If you really want to get to know someone, you don't ask what's between their legs

I did listen to the interview. They said they were surprised that it ended up on the front page. By doing any interview they brought more attention to what might be between their child's legs than any other parent in the history of parenting. By saying "gender doesn't matter" they've made gender matter and now they say they're glad that they have everyone talking about gender.

I don't really care one way or the other. I don't think telling or not telling will effect the baby. The whole thing really belongs on the white whine website.

I don't know what I think re this couple and the child. I find them on the obnoxious side, but that may be since I've heard of them for a few days. I tend to be crabby.

I already think gender is not caused by treatment after birth of babies, though I know babies are differentiated in care based on their varied genitals.

I come a large family. I've raised a boy and a girl. When both my kids were small I purposely banned barbies and guns. Guess what, the daughter found dolls at friends and relatives places and glommed on to them. The boy made guns out of carrots and corn forks or sticks. So they won't own up to the sex of the babe yet, but one day, regardless, all attempts to white wash nature will be lost.
So they've got a secret for a while, it wont last long. Human nature is stronger than the ideals of any lost cause.
I wish them luck.

Apparently this has also been the experience in some Socialist Israeli Kibbutzim. Parents did not prescribe gender roles for their children, and let boys and girls play with the same abstract blocks of wood. The end result was that the wood represented guns to the boys and babies to the girls. At least that's what I learned in the ethology lectures I heard 20 years ago in Munich. Gender roles seem hardwired to at least some extent.

They found this with baby monkeys too (a more recent study).

Boy baby monkeys wanted to play with guns ? ! ? ! ?

Who knew?

And the kind of gun preferred by monkeys:

There are so many misfits and fringe wackos out there in the world and nobody can stop them from having children. Wackos of every type go out of their way to graft their unconventional and sometimes downright sick mentalities upon their offspring. What can mainstream society do about it? Appearantly nothing. All they can do is hope that the kids will grow up and someday be able to make rational choices for themselves. There are many among us who make terrible parents, but nobody has a right to interfere unles a provable crime has occurred. This is the nature culture in which we live.

I got a kick out of that banana magazine.
That 's what we really call them (qua shape).





David

Do u believe that a monkey is able to know the concept of a gun ?

I agree. Certainly, at this point in time, they are only affecting how others might relate to the baby--for instance, what kind of clothing or toys others might give "it" as gifts--which, in itself, might cause people in their family or social circle to stop and think about how they relate to children, and how they treat them differently, on the basis of their gender, and that's not so bad. But it also forces them to regard little Storm as asexual, to probably only buy Storm asexual clothing and gender-neutral toys, etc.

While Storm is still very young, it really doesn't matter, infant and toddler garb can be pretty asexual in design and color without sacrificing much, and toys aren't so gender related, but as you get toward school age, it really does begin to matter, to Storm and to everyone else. At that point, children are starting to think about gender identity, they identify with the same sex parent, they start modeling their behavior on what they see in same sex adults and peers, and they know they will be a man or woman when they grow up. There are limits on how much of this a parent can, or should, alter.

Gender is an important part of one's identity, and I can't see any value in wanting a child to view themselves as gender-less, or to have others view them as gender-less, it leads to too much ambiguity and confusion on everyone's part, particularly the child's. It's one thing to try to avoid pushing a child into overly rigid gender stereotypes, and quite another thing to leave the child, and everyone else, feeling the child has no gender at all. Storm has the right to a gender identity, the same way he/she has the right to a name, it helps you to identify yourself, to yourself as well as others, it's part of who you are.

So, I think what these parents are doing right now is really harmless, but as time goes on, it could become quite harmful. Also, expecting Storm's two siblings to keep "the family secret" about the baby's gender, also seems harmful to me--there's nothing shameful about Storm's gender, and there's no reason to involve two other young children in this sort of secrecy, or to make them feel their younger sibling is different in some way.

At some point in time, Storm is, hopefully, definitely going to know whether he/she is male or female. And Storm will be blasted with cultural and media depictions of how males and females behave--there is no way the parents can keep it all out. And Storm should be allowed to dress in a basically gender appropriate way, and play in a basically gender appropriate way, because that's probably what Storm is going to want to do, and really needs to do, to grow up in a healthy way and fit in with peers. And fitting in, and being accepted by peers, is very important to children.

So, if the parents keep this up too long, I think they will be depriving Storm of something, rather than expanding his/her options, because they will have interfered with an important aspect of social development which involves gender identity.

The family are not keeping Storm's sex a secret within the family you know.

Nor will it be a secret from anyone soon.

Sex, as opposed to gender, (which is normally defined as the social construct in a particular society that is assigned to one because of one's sex), is readily apparent to one and all fairly quickly. Even toddlers can tell the sex of another toddler from physical cues, like how they walk.

What this family appear to be doing is challenging the gendered way in which people outside the family relate to this infant because of its sex.

Its not at all likely that thay 'd do that to a female,
raise the possibility of her impersonating a boy.
I think thay r more likely to feminize a boy.
Thay deny that his sexual organ is abnormal; maybe.





David

Oh man.

Yes; I remember, in the earliest years of my life,
boys configured their hands into the shape of handguns
and tried to imitate the sounds of gunfire.





David

I 'll take that as a disagreement.

So did I.

Lots of cowboy and Indian and WWII films around...

Yea, but not with chicks impersonating guys.

There WAS one in which a guy
wore a female dress all the time.

Castor and Pollux blow me to Bermuda.