This is such a non-issue publicity thing it’s ridiculous. Has anyone ever heard of a pronoun? I really doubt the other sibling Jazz is going to be able to keep from saying, “He took my toy” or “She took my toy” in public.
Ironically there is another Jazz who is a transgendered boy who wants to be a girl. The parents even had the sex of Jazz changed legally
As for imposing ideas, yeah so? Parents do this from the day the kid’s born. They give it a name, a religion, a nationality etc, etc. Then they spend the next 18 years trying to enforce it, while the child rebels finding her/his identity. Usually the results are somewhere in the middle.
You know what, I am just really not bothered by it. The kids will probably be fine. Storm will probably be fine, and will be outed as a girl or boy in a couple of years, long before anyone has to make a decision about bathrooms.
Well, there are various ways to approach the pronoun issue. Here’s a rather exhaustive look. (I like Greg Egan’s ve/ver/vis, but that was for physiologically “asex” people, who were emphatically not undecided.)
My guess is that they display a selection of clothing and the kid chooses from that. Just a guess, though.
Like others have stated, if the kid is a hermaphrodite or something similar, I get it - it kind of makes sense. But if the kid has standard genetalia, doing what they’re doing just to make a point is doing the kid a disservice.
Being gender neutral is a goal of many parents, particularly those of a certain socio-economic class and mindset. Usually it’s the kids themselves that are extremely rigid as they mature through different stages.
You could fill a volume the size of the Oxford Dictionary with articles written by “with-it” parents who do everything correctly and then are aghast when little Madison or Shiver insists on playing with dolls and wearing dresses or turns every object from chopsticks on up into a toy gun. The articles are as predictable as the sun coming up the the east. A paragraph on how modern the parents are - how vigilant they are against putting any preconceived notions into their kid’s heads. The second is describing the offensive behavior of their precious tot. Picking Round Heels Barbie instead of the educational puppet set and their cries of “where did I go wrong.” Third paragraph is more hand wringing and the gradual realization that this was not a one off behavior. Their tot ALWAYS prefers to wear the pink dress or ALWAYS wants to play"Army." Then finally, sticky epiphany comes to wrap things up - playing with dolls is just Madison being Madison. Surely it’s better for Madison to have her way than to think that her parents don’t support her in all things 100%. Sometimes being a good parent is all about taking a chill pill and letting your child do what they want to do.
BTW, the pronoun problem does not imply a problem with anything but our language. English lacks a gender-neutral singular pronoun that is sufficiently personal for casual use (most people don’t like being called “it”). Singular “they” works, but only colloquially, and it grates on the ears of pedants everywhere.
And this is very much another situation of parents imposing their own values on to their child. How is it any different to impose the value that children should be gender neutral than it is to impose the value that there are inherent gender roles?
I remember a bit of fiction from - hm, I think it would be the 70s - in which parents did this exact thing. I can’t quite remember if they named the kid “X” or said the kid’s gender was “X”. It was a touchy-feely story and supposed to be heartwarming, as I recall. At the end of the story, the kid said it knew what gender it was, all along, the point of the story was, the parents didn’t want OTHER people to know, because of the other people’s presumed sexist attitudes toward a kid.
This thread is not about accepting alternative sexualities and gender identifications (which I’m all for), but about a pair of flaky new-agey parents insisting on imposing some quixotic vision they have of a gender-neutral world onto their unsuspecting innocent baby. Which is twisted and absurd.
In my opinion, children aren’t gender neutral. I’m NOT saying that kids should be treated in stereotypical ways because they’re female or male; however, humans in general are not gender neutral. And it’s not even genitalia - there is a large body of research that indicates that male and female brains are different from each other. To assume that biology doesn’t play any part in gender, that it’s all a “social construct” is fallacious. Yes, there are exceptions - many of them. But in this case, you’re suppressing facts to further what seems to be an attempt to stick it to the man.
Plus, I can’t imagine how they’ll manage to explain those nuances to their child, especially once he/she comes into contact with other kids. Right now I’m imagining what kinds of conversation they’ll have with this kid when he or she is 3 or 4 and points to his/her genitalia. What are they going to tell the kid? “Well, honey, some people believe that that is a penis. But it’s really not. It’s whatever you want it to be.”
But what’s the likelihood that this child will turn out to be transgendered? Doesn’t it make sense to assume they’ll be happy with their biological sex until told otherwise? Most people after all are satisfied with their biological sex, despite the exceptions.
I just find it a little… remarkable that “left to their own devices” all the boys in this family show an extremely strong affinity for stereotypically glam girly things, and seemingly reject all stereotypically boy things.
If it was one of the boys I wouldn’t find it odd, but now there are three. methinks “Clever Hans” lives among these childfolk, and the parents are directing and rewarding certain behavior more than they think. I don’t find it hard to believe at all that these parents express approval when the kids gender-bend and not-approval or neutrality when they don’t.
Are you sure? This story came out a few years ago. I think the whole reason it was in the news wasn’t the dress but because people were debating if a child of five (or so) could be gay or straight.
Sure, but when approached by cooing friends and relatives clucking over the miniature Winston Churchill wrapped in swaddling clothes they also didn’t answer “Boy or Girl?” with “I’m not going to tell you”.
Good. It grates in just the same way as split infinitives and sentence ending prepositions and for the same sort of silly and unsupported reasons. That said, using “they” when referring to a distinct and known singular person is a bit odd even for me.
This reminds me of a book I read hen I was high school. It was about a teen named Drew. Who showed up out out the blue. Refused to tell everyone what gender they were. Due to this and other weird circumstances, everyone believed Drew was an angel. I forgot if it was ever resolved if Drew was a mortal or what Drew’s gender was. I think the whole point was in the end it didn’t matter. It sounds very stupid, the book was good. Can’t remember the name.
That rings a bell, yeah. There was a faff too because she wanted to wear a girls’ swimsuit to a swim carnival or something, and people got upset about it.
