# Raising a genderless child from birth **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 8, 2018, 4:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/raising-a-genderless-child-from-birth/812013 "2018-04-08T04:17:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Delicious](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/dbc845/32.png) [@Delicious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Delicious)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2018, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/raising-a-genderless-child-from-birth/812013/41 "2018-04-08T22:23:12Z")
I admit I didn’t read the article, saw a documentary about parents doing the same thing as while back and they very much didn’t want their boy to be boyish. What that quote says to me is that they’re just parenting normally and are making a song and dance about it, my parents never pushed gendered activities or colours on me or my siblings…maybe it happens more in other families and I’must unaware ---
**Author:** ![Buck\_Godot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/buck_godot/32/6573_2.png) [@Buck\_Godot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buck_Godot)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2018, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/raising-a-genderless-child-from-birth/812013/42 "2018-04-08T22:37:08Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > I would actually expect the reverse, that if it weren’t for binary expectations in society as a whole, that transgenderism wouldn’t be a thing. What gets referred to as “gender” isn’t any one thing, and even the most masculine man or the most feminine woman has some traits which are more typically associated with the opposite gender. But our society forces (or at least, tries to force) people to be one or the other, and so some people end up identifying themselves as one while society identifies them as the other, instead of everyone just being many-dimensional shades of in between. I agree, my point was to consider a child who was biologically a boy but on the gender spectrum was inherently something like 60%female/40%male. if they was raised with the current standard child rearing methods he would probably identify as male when he grew up, while if he were raised as Zoomers parents intend him to be he would probably identify as female. So that it would be more likely that there would be people whose biological sex doesn’t match their gender, and hence more transgenderism. Of course if society has evolved to the point where the whole concept of gender is meaningless, then there would be no concept of transgenderism, since people would just be as they are with no labels attached. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2018, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/raising-a-genderless-child-from-birth/812013/43 "2018-04-08T22:48:20Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Anyway, the parents’ plan will last until the child is old enough to choose to play with dolls or trucks. And if the child chooses both it might well be [a dog.](https://youtu.be/_aYZrvG5BkY) A creature those parents might be happier with. Dogs often like to get dressed up in whatever you feel like and don’t care what you call them (Shit for Brains answers as readily to that as to his given name). And Zoomer is a far better dog name than people name. > [@RivkahChaya](#): > > I was raised in the 1970s, which was a great time to be a little kid. Everyone was trying to raise children without gender stereotypes. Girls could play with trucks; boys could play with dolls, and everyone had a copy of _Free to Be You and Me_ (on which Michael Jackson ironically sings “We Don’t Have to Change at All”). But I don’t know of anyone who was raised with their sex kept a secret. > > The idea wasn’t so much that no one should have a gender, as “Your gender should not dictate your interests, goals, friends, etc.” One reason I loved the '70s. 🙂 > [@](#): > > Sometime in the 1990s, the toy store manufacturers realized they had a saturated market, and started making “regular” and “pink” versions of everything, and marketed the pink versions to girls. Walmart carries a pink BB gun. ---
**Author:** ![Beckdawrek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beckdawrek/32/3647_2.png) [@Beckdawrek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beckdawrek)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2018, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/raising-a-genderless-child-from-birth/812013/44 "2018-04-08T23:39:06Z")
My middle daughter was a tomboy, into sports. No makeup, no frilly clothes. She cared about 2 things her hair and sports. Every one said we should make her be more girly, Grandparents and aunt’s mostly. We let her ride it out, knowing full well whatever she was it would be ok with us. Of course she discovered boys. She still isn’t excessively girly, but is a beautiful young Mom. My baby girl is a girly girl. From the start, it was glitter and frills and everything pink. It’s hard to believe the 2 are sisters, they are so different. I think the trick is to let them explore and figure out things. And answer questions when they come up. LGBTQ or whatever will come out. It always has, these are not new concepts. We are just more aware of them now. ---
**Author:** ![Barack\_Obama](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/dc4da7/32.png) [@Barack\_Obama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Barack_Obama)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2018, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/raising-a-genderless-child-from-birth/812013/45 "2018-04-08T23:58:41Z")
I think people are products of their environment above all else. Even a paralyzed person can be the smartest person in the world. So when a child of all people claims a different gender than their biological gender, then I believe it’s the parents who have primed or planted this concept in their head whether intentional or not. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2018, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/raising-a-genderless-child-from-birth/812013/46 "2018-04-09T01:59:08Z")
BB guns, hell… at real gun stores they’re selling pink AR/AK-type rifles. As to young Zoomer (may I say I happen to not really find much trouble with Zoomer as a name, it’s 2018, the child will be growing up knowing other creatively-named kids) I get a sort of “solution in search of a problem” feeling from this whole thing. Are we really aiming for somehow being able to say nobody “influenced” Zoomer’s gender-identity development, and when s/he announces it we can say it was an entirely endogenous result? Because, people, we humans are _social animals_. We unavoidably influence one another and absorb influences from one another without even trying. As mentioned before, this experiment is itself is an exercise in someone deciding on the child’s behalf what’s better for them – _ **and that IS the job description of parents anyway** _. Influencing your child cannot be avoided. BTW, anecdotally, as far as I’ve been able to tell, virtually everyone I know worked out their gender identity when they were ready for it regardless of initially having a default-setting, (biosex=gender)-normative, upbringing through infancy and early childhood. The problem, where there was any, was in the parents reacting badly to the revelation that the young person figured out otherwise from what they presumed. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2018, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/raising-a-genderless-child-from-birth/812013/47 "2018-04-09T02:06:45Z")
> [@Warm\_blood](#): > > Another thing I have a major gripe with, they say that gender is a man-made construct and suggest that gender can be chosen. So they’re effectively saying that trans people are choosing to be trans, that their gender identity isn’t innate. I wonder if they understand the implications of their statements, since they claim to be allies for the trans community. Thank you. That’s exactly what I meant. We’re in complete agreement on that. > [@DavidwithanR](#): > > Trans people themselves are the most transphobic humans on the planet. It’s their own intolerantly rigid and absolutely binary view of gender roles that leads them to mutilate themselves. If they had one ounce themselves of the acceptance they ask from others, the mutilations would be unnecessary. And you, take your ignorant, pernicious, bigoted, hateful ideas and shove 'em up your ass. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2018, 2:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/raising-a-genderless-child-from-birth/812013/48 "2018-04-09T02:45:03Z")
> [@Barack\_Obama](#): > > I think people are products of their environment above all else. Even a paralyzed person can be the smartest person in the world. So when a child of all people claims a different gender than their biological gender, then I believe it’s the parents who have primed or planted this concept in their head whether intentional or not. Wrong. Dead wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2018, 2:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/raising-a-genderless-child-from-birth/812013/49 "2018-04-09T02:47:59Z")
> [@JRDelirious](#): > > BTW, anecdotally, as far as I’ve been able to tell, virtually everyone I know worked out their gender identity when they were ready for it regardless of initially having a default-setting, (biosex=gender)-normative, upbringing through infancy and early childhood. The problem, where there was any, was in the parents reacting badly to the revelation that the young person figured out otherwise from what they presumed. Yes, that’s it, really. Upbringing cannot determine a person’s inherent gender, because that is set before birth. All parents can do is either accept the child’s inherent self as it develops or harm it by applying pressure in the wrong direction. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2018, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/raising-a-genderless-child-from-birth/812013/50 "2018-04-09T02:51:01Z")
> [@nelliebly](#): > > For those who didn’t actually read the article 😕 Why would we bother reading the article, when instead we can make fun of the baby’s name and point and laugh at them all, content in our tiny, ignorant judgments? Isn’t that what Great Debates is all about? ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2018, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/raising-a-genderless-child-from-birth/812013/51 "2018-04-09T02:55:23Z")
> [@Barack\_Obama](#): > > I think people are products of their environment above all else. Even a paralyzed person can be the smartest person in the world. So when a child of all people claims a different gender than their biological gender, then I believe it’s the parents who have primed or planted this concept in their head whether intentional or not. You vastly overestimate the centrality of parents in the overall universe of a child’s social environment. They’re just one factor. You are of course not the first person to make that overestimation. Freud did it. Parents themselves do it quite often. But kids quickly come to value peer opinion and they also absorb the surrounding prevailing culture like thirsty sponges. Also, there’s no such thing as a “biological gender”. Gender is social. SEX is biological. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2018, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/raising-a-genderless-child-from-birth/812013/52 "2018-04-09T03:04:18Z")
The article is fairly nuanced and is IMO best read as a fascinating insight into how some people are trying to raise their kids right. I don’t regret not taking this approach with my kids–instead I emphasize to them that while they may be girls, that doesn’t need to define anything about them they don’t want defined by that. But I don’t think there’s anything wrong with folks who are trying this approach, any more than I think there’s something wrong with folks who raise their kids Buddhist or vegetarian or Southern Baptist. What I do find appalling is the willingness of people to sit at the sidelines of life and cackle in derision at people trying to do right. If you find yourself in those sideline seats, stand the hell up. ---
**Author:** ![Warm\_blood](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/df705f/32.png) [@Warm\_blood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Warm_blood)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2018, 5:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/raising-a-genderless-child-from-birth/812013/53 "2018-04-09T05:33:58Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > 😕 Why would we bother reading the article, when instead we can make fun of the baby’s name and point and laugh at them all, content in our tiny, ignorant judgments? Isn’t that what Great Debates is all about? Well is it any different than mocking the wacky names that celebrities bestow upon their children? ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2018, 10:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/raising-a-genderless-child-from-birth/812013/54 "2018-04-09T10:47:18Z")
> [@Warm\_blood](#): > > Well is it any different than mocking the wacky names that celebrities bestow upon their children? Exactly, and if there’s one reason I come to Great Debates, it’s for that level of intelligent, principled discussion akin to tabloid mockery. ---
**Author:** ![ElderSign](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eldersign/32/8263_2.png) [@ElderSign](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElderSign)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2018, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/raising-a-genderless-child-from-birth/812013/55 "2018-04-09T13:58:47Z")
The parents will be so disappointed when the kid turns out to be shamelessly straight. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2018, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/raising-a-genderless-child-from-birth/812013/56 "2018-04-09T14:13:02Z")
Of course a lot of us didn’t read the article-- That way lies madness. The World Wide Web is, well, a web, and relative to any human’s capacity, it’s endless. Any page anyone links to will itself link to many other pages, and each of them to yet more. There is some number of links that any given person will follow, on average, from each page, and that number is _always_ less than 1. The only way to make sense of anything is for every page that contains a link to also contain some sort of summary of what’s on that link, that people can use to decide whether to spend time on reading the original (with its summary of its own links), and so on, and most people will usually end up reading nothing but the summary, for most links. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2018, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/raising-a-genderless-child-from-birth/812013/57 "2018-04-09T15:42:22Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Of course a lot of us didn’t read the article-- That way lies madness. The World Wide Web is, well, a web, and relative to any human’s capacity, it’s endless. Any page anyone links to will itself link to many other pages, and each of them to yet more. How the hell are you getting from “read the article before discussing it” to “read every link coming out of the article, and all the links that come out of those article, ad infinitum, before discussing it”? They’re not remotely the same thing. The OP has a summary of the article, sure, but it’s very brief and somewhat hostile and includes this caveat: > [@Warm Blood](#): > > I really do recommend reading it in its entirety to get the full picture. Folks who didn’t read the article are apt to say blatantly incorrect things like this: > [@ElderSign](#): > > The parents will be so disappointed when the kid turns out to be shamelessly straight. Given this line from the article: > [@](#): > > “Around 3, our kid was just like, ‘I’m a girl,’ ” says one gender-open parent from the Pacific Northwest (who asked to remain anonymous). “And we said, ‘Oh, yay, we’ve always wanted a girl. You’re amazing. Welcome.’ ” Yet they were surprised that, even growing up in a household of expansive gender expression, their daughter’s concept of “girl-ness” included many social cues from the outside world. “When this child said ‘girl,’ let me tell you, that meant all these things that were pink and glittery and made of tulle,” the parent explains. “But she’s taught me that feminine is feminist, and she can do things that other people might say are ‘boyish,’ but she redefines them as ‘girlish.’ ” Again, there’s a tendency of some posters in Great Debates and elsewhere on this board to find people with nontraditional approaches to gender, or other subjects, and Nelson Munz it up, pointing and haw hawing without bothering to understand anything about what’s really going on. It’s foolish, shameful behavior that detracts from discussion. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2018, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/raising-a-genderless-child-from-birth/812013/58 "2018-04-09T15:55:12Z")
The problem \*\*isn’t \*\*that we don’t understand what is going on. > [@](#): > > Yet they were surprised that, even growing up in a household of expansive gender expression, their daughter’s concept of “girl-ness” included many social cues from the outside world. The fact that it surprised them is not only worthy of a condescending snicker, such a snicker is almost unavoidable. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![JohnGalt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johngalt/32/184_2.png) [@JohnGalt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnGalt)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2018, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/raising-a-genderless-child-from-birth/812013/59 "2018-04-09T15:57:43Z")
There’s nothing new under the sun: I present to you the story of [X A Fabulous Child’s Story](http://web.bend.k12.or.us/jeremy.rubenstein/Mr._Rubensteins_Language_Arts_Page/Senior_English_files/PDF%20X.pdf) from 1978 (warning: PDF!) I recall reading this in college, thinking it’d be really difficult to pull off, which is what these parents are finding. Of course back then it wasn’t transgender-this or cis-fluid that; I think it was meant to be a thought-provoking exercise, not a guide on how to do it. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2018, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/raising-a-genderless-child-from-birth/812013/60 "2018-04-09T16:40:16Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > The problem \*\*isn’t \*\*that we don’t understand what is going on. > The fact that it surprised them is not only worthy of a condescending snicker, such a snicker is almost unavoidable. > > Regards, > Shodan And your condescending snicker is exactly the sort of Munzing-it-up behavior I’m talking about. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/raising-a-genderless-child-from-birth/812013.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/raising-a-genderless-child-from-birth/812013.md?page=4)