Parents keep child’s gender under wraps

Bluerang1

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    https://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thel...ep-childs-gender-under-wraps#mwpphu-container

    What i this, I don't even...

    They have a point but they are contradicting themselves. If you want your child to grow freely, let them decide if they want to or not. Oh wait, it's just a baby, it can't do that. But do what's right for it and not for you. This is basically a social experiment on a child.

    On another note, I think Storm's a boy. Looks like one. What do you think?
     
    Those liberals, you seein' what they do?

    I dunno what they're trying to achieve.
    Seriously I was just like "lol.. wut?" when I finished reading it.
    And I'm not sure what the results will be. I mean I was told by my parents I'm male, but I was a perverted 5-years old child and wanted boobies. My parents probably were worried I'll go transsexual on them.

    Then I hit puberty..

    Hell my stories are weird as hell.
     
    Perhaps they are taking this a little too far, but it's far from the worst thing you hear of being done to a child. I think it will be incredibly interesting to see how this all pans out, and even if they are using it to conduct a social experiment, it will still be loved and could very well turn out to be a more well-adjusted person than any of us. I'm not saying it's right, but I think it's far too early to say if it's wrong... I say reserve judgment until a little more is known.

    A lot of the comments on the article raise valid points, such as one woman who writes "Ah, forced individuality. How hypocritical", but regardless of the validity I can't help but feel that these parents are trying something unconventional and the public (commenters) are the angry mob ready to lynch them for it.
     
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    This really doesn't achieve anything. If they really want to let their child have freedom, then they should teach him/her that gender/sex is meaningless when it comes to life choices. What, do they think everyone's going to brainwash their child into wanting to join the army if they know he's a boy? Silly parents think they're making a defying statement against society. People need to read about David Reimer, and then stop giving their children gender confusion before they're even old enough to understand what it is.
     
    Shining Raichu said:
    I can't help but feel that these parents are trying something unconventional and the public (commenters) are the angry mob ready to lynch them for it.
    Click to expand...
    Agreed.

    As far as I can tell the only thing these parents are doing is not telling other people what their baby's gender is. That's really nothing special at all. It's just not something you usually hear about. I don't understand why people are making a big fuss about it. There's really nothing wrong with what the parents are doing (any more than anything any other parents do, that is): letting their kids pick which clothes they want, etc. is nothing new.
     
    I feel like this is very ineffective for what they're trying to do.

    By doing something so different with its gender, everyone in its life is going to focus on that part of it. While other people may not pressure it based on societal guidelines for gender, it will still know its own gender, so it will know whats "expected" anyway. I feel like the older ones are being raised in a better way...taught that they are boys, but they don't have to act like them. They're growing up accepting their gender, while Storm is going to grow up with a complex about it because everyone is going to care about it.
     
    The parents are doing it wrong...

    The message they think they're sending: Gender doesn't matter

    The message they are actually sending: Having a gender is wrong.

    I'd ask what they were thinking but I'm pretty sure I know. Their message is sick but their intentions are merely misguided. They clearly haven't given their views enough thought. Needless to say, this is very, very bad parenting and they should really stop playing games with their child's psychology before the poor kid grows up with a warped understanding of the world around him.

    After all, genders are a perfectly natural part of being human beings. Repressing them is not going to lead anywhere good. That and if you teach him they're wrong it's just going to bother and upset him that the rest of the world doesn't care as he grows up. You can shelter and force them to learn it, but when they step out into the real world... boom. Your kid now needs mental therapy.

    Edit: Oh hey, look at that. I unconsciously referred to the child as a he! Clearly that is me not respecting the parent's decision. That is also what the rest of the world is going to do to that kid if they try and force him to not have a gender.
     
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    Well, first of all, it's obviously a boy. I mean, come on... LOOK AT IT.
    And secondly, what parents would give this type of decision to their child? Changing your outer appearance DOESN'T change what you are on the inside. But really, I don't see anything wrong with letting your kids wear what they want, as it's just clothing. And keeping your child's gender a secret isn't that much of a big deal either. =/ It's almost as if the parents just want their kids to be talked about. Bleh...
     
    ManhattanTheStarr said:
    And keeping your child's gender a secret isn't that much of a big deal either.
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    Children are in a very vulnerable psychological state. What they're doing is a very big deal as far as parenting goes. If they don't stop this foolishness before their child starts emulating their wishes, it WILL impact that child later in life. You can't just raise your child to believe something backwards like "Having a gender is wrong" and then release them into a society full of people who won't care and expect there to be no problems.
     
    I don't really get what this is gonna do, but I can't find anything wrong with it. They're point isn't going to be delivered very effectively since he's a baby, and when he gets older he'll know he's a boy from the penis in his pants. Yes he's recognizably a boy, oops, I'm such a party pooper.

    A more effective way of letting him choose what he wants to be is to let him know he can as he grows up, not by not disclosing his gender at birth to relatives at a time he isn't going to remember. If he decides that despite being a man he is actually a woman later on down the line that's cool, but raising him in a way that's going to suggest to him he isn't exactly a boy to begin with isn't letting him choose what he wants, it's confusing him as to what he is.

    And when I say that last bit I mean as he grows up because obviously babies don't make decisions. Poor kid is probably going to be dressed as a woman because that's what he rolled nearest to :(
     
    Shadow_Angel said:
    Kind of obvious it's a boy by the picture, but this is just stupid. What's the point of hiding it's gender if the picture obviously gives the gender away? Makes no sense, but, whatever. I just want to say that's not right and I find it stupid.

    They'll have to say it's a boy eventually despite the obvious picture releasing it.
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    Note: The baby will be referred to as he, because I feel that I can use "he" as a gender neutral pronoun in comparison to using little-known gender-neutral pronouns.
    Gender is a range of characteristics distinguishing between male / masculinity and female / femininity , Particularly in the cases of men and women[/U]


    Notice that the word particularly was used. What if the baby didn't have a gender? What if the baby was completely gender neutral? What the family is trying to say is that the gender assigned to you at birth is your biological gender, and has no bearing on your psychological gender. You are given a gender, and hopefully, you will feel that you are in the right body, which is true in most cases. I think this may be the wrong approach, though. I think that people shouldn't have to know about the child's genitals, but aybe early on, the parents could ask if the child feels as if he's a boy, a girl, something in between, or has no gender at all. His genitals don't matter, and if he is a boy or a girl, he will know. It's impossible to "check" someone's gender to know if they're a boy or girl; they have to tell you. This family is just, as said before, taking the wrong approach at things.

    Also, I don't think that the baby is "obviously" a boy or a girl, it could be either.
     
    I think they're doing something great for the he/she. True, he/she will lose out on somethings, such as...actually I have no idea what he/she would be missing, since my childhood was pretty much wasted.

    They're letting their child decide for him/herself what he/she/it wants to be! I've never had that choice as a child, I was handheld by my mother, so I would've killed for such freedom and insight.

    Though they should say sex, since sex =/= gender. Two completely different things.
     
    There is a lot of trans* hate in this thread.

    Let's look at one little fact, alright? One in 100 children are born with errors in development of chromosomally-appropriate sex organs. This is not to say that one out of every hundred ends up with "opposite-sex" organs, but this is the rate of ambiguous genitalia. Why should parents arbitrarily pick something so important to the lives that their child is going to live? Why should parents chance damaging their kids by assigning them a gender that might be totally wrong for them?

    Gender identity is a personal understanding, but gender roles are a social construction. They don't actually exist. There is no "right way" to be a boy, a girl, a man, a woman - these are all just made-up categories created by the human brain in its ceaseless attempts to categorize things it wishes to make simpler. The brain of a child as early as two years old can comprehend these constructions and decides which category they feel they belong to, whether or not the parents agree with the child's assessment.

    Why should anyone else be bothering this kid? Storm's "real gender" is the one that Storm believes ends up feeling is right. It isn't the parents' job to tell their kid who they are.

    I applaud these parents for not coercively assigning their child a gender that might not be right for them.

    Keep your itching curiosities out of this kid's pants and let one child grow up in peace.
     
    Merzbau said:
    There is a lot of trans* hate in this thread.
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    The people in this thread cannot be hating a trans that does not exist. We're hating on bad parenting.

    How will it know which gender it is if it is never given a chance to figure out which gender it isn't? The way they're raising their kid is needlessly screwing with it's psychology to make a misguided political statement. If that isn't incredibly irresponsible I don't know what is.

    Furthermore, you just indirectly implied that because of a small risk of gender confusion, we should raise all babies as if they were going to be trans anyway at the expense of every other baby. That's some nice hating on non-trans right there.
     
    PkMnTrainer Yellow said:


    The people in this thread cannot be hating a trans that does not exist. We're hating on bad parenting.
    Click to expand...

    But how do you know it's bad parenting before the child has even shown any signs of being messed up by it? If it turns out wrong, then yeah, lynch away, but at the moment the most we can say is that it's unusual. It's not something that any other parent is doing, and it's therefore bad parenting? I don't understand that mentality. We just don't know yet.
     
    This seems like a bad idea to me. Like one of the comments said, it looks more about publicity for the parents than the well-being of the child. I'm not supportive. Why bother denying the child fundamental information about himself ("him" for the sake of this post)? Just bring him up as he is, and teach him how to act in light of that.
     
    Shining Raichu said:
    But how do you know it's bad parenting before the child has even shown any signs of being messed up by it? If it turns out wrong, then yeah, lynch away, but at the moment the most we can say is that it's unusual. It's not something that any other parent is doing, and it's therefore bad parenting? I don't understand that mentality. We just don't know yet.
    Click to expand...

    Because taking dumb, unnecessary risks with a child's psychology to make a political statement is bad parenting whether it actually comes to harm him/her or not.

    It's like playing with fire. Sooner or later, you're going to get burned, but even if you don't get burned the first time, it was still a bad choice. There is solid reason to believe this has potential to harm the child's psychology so yeah... bad parenting, mainly because they did it just to make some dumb political statement and could've avoided the risks altogether.
     
    There is a difference between gender and sex - a person cannot decide their sex, it's in their biology. These parents just don't know what the hell it is they're talking about.
     
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