Parents decide to bring up "genderless" child

xsiborg · 26-05-2011 12:12pm

this to me seems like lazy parenting tbh, to let a child decide what gender they are, what happens if the child also decides that they want to be a vegan, discard their clothes and walk around naked. there are so many more issues involved in a childs development than just their sexuality, and for these parents to defer decision making to a child is just irresponsible. they as the child's parents are supposed to be role models for their children, not make their children responsible for being role models for society. can they not raise their children as their given gender, yet educate them to respect the opposite gender?

what will happen if the children decide they want to be emancipated from their parents, the children do not foresee the onset of puberty so therefore they should not be encouraged to be asexual or genderless before their brains are even developed enough to grasp the concept of gender identity.

wrong identity is one thing, NO identity is completely another.

St.Spodo · 26-05-2011 12:14pm

Self-important post-modernist gob****ery at its most annoying. The kid will want to be the gender it is born in all likelihood so I can't see why they don't just go with that.

sensibleken · 26-05-2011 12:15pm

xsiborg wrote: »

this to me seems like lazy parenting tbh, to let a child decide what gender they are, what happens if the child also decides that they want to be a vegan, discard their clothes and walk around naked. .

Um...i dont think youve quite grasped what a vegan is

prinz · 26-05-2011 12:17pm

Halfwits. In their incredible desire to be individual and different all they are doing is copying another couple (Swedish I think they are) who came out with the same nonsense.

G.K. · 26-05-2011 12:17pm

St.Spodo wrote: »

The kid will want to be the gender it is born in all likelihood so I can't see why they don't just go with that.

You answered your own question. What if the kid's gender identity does't match what sex it is?

Also, this makes complete sense:

deirdre_dub wrote: »

Here's the deal. In terms of gender identity, the kid is most likely either male or female (there are other gender identities, but male or female are the two most likely by a long margin).

Most likely, the kids gender identity can be determined by looking between its legs.

However, that is not guaranteed to work in all cases. All the parents have done here is allowed some time and space for the kid to say whether he is male or she is female.

Most likely, the kid will say something that is in agreement with what's between his/her legs. All the parents are doing is allowing space for the other answer to make itself known.

It is, surely, more respectful to say to someone "who are you", rather than say to them "this is what I see, therefore you are that".

How those who don't understand and agree with that post do so I cannot understand.

JohnMarston · 26-05-2011 12:19pm

prinz wrote: »

Halfwits. In their incredible desire to be individual and different all they are doing is copying another couple (Swedish I think they are) who came out with the same nonsense.

They're so hipster it hurts

As well as that, do you think the kid will appreciate their parents decision. No kid wants to be seen as the odd one out at school or anywhere else. This is entirely self-centered of the parents, they want to be seen as different regardless of how the child may feel.

Kevin Duffy · 26-05-2011 12:24pm

sensibleken wrote: »

Um...i dont think youve quite grasped what a vegan is

Yeh, they're from Earth FFS! :pac:

common sense brigade · 26-05-2011 12:26pm

This is so sad. My heart goes out to that innocent baby. It is selfish , self indulgant crap that so called parents are doing this. They want their 5 minutes of fame, and an interesting topic to discuss over dinner with their hippy friends. All patting each other on the back for being so different and non conformist. The baby is the one who will suffer and face ridicule and confusion for its formitive years. Absolute Disgrace. Another example of any idiot can have a child, but you need a licence to have a dog.

sensibleken · 26-05-2011 12:26pm

Voodoo_rasher wrote: »

that child needs to be taken into care. he/she will get merciless bullying from peers in elementary school..

he'll get mercilessly bullied anyway. all kids do except the big ones

Vicxas · 26-05-2011 12:26pm

WTF is wrong with people these days

Teddy_Picker · 26-05-2011 12:27pm

I think what these parents are doing isn't nearly as radical as people are making it out to be.
They are not raising a genderless child, this is absolutely not the case, they are simply letting the kid be a kid and find its own way in the world without any of the potential baggage that rigid gender roles bring.

prinz · 26-05-2011 12:28pm

Links234 wrote: »

But Pete, you cannot logically say what the parents are doing is wrong, because you don't know the outcome, you're projecting that it's going to damage them in some way without any way of knowing that. So you can't say that this is wrong or abhorrent, because you can't know that!

Total complete and utter bull. Bullying affects different people differently. Is bullying more wrong because the damage was worse in one person than another? Or is bullying in and of itself wrong? Using your logic we cannot say it's wrong until the victims grow up and we assess the extent of the damage. You can no longer say rape is wrong, because who knows maybe the victim will enjoy it afterwards. Mind boggling.

Is that how we decide how wrong things are these days? By looking retropectively at the damage done? Is it ok to rob someone who won't be as much affected financially as another person? Is it ok to sexually abuse people because we don't how to what extent that abuse will affect them in the future? People deal with different things that happen to them differently, but waiting until after they are damaged or not to judge the action is subjective stupidity beyond belief.

Susie_Q · 26-05-2011 12:28pm

It would appear these idiots don't understand the basic difference between the terms 'sex' and 'gender'.

Sex = biological difference, i.e. a penis or vagina
Gender = Cultural norms, i.e. masculine or feminine

Yes you could have a genderless child (not dressing a girl in pink or buying toy trucks for a boy) but you can't have a sexless child which is what they seem to think they have by refusing to tell people if it's a boy or a girl.

MORONS!

prinz · 26-05-2011 12:31pm

Teddy_Picker wrote: »

...the potential baggage that rigid gender roles bring.

Telling family and friends if the kid was born male or female does not equate to 'rigid gender roles'.

sbsquarepants · 26-05-2011 12:31pm

xsiborg wrote: »

this to me seems like lazy parenting tbh, to let a child decide what gender they are, what happens if the child also decides that they want to be a vegan, discard their clothes and walk around naked.

wrong identity is one thing, NO identity is completely another.

There is a massive psychotherapy bill down the road for this poor kid!
It's gonna be hard enough getting through childhood being called storm, without this genderless shít. I mean does such a state as genderless even exist? I accept some peoples psychological genders/physical sexes have somehow gotten mixed up, but they still feel like one or the other.
I wonder does anyone naturally feel like neither man nor woman?
It's just weirdness for weirdness' sake i reckon - normally if one parent had such a stupid idea the other one would kick it to touch, but somehow these two met and had had kids with each other.
It will end in tears!:eek:

sensibleken wrote: »

Um...i dont think youve quite grasped what a vegan is

Ha ha! I'm sure there's a vegan nudist colony somewhere!

common sense brigade · 26-05-2011 12:32pm

They are not raising a genderless child, this is absolutely not the case, they are simply letting the kid be a kid and find its own way in the world without any of the potential baggage that rigid gender roles bring.

Sorry i dont agree they are refusing to tell people outside a close inner circle the childs sex. That is just plain wrong and cruel. They are esssentailly carrying out a social experiment on their baby. disgraceful.

wes · 26-05-2011 12:34pm

The entire thing strikes me as pretty damn stupid. I feel for the poor kid involved, and hope things don't turn out to badly for them.

JohnMarston · 26-05-2011 12:35pm

Teddy_Picker wrote: »

I think what these parents are doing isn't nearly as radical as people are making it out to be.
They are not raising a genderless child, this is absolutely not the case, they are simply letting the kid be a kid and find its own way in the world without any of the potential baggage that rigid gender roles bring.

I agree that the parents should raise their kid to be an individual, but at the same time he/she needs direction.
Finding your own way in the world comes after you've grown up. And i would think in this day and age, gender roles account for very little. You can be what you want.

sensibleken · 26-05-2011 12:38pm

JohnMarston wrote: »

I agree that the parents should raise their kid to be an individual, but at the same time he/she needs direction.
Finding your own way in the world comes after you've grown up. And i would think in this day and age, gender roles account for very little. You can be what you want.

Why amnt I a fúcking robot crime fighter then!

prinz · 26-05-2011 12:44pm

sensibleken wrote: »

Why amnt I a fúcking robot crime fighter then!

Ask your ol' pair. It's their fault they didn't raise you as one.

pq0n1ct4ve8zf5 · 26-05-2011 12:53pm

robinph wrote: »

It's been done before, approximately. I can't remember the names right now to do a Google and find the story for you, but something along the lines of twin boys born, some crazy accident happens to one boy, various operations, boy becomes girl, boy brought up as girl, birl is all confused through life, birl finally discovers what happened (possibly from reading some paper written by the doc that messed with his bits and realised it was about him/ her) and I think eventually tops themselves.

Yeah I was thinking of that too, in fairness this doesn't seem as bad.

But...reading that article, it's partly because of the hassle that Storm's long haired, pink loving older brother Jazz got that they've decided not to reveal the gender to the world at large (for those who didn't bother to read the article, the child's siblings, close family members and a family friend do know, so presumably the child will be told the relevance of whatever it has between its legs). So, they've made an active attempt to remove the influence of any gender stereotypes which are just societal constructs from their children's lives. So...what's between your legs doesn't define your gender, what society tells you doesn't define your gender, presumably they're going to say it's what you feel in your heart or some bull that defines your gender.

For all the practical reasons listed in this thread, this child is probably going to have to decide on its gender soonish, by puberty really at the very least, it's a massive amount of pressure to put on a child that they have to figure out something so important to their lives with all frames of reference deliberately removed. I mean, if the child is amongst the very, very, very small number of people who are transgender then it'll be the best possible environment to grow up in. But if it's amongst the vast majority of people who are heterosexuals with the biological gender they feel is theirs, it's just going to be massively confusing. Children are not adults, children don't understand things that seem obvious to us. What if the child is male but feels pressured to be female because there are already two boys in the family and mommy seems lonely? Or what if it's a girl but decides to be a boy because it wants to fit in with the brothers? Or finds out about periods, thinks "screw that" and thinks deciding to be a boy would make most sense. This is going to be a messed up kid.

So, unfair on the kid, but not as bad as some people here are making out (having not read the article I assume).

krudler · 26-05-2011 1:02pm

sensibleken wrote: »

Why amnt I a fúcking robot crime fighter then!

I wanted to be a dinosaur as a kid, damn parents restricting me!

deirdre_dub · 26-05-2011 1:13pm

xsiborg wrote: »

wrong identity is one thing, NO identity is completely another.

When we are born, none of us have formed a gender identity.

St.Spodo wrote: »

The kid will want to be the gender it is born in all likelihood so I can't see why they don't just go with that.

Because if they are wrong, then they will be creating a world of hurt for their child.

JohnMarston wrote: »

No kid wants to be seen as the odd one out at school or anywhere else.

In all likelihood, the child will have formed a strong gender identity by then, and will have started to display his/her gender quite strongly.

prinz wrote: »

Telling family and friends if the kid was born male or female does not equate to 'rigid gender roles'.

Unfortunately, it does.

As soon as you tell others about your gender, there are immediately a set of expectations and roles placed on you.

sbsquarepants wrote: »

I mean does such a state as genderless even exist? I accept some peoples psychological genders/physical sexes have somehow gotten mixed up, but they still feel like one or the other.
I wonder does anyone naturally feel like neither man nor woman?

Yes - biologically, there are intersex people, and in terms of gender identity, there are gender queer and third gender people.

common sense brigade wrote: »

Sorry i dont agree they are refusing to tell people outside a close inner circle the childs sex. That is just plain wrong and cruel. They are esssentailly carrying out a social experiment on their baby. disgraceful.

How do you know that their motivations aren't because they know that the child is intersex, and are allowing time for the child's gender identity to assert itself?

Julian Future Gazebo wrote: »

For all the practical reasons listed in this thread, this child is probably going to have to decide on its gender soonish, by puberty really at the very least, it's a massive amount of pressure to put on a child that they have to figure out something so important to their lives with all frames of reference deliberately removed.

How can you say "all frames of reference deliberately removed"? The world is completely, totally and utterly gendered! The child would have to be locked in a windowless dungeon to have all frames of reference removed.

Da Shins Kelly · 26-05-2011 1:21pm

I think some people here are mixing up sex and gender. Sex is to do with hormones and genitals and all the rest, gender is behaviour that is considered masculine or feminine, and there are stereotypes to go with this. I don't think that what the parents are doing is right, because gender socialisation is important to an extent for identity purposes and all the rest. I don't have any problem with people trying to reduce the effect of gender stereotypes, because they can be damaging and constricting if someone is led to believe from a very young age that have to act in a certain way to be considered conventionally female or male - for example, boys HAVE to play with guns and like football to be masculine, and girls HAVE to love Barbies and playing Mammies and Daddies to be considered feminine. However, the idea that a child will be completely without gender socialisation is ludicrous, and it's not going to work. As soon as the child goes into the playground, reads a book, sees a movie or goes to school, they are going to be bombarded with all sorts of different examples of gender socialisation. It's a part of growing up, and it's completely unavoidable. The parents are clearly morons.

common sense brigade · 26-05-2011 1:26pm

How do you know that their motivations aren't because they know that the child is intersex, and are allowing time for the child's gender identity to assert itself?

Because the child is not 'intersex', the parents state that they know the childs gender and some close people in the family circle also do.

philologos · 26-05-2011 1:29pm

The fact that anyone can actually defend this type of deception is beyond me. When we were born we were born male and female. These things don't just have identity characteristics but tangible biological impacts on our lives.

Perhaps I'm the nutty one I don't know anymore.

Fukuyama · 26-05-2011 1:49pm

TheZohan wrote: »

Couldn't agree more. The child will be free of gender stereotypes and free to be straight, gay, bi or anything else without the pressures of having to conform to what society expects of them. At least that way when they're growing up and if it does transpire that they're gay etc there's no big dramarama for them in "coming out" and if they're straight it's business as usual and they'll do their own thing. A persons sexuality shouldn't define them.

Hahaha

You clearly have no knowlege of psychology. In particular how a child develops.

When I was a kid, I wanted to go throw rocks at stuff, play in the mud, race, do dangerous things. Girls, are instinctively drawn to different things. However, boys will occasionally do boy things, and girls will occasionally do boy things.

That's why when we're kids we're more likely to hang around with boys (if your a boy) and vice versa.

That kid is going to be so fcuked up by the time 'it' reaches 12 years old...

prinz · 26-05-2011 1:49pm

deirdre_dub wrote: »

Unfortunately, it does. As soon as you tell others about your gender, there are immediately a set of expectations and roles placed on you..

...and that's when you tell other people to feck off. Most kids grow up perfectly happy with how they experienced these 'expectations and roles'. What these parents are doing is saying the kid should be ashamed of this, to hide it etc. You are letting the very people who uphold these expectations and roles win by saying if you don't conform to them you should hide behind a smokescreen instead. A more obvious solution would be to be male or female and behave however the hell you like surely. They are going about it completely backwards IMO. Of course this all rests upon the assumption that expectations and roles are in fact a negative influence. I'd argue that. Either way, my parents never hid the fact that I was male and I never had an issue growing up playing with my sisters dolls and toys I never ever had toy guns or soldiers and had little to no interest in cars or machines etc.I loved learning to cook and iron and sew etc or any of a number of things which wouldn't be considered male orientated for a child. If anyone thought any less of me because I could sew, two fingers to them. Couldn't care less attitude, not let's make it all ambiguous so they don't know what to say.

deirdre_dub · 26-05-2011 1:49pm

common sense brigade wrote: »

Because the child is not 'intersex', the parents state that they know the childs gender and some close people in the family circle also do.

"Intersex" could be considered a gender.

deirdre_dub · 26-05-2011 1:51pm

philologos wrote: »

The fact that anyone can actually defend this type of deception is beyond me. When we were born we were born male and female.

Would it not be "deception" if the parents said that the child is male (based on the presence of a pen1s), and the child later on in life said "no, actually, I'm transgender female"?

Parents decide to bring up "genderless" child

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