The Secret-Gender Baby

[Titanic]

Fascinating little story here that I'd like people's opinions on. To sum it up in a sentence, a married couple are refusing to disclose the sex of their baby child. It's a fun little gender fluidity debate.

http://healthland.time.com/2011/05/...for-parents-to-keep-their-babys-sex-a-secret/

Yet Kathy Witterick and her husband, David Stocker, have kept their baby Storm's gender a secret. The only people who know are one family friend and Storm's older brothers, Jazz, 5, and Kio, 2. (Not surprisingly, the two midwives who delivered Storm on New Year's Day are in the know as well.)
A lengthy feature last week in the Toronto Star profiled the family and their quest to raise their baby unfettered by the rules of pinks and blues. The couple began by sending out an email after Storm's birth: "We've decided not to share Storm's sex for now — a tribute to freedom and choice in place of limitation, a stand up to what the world could become in Storm's lifetime (a more progressive place? ...)."


Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2011/05/...-keep-their-babys-sex-a-secret/#ixzz1NPEOldGX

I'm a student LGBT representative so I know I should be all for this sort of thing but personally I think this is going way too far. Anyway, opinions?


EDIT - Sorry, Metta beat me to it with his thread, please feel free to delete this if appropriate.

 

[Jack Springer]

The parents are nuts. They are forcing their children to make choices they don't have the ability to make.

Child abuse.

 

[Rex]

It's their choice to do what they want but the whole thing seems a little bizarre and what exactly is the point of keeping it a secret?

I don't think it will harm the baby as long as they don't keep on going with the "experiment" by the time it understands what gender it wants to identify as.

 

[bankside]

So they want their child to be a person first and not a gender.

Good for them. It's hardly going to warp the kid's mind. And in all statistical likelihood the child's assumed gender and aspired gender will be the same. But the kid will get there on his or her own terms, and if & when the kid settles on one gender or another, or something else, I'm sure it will feel like putting on a comfortable pair of shoes instead of having your feet crammed into a pair that doesn't fit and then hoping to grow into them.

Unconventional? Yes. The only way to gender freedom? No. Child abuse? Of course not.

 

[yummylongsword]

It's a nice thought, and in an ideal world all kids would be raised this way, imo. Unfortunately, they're absolutely f@#king up any chance this kid has of fitting into regular society when he/she is older, unless they cut this out soon. Making this kind of choice which so radically goes against societal norms is something you do to YOURSELF, not to your poor children.

It's certainly possible that the child could turn out okay, especially if this were the only odd thing about their childhood, but the kind of parents that do something like this are probably a bit nutters in a bunch of other ways too. But I mean, who am I to say how they should raise their kids? If it were me, I'd do it differently... but I'm not them, so I guess I can't really judge.

 

[fetaby]

Unfortunately, they're absolutely f@#king up any chance this kid has of fitting into regular society when he/she is older

Have you seen some of the shit going on in regular society lately?

 

[blackbeltninja]

^All the more reason to adhere to some of the norms, then.

-d-

 

[healingduck]

This could only work for so long. Eventually he/she will be in school and have to be labeled as either a boy or girl. Whether its for gym, or some in class thing, its gonna happen. Not to mention people will eventually know when his/her features become more prominent. I have a feeling though the kid will care less and tell people they are either a boy or a girl. The parents idea is good in theory, but eventually he/she will either be put into the boy or girl category. It will be interesting though to see how they handle doing the child's hair and stuff until he is old enough to choose.

 

[fetaby]

^All the more reason to adhere to some of the norms, then.

-d-

Tell me again, are you advocating cowardice or oppression?

 

[yummylongsword]

Tell me again, are you advocating cowardice or oppression?

Radical changes do not happen instantly, and people who do not conform to social norms have a harder time going through life. If you want to make the choice to live by your own rules, then that's great; however, you should not impose your society-defying ethics upon your children if it means they will end up being outcast by their peers and from society. That's my opinion, anyway.

If these parents are so free-minded, THEY should hide their gender identities, not their child's. If the child decides to live a certain way when they're an adult, that's fine, but until they're old enough to make a conscious choice, they should (in my opinion) be raised in a way that somewhat coincides with what society considers "normal."

 

[fetaby]

But it's not their childrens identity that is being hidden. Just their gender. We are capable of being more than what's between our legs.

And if peers and society are willing to outcast a person on something as trivial as this, why again would any one want to be like them? The world sucks for huge swaths of the population. And why is that? Cause it's easier to be a coward and maintain the stays quo.

But take in to account the individuals who are different and can't hide that. How is the world going to accept them? Or is it okay for them to be outcasts?

 

[blackbeltninja]

^Because kids need to fit in otherwise they are lonely, and lonely people tend to be unhappy. Sure, what doesn't kill might make you stronger. But that's only if it doesn't kill you.

And what is the parents' angle, anyway? Will the kid know whether it's a boy or a girl in terms of what that actually means? What's the point of not revealing it to the rest of the world? The rest of the world aren't going to be involved in rearing it, not at first. How will it integrate with the rest of the kids in its class if it doesn't know what it is, and if it does know what it is surely it will learn to behave from watching others like it, in which case their little experiment is going to be fucked up by circumstances beyond their control since the kid will not forge its own path and will follow one instead.

How do they fit their other 2 "Stereotypical" children into the frame and pull off treating this one differently? Are the other kids not going to be allowed to say things like "that's not what boys do!" if it's a boy? Any psychologist will tell you that children need structure in their lives; for two of the three to have it and one not, this is shaping up to be a potential disaster.

Sorry - this little thing has clusterfuck written all over it.

-d-

 

[braex27]

To prevent "society" from imposing "male" or "female" on their child, they have imposed their own views on the poor child and declared it neither, or both, or either.

How is it different? All they will succeed in doing is confusing the poor thing - and what happens then?

And they named it STORM. STORM! And see? I have had to refer to it as an IT!

It is not progressive. It is not new age. It is pure crap and if the authorities are seeing this, the fitness of these people to raise children should be seriously investigated!

 

[sixthson]

They are going to produce a freak of nature. This is political correctness run amok. Have we learned nothing about closeting parts of our lives? The distinction of our genders is something wonderful to be celebrated not hidden.

 

[fetaby]

There's more issues on parade here than the waiting room of a Dr's office.

If the job of a parent is to prepare their child to face the world, what better way than to teach them how to see it as it really is.

4 outcomes....

The child is male and chooses male gender typical behaviors. Nothing extraordinary happens.

The child is male and chooses female gender typical behaviors. He's labeled a sissy and gets teased the same as every other male that has done this.

The child is female and chooses female gender typical behaviors. Nothing extraordinary happens.

The child is female and chooses male gender typical behaviors. She is labeled a tomboy, which is social accepted.

SO! 3 out of 4 ain't too bad, is it?

What's more than likely to happen, is that the child will choose a mix of both, and what's the harm in that? Before you answer that answer this.

Is that harm something produced by the child, or the people around the child?

But anyway, I find it highly discouraging that everyone assumes these parents aren't capable of raising their child. Everyone keeps saying, "this POOR child." All children are poor. They don't have jobs.

And the simplest of details is being overlooked. (and people with children, I'm especially disappointed) These parents have not disclosed how they are going to handle answering the child's own questions. The kid looks down, and then asks the question.

In this grand scheme of social honesty, why would the parents make hypocrites out of themselves and lie to their child about it's biology?

Edit: So there is a 5th outcome! The child really is inter-sex, and the parents are waiting to see themselves which gender the child leans...

 

[sixthson]

Disappointed or not, Fetaby, I won't apologize for my opinion.

 

[mbamike]

My first thought is the baby is gender ambiguous/hermaphroditism.

 

[LilBit]

My first thought is the baby is gender ambiguous/hermaphroditism.

No, the article specifically says that this isn't the case.

 

[Titanic]

The way I see it, all the flaws that people point out, all the reasons that it might be a good thing to disguise your child's sex, they all stem from the faults in society, not the fault of gender differentiation in itself. Sure a boy is expected to like trucks and guns before ponies and glitter, that's always how it's going to be. How people react when kids don't follow that trend, that's the problem. So your son wants his bedroom coloured pink, it's not what you expected, but don't tell him it's wrong!

In my eyes this just isn't the right path to take. Whether it's good or not, this child is going to get singled out at school and abused for it and that's just not right. But at the bottom line, I just look back at my life and think "what if my parents didn't tell me I was a boy until I was seven?".


Really this all reminds me of the Californian circumcision debate. How much right should parents have to dictate how their child's life is run?

 

[fetaby]

Disappointed or not, Fetaby, I won't apologize for my opinion.

Finally!

They are going to produce a freak of nature. This is political correctness run amok. Have we learned nothing about closeting parts of our lives? The distinction of our genders is something wonderful to be celebrated not hidden.

We are all in our own way, freaks of nature. That is neither here not there...

And political correctness states that one should never run amok, the correct path is to walk calmly towards the nearest exit.

But that's a nice bit of transference you got going there... Care to explain how gay men lying about their sexual habits figures in to this?

Gender distinction is a forced extreme that a majority of the population does not fit the mold. Yet is celebrated anyway... If people are taking pride cause they have a pecker, I'd suggest finding a hobby.