.
Now another guy I knew about 20 years ago, just from looking at him, I would not be surprised if he had a chromosomal abnormality called "Kleinfelter's Syndrome", which affects males, giving them 2 x-chromosomes and 1-y. People teased Brian as gay, but I don't think that was the case. He looked feminine, distributing his weight more like a short pear shaped woman in the hips and rear like guys usually don't, but I suspect that was beyond his control. That's a difficult choice. I've heard some choose to live their lives as women, since it is double x, but I'm sure others make a different choice.
that's exactly my point. Putting a lamb's head and lamb's skin on a wolf, doesn't make it a lamb, it makes it a funny looking wolf.
That is why I wonder what would have happened to a transgender, before doctors could make a penis into a vagina. Would they have dressed themselves up as girls, or vice versa? I'll have to do some research on that
A woman or man having skills is not gender. My sisters can wash there cars better than most guys. Cut grass, fix things, but they are still women. Using a saw didn't make your daughter multi gender it just made her a woman able to use a saw. Not odd at all. You see these pro sheffs and many are male. They don't call themselves multi or non gender. Nature is nature leave it be.
I never intended to imply that learning new skills would make someone a different gender. Honestly, one of the more disturbing elements of the gender bender thinking, to me at least, is their apparent obsession with roles.
I'm gonna go out on a limb here, but if it is a mental condition as some claim, that may be part of it. They and their parents / siblings are still gonna need the support of society. Again, going out on a limb / getting myself into potential trouble, perhaps that support is like supporting the mentally ill or someone with breast cancer. Someone with a chronic condition, it can't be helped fully yet, and the treatment options are far from perfect.
For a good example of support for an individual born one gender but orienting towards living as another, watch "A Girl Like Me" if you guys get Lifetime. I actually watched it, scene by scene, on youtube if it's still there.
I understood the young man's dilemma somewhat. Look at me, even my screen names have even been of male characters on the "SpongeBob SquarePants" cartoon. I more readily identify with men as friends, can't stand to talk, at least not very long, about some subjects women will seriously still be chatting about years after it took place, like a wedding. I am not into traditionally female stuff like makeup, although I would bother myself if I had a job interview or formal event to attend.
But at the same time, I'm not seriously thinking about altering myself to become a male, or taking male hormones. Probably what blurs the line between me and someone who seriously pursues these options is they've already started living out the role of a person of the opposite gender, for example, the young man in the movie seriously loved wearing womens' clothing and putting on makeup. He even had the acceptance of that part of California's Latino community, as every young woman knew, for their coming of age party, or quinceanera, to get Gwen, formerly Eddie, to do their hair and makeup.
But enjoying those kinds of things doesn't make you a boy, it makes you a girl who enjoys those kinds of things. Gender roles are made up. One day, long ago, someone decided that girls would do the cooking and the cleaning in western society, and the men would go out and kill things that the woman could cook and clean up later.
If you were a native american a few centuries ago, you would have been thought strange if you were a woman who thought about weddings and the like. And everyone wore a form of make up, so that wasn't feminine either.
I think its messed up that they are refusing to accept the gender in which there child was born. I believe if you have a child and he or she becomes gay or lesbian or wants a sex change, it's there choice, but why make it more complicated by deciding that they are not going to be any gender at all. I think that is disturbing. What would you tell your child in that kind of situation if they come up to you and ask you what they are. It would be like "Oh, honey, that's for you to decide." Really? A child already has enough to learn and get used to, no parent should make things harder by being that retarded. Sorry.
Parents don't usually have to tell a child what gender they are. Children decide that for themselves, and that's what these parents are doing. They're allowing their child to decide their gender rather than imposing a gender on their child by dressing them in pink or blue, only allowing them to play with dolls or action figures, and so on.
Yes, but what's wrong with saying to the child, well, physically you're female, but if you would like to play with toy trucks and action figures, if that's what really interests you, there's nothing wrong with that.
Why are these so-called progressives so absolutely taken with gender roles? It is almost to 1950s proportions! I mean, telling a little boy he's a little boy, or doing the same for a little girl, doesn't automatically mean so-called roles, or social norms from before some of your parents were born. I mean, c'mon people! Some of this so-called gender liberation is so heavily based on stereotypes you'd think it was a pack of 1950s suburbanites or modern Fundamentalists!
Many parents put the gender on the birth certificate, and their boy or girl plays in and out of so-called stereotypical roles: boys playing house and holding a baby doll sometimes, or girls playing in the dirt and such, not because of gender, but because it's stuff for them to do and experiment with. The more I read up on this gender stuff, the more I conclude the people entrenched in it are more radically dedicated to so-called norms, or traditional roles, than any of the rest of us. So congratulations: you progressives have got the fundamentalists beat hands down when it comes to preoccupation with overly exaggerated gender stereotypes, stereotypes most of the rest of the population gives little thought to.
Yeah, I was horrified when I read about storm, still jazz and whatever that other brothers name is still very messed up. they'd probably need a lot of therapy when they get older, which is unfortunate, but this is the crap that liberalism does and all this political correctness. It doesn't work, because it's going to be a complete mess, and these kids are going to be so psychologically ruined that there lives will be difficult. What a idiotical choice these brutes made, and how terrible that they are experimenting with the.re own child who is the victim of this abuse, and I dont like the unschooling they are doing either or the dresses the older ones are wearing. it's such a tragedy that the parents have in effect isolated there children and made them outcasts this damn young in life. It doesn't do anyone any good, save the psychologists who will get the big bucks, I guess.