An interesting tidbit flittered across my screen that made me smile on a day when not much is going right. I found this story so profoundly wonderful and wacky I just had to share.At four months old, Storm is the most recent addition to the Witterick/ Stocker household of Toronto, Canada which includes brothers Jazz and Kio. But for now, Storm’s parents aren’t revealing his/her’s gender.
"We've decided not to share Storm's sex for now--a tribute to freedom and choice in place of limitation, a stand up to what the world could become in Storm's lifetime (a more progressive place? ...)"
Stocker and Witterick say the decision gives Storm the freedom to choose who he or she wants to be. "What we noticed is that parents make so many choices for their children. It's obnoxious," adds Stocker, a teacher at an alternative school.
HERE is the story.
I found myself being able to identify with some of their ideas and concepts. I remember at the age of 8 wanting desperately to be a boy, mostly because my brother got so much attention from my Dad and a favorite uncle. I thought if I wished really hard and acted like a boy, I’d become one. This quickly passed and I became content to be a girl but many times I was told I couldn’t do something or follow a career path because it was reserved for males only.
One of my sons at the age of four wanted my mother in law to paint his nails with nail polish like hers. He liked the bright, shiny color. My father in law went wild,” You’ll turn him into a sissy!” I had to defend my mother in law’s action and my son’s desire for the innocent interaction it was. Today he is a man who seems quite well adjusted to his gender.
The notion of letting children develop their own personality and perspectives is appealing to me. Think of how much mental illness and or sociopathic behavior might be averted if kids grew up just being whatever they wanted to be.
Forget color, gender, religion and social status…
I’ll let Storm’s, Jazz’s and Kio’s Mom have the last word:
"Everyone keeps asking us, 'When will this end?'" she said. "And we always turn the question back. Yeah, when will this end? When will we live in a world where people can make choices to be whoever they are?"
Maybe someday all homo sapiens will aspire to this for their children and themselves. Well, I can dream.
ReplyDeleteMakes me think of a project from the 70s by Marlo Thomas and the Ms Foundation called Free to Be...You and Me. It was a combination of storytelling, music and poetry with the theme of gender neutrality. One of the stories was about a family who refused to identify their baby's gender and another was about a boy who wanted a doll. We've come so far in many ways but traveled so little in others. Gender identity is still a bit like being bound in bandages like a mummy.
ReplyDelete"Forget color, gender, religion and social status…"
ReplyDeleteThis is so pervasive in our culture. I remember when my grandson was born, an older aunt had knit him a sweater set--a mint green color, since she hadn't known my daughter was having a boy. My daughter's husband didn't want his infant son to wear the sweater. Why? Because the color was too "girly." Imagine the silliness of that!
Yet I, too, remember the anxiety I caused adults because a little girl wanted a dump truck for a toy.
It was always the adults who couldn't handle the children's innocent, playful choices.
So long as the kids are only a few years old, it probably doesn’t matter a whit, and of course there’s no need to steamroll them down a particular path of “appropriate” behavior and sentiment.
ReplyDeleteBut as I see it, underlying this approach is the notion that because gender is a social construction, it’s more malleable and somehow weaker in comparison with nature. That seems to me a dangerous assumption: almost nothing human beings do is natural, including breathing (which shamans and meditators have been known to control and alter in significant ways) and without doubt the sexual function. It would be only a slight exaggeration to say that social constructedness -- artifice in practically every area of life -- is human nature. I suggest that gender is at least as powerful a force as nature and that if mishandled, it has as much capacity to ruin someone’s life as a shark’s tooth or a tiger’s claw.
I suppose the parents would respond that they’re trying to allow nature to inform gender in a non-coercive way. But there’s nothing gentle or non-coercive about this construction called gender once a person’s life really begins to take shape: it will become important as the little actors begin to “con their parts” and make their way in the world. Gender can be a rude and unforgiving force, almost totemistic in its influence; it is a power wielded by a child’s peers, relatives, and even acquaintances. It cannot be escaped easily or, ultimately, at all.
I am suspicious of sixties-sounding liberation schemes. Most kids, at some point well before puberty, would be distressed not to conform mainly to the ways of one gender or the other, and assuming that one’s child is fixing to be different from others, if indeed that’s the assumption, seems premature. If a child is clearly headed down some alternative gender-path, he or she deserves parents’ esteem and support, of course: if boys want to play with dolls and girls with trucks or both want to play with dolls AND trucks, that’s fine and a great deal of misery is caused by trying to force children to act as others want them to when their inclinations run otherwise. But I wouldn’t push indeterminateness on them because it sounds very likely to make them uncomfortable with their peers.
Balance is good: a lot of males could use some encouragement in showing so-called feminine traits; too many modern men have been taught to define themselves by presumed (often feigned) readiness to engage in brainless violence, by a great display of indifference to beauty and contempt for refinement of any sort. Those lovely masculine qualities often manifest themselves in utter contempt for females and the female body. Female humans, in this dino’s view, are fine just as they are – elegant, capable and perfect.
Dino - while I share some of your concerns as applied to our present societal construction, I think these parents are simply giving Storm the chance to explore her/his early years without the constraints of gender identity.
ReplyDeleteIn the article it appears this couple two other children were allowed the same freedom and are working their way through peer pressure and gender identity.
I do think that if more parents ascribed to this kind of freedom for their children, there would be less constraints and pressure and perhaps more acceptance.
Any person young or old should never feel guilty or ashamed of wanting to do something that is not specific to their gender.
Rocky,
ReplyDeleteWe disagree on one point -- I think parents who take the approach mentioned in the article may be either ignoring that present construction or treating it without proper regard for its power to do harm. At least, they would be if they went on too long with the approach. But I hear what you say and am by no means in favor of enforcing rigid gender roles, or gender roles at all, for that matter.
Dino - I think I know what you're saying: This approach is naively idealistic given the reality of our present society. But perhaps they are more aware than this article indicates.
ReplyDeleteOur society 30+ years ago was as racist and bigoted as ever but I chose to raise my sons in a home where no racial/ethnic slurs were EVER used. I actually threw a guy out of my house for using the "N" word. He was a very casual acquaintence of my husband's, who, btw, backed me up in throwing the bum out.
My sons were encouraged to choose their friends based on compatibility and not color, economic status or gender.
Naive and idealistic? Maybe, but I wasn't thinking I would change the world, just wanted to change the way my children approached the world.
Of course, they grew up, went to school, heard all sorts of bad language but continued to choose their friends based on compatibility.
When my youngest heard the "N" word for the first time he was in 2nd or 3rd grade and some kid used it to describe my son's best friend. He came home and asked me, "What's a n-----?"
I was able to use this as a teaching moment about ignorance, hatred and the power of speech. Do we ignore our principles and ideals and allow our children to be sucked into a societal vortex or do we fight the tide and teach our children something different?
Yes, it's radical but without radical thoughts and ideas there would be no United States, or even America.
We have to start somewhere.
The intentions are good, but this has to be looked at in a practical way. For Storm to truly be able to "Choose" what he/she wants and be free of outside influence, he/she will have to be sheltered from all outside contact. No books, No radio, No friends of different sex because that would lead to questions about why some parts of them are different then other people. No T.V. commercials showing feminism, like Victoria’s Secret, or masculinity like Football. Storm will have to be completely sheltered, and this would result in sever psychological damage. Storm would not gain any of the people skills developed in early years, and would not be able to function in society. Psychologically, we want to be accepted by society, so we conform to what is “popular”. Storm would also have problems when he/she hit puberty. He/She would not know why he/she is attracted to some people more than others. If this experiment was continued into young adulthood, then Storm would never be able to function normally.
ReplyDeleteRocky, your philosophy in rearing your children brought tears to my eyes. If only we could all embrace such a philosophy.
ReplyDeleteI agree that the approach of Storm's parents isn't misguided nor will it cause some great harm to Storm's development. My grandnephew, Little D, is 28 months old, and I see no signs that he is particularly aware of gender, his or that of others. He chooses toys that he likes. He has attachments to stuffed animals and likes anything that he can stack. Children aren't concerned with gender, adults ae. His dad became upset because my sister dressed Little D, her grandson, in a purple overalls because it was a "girlie" color. My nephew is an idiot! Little D din't care and neither did any of his toddler friends.
We don't have to be taught gender. We are who we are. I think that Alaska's comment entirely misses the point of what Storm's parents mean by choice. What they are doing is refraining from defining gender in absolute terms. Gender identity is a continuum, think of it like an arc. Some people are firmly at the female end or the male end but there are many different points along the continuum and people naturally fall at various points if they are not pressured into conformity.
Thank you Sheria - it has always been my hope that others of my generation would raise their children in a similar fashion. This societal climate certainly makes it look like I'm in a minority but my hope is there are others who were raised like my sons and that they will adopt a similar attitude in raising their's and so on.
ReplyDeleteI too think Alaska missed the point - this is not about denying Storm a gender but simply letting him/her discover his/her world without gender stereotyping. I remember what a scandal it was when men started to join the nursing field. Those first guys took a lot of heat but now it is rather commonplace.
Stereotypically speaking, little girls like pretty dolls, and little boys like fancy cars. But only until they reach late adolescence. After 17 or so, their interests reverse.
ReplyDeleteAs a parent, don't you think it is important to let and accept your kid for who they are as individuals? It's foolish to think that you can escape society. That is exactly what our human nature has become. If you don't teach your child about the basic roles in society then you are placing them into oblivion as they grow older. If your boy wants to play with dolls, let him and if your girl wants to play with trucks, let her. People need to teach their children values rather than focusing on what toys they play with or the cloths they want to wear. Aren't you supposed to let your children express themselves? There are men and women, but either way were all human beings. Taking away a title isn't going to change what or who we are biologically.
ReplyDelete"What we noticed is that parents make so many choices for their children. It's obnoxious," adds Stocker, a teacher at an alternative school.
ReplyDeleteThis is purely hypocritical. They are making a HUGE decision for their child by doing this. These people need to get their act together.