This story was getting the family and feminist blogs all tied up in knots this week. From Jezebel:
A couple in Canada isn't telling anybody the gender of their baby. But paradoxically, their attempt at neutrality may make gender an even bigger deal.
According to Parent Central, Kathy Witterick and David Stocker have decided to keep the gender of four-month-old Storm a secret — only they, their two older children, and a few others know the truth. In an email announcement to friends and family, Witterick and Stocker said,
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? ...).
Parental Central (in Canada) has the original story - and more details:
This past winter, the family took a vacation to Cuba with Witterick’s parents. Since they weren’t fluent in Spanish, they flipped a coin at the airport to decide what to tell people. It landed on heads, so for the next week, everyone who asked was told Storm was a boy. The language changed immediately. “What a big, strong boy,” people said.
The moment a child’s sex is announced, so begins the parade of pink and barrage of blue. Tutus and toy trucks aren’t far behind. The couple says it only intensifies with age.
“In fact, in not telling the gender of my precious baby, I am saying to the world, ‘Please can you just let Storm discover for him/herself what s (he) wants to be?!.” Witterick writes in an email.
20 Comments
Awesome idea! Let's stop putting labels on people, especially at such an early age!
Here's what I don't get. If you can choose your gender, why can't you choose your sexual preference?
and this story has NOTHING to do with gay marriage.
Alvin, the nice thing about a group called National Organization for Marriage instead of a group called National Against Same Sex Marriage Organization is that they can address any factor in society that impacts marriage. Even the factors that don't directly relate to *your* pet cause.
And as marriage is still, in the majority of this country, defined as being between one man and one woman, an article about teaching children to be "neither" (thus forbidding them the requirements of marriage) certainly needs to be considered.
What a disgusting way to raise a child. Feel bad for the child. Another bad byproduct of SSM. The push of denial of your gendor.
they are nuts.
Here's what I don't get. If people can choose their gender, why can't they choose their sexual orientation?
Parental units 1 & 2 will now conduct experiment on humanoid baby unit....
It would appear to me he is a boy based on his masculine head shape. Good luck to him.
This does, in fact, have a great deal to do with gay marriage.
The current trend in "Boys have trucks, girls have dolls" is fast becoming a recruiting tactic for the GLBT activists. Even when I was growing up, which wasn't that long ago, a boy could like pink and still be a boy. A girl could play with action figures (like me!) and still be a girl. If you had the genitalia, that was your gender, end of story.
Now, if the boy likes pink, he is told by GLBT activists to examine himself and wonder if he is really a girl inside. Now they try to teach you that your mental gender might differ from your physical gender. If it does, then you are 'one of them'... and therefore you must champion their causes or you will be trapped as a lonely, unprotected sexual deviant.
This reminds me of two things. One of them is the gang mentality. You speak of hetersexuals as one gang, and GLBT as another gang, as if they are two equal but opposite sides... kind of like race, where you have White and then you have Minority... even if Minority is the majority. Then you isolate people by trying to convince them that they cannot belong to the heterosexual gang, and talk them into becoming part of the Other.
It also, sadly, reminds me of the courses I took as a teacher on spotting warning signs for sexual abuse of a minor. The abuser will often lead the child into something he is not supposed to be doing and then use the knowledge of that event as a guilt trip to convince the kid that he's already out of favor with his parents.. or will be if the incident is revealed. In this case, a boy is taught that his natural love of beauty (or a girl's natural love of adventure) makes the child transgendered and thus no longer in step with the Heterosexual Community.
Then, of course, if you don't at least pay lip service to the GLBT Activist Line, you're considered to be Not A Proper homosexual/transgender/whatever, and let adrift... the mentality is that they should be *grateful* to the activists for fighting for their "rights" (whether they want the battle or not), and if they don't want what the activists have decided that they need, they're the ones who are in some way defective.
It's an evil thing to do to a kid, but the answer is not to decide that your child cannot be any gender at all. The answer is to affirm your child's masculinity (or femininity) and point your child toward great men who loved beauty, and great women who engaged in adventure.
The relevant agency should remove this child from their custody for abusing this poor child.
These parents should be investigated for child abuse. Even if found to not be abusing their child, the children should be removed from this home and the parents charged with "felony studid." They are obviously the product of today's Canadian and American public schools.
I find it hard to fathom the idea of being raised as "genderless". It doesn't seem o be neglectful or abusive to me.
May Storm grow up to be healthy and happy.
Good luck!
Depends on how long they try this experiment. I remember the man from England whose penis was so badly ruined during a circumcision that the doctor told the family to raise him as a girl. But he WANTED to play with boy toys although he was given girl toys. He didn't want to take the hormones that would make his breasts develop because he didn't WANT to wear a bra. Eventually he had corrective surgery as an adult.
@KevininMich Gender is not a label.
Gender *shouldn't* be a label. Unfortunately, it appears that GLBT groups are turning it into a label so that they can openly defy it and demand special consideration based on their willingness to defy their label.
I see this in the sad case of stories suggesting that a little boy who loves beauty must be a woman inside, because 'obviously' men can't have a sense for beauty. They construct artificial barriers and say that you are transgender if you do not fit inside them.
I hate to say it, but it sounds an awful lot like a recruiting tool to me.
To deprive a kid of its biological sex sounds pretty insane, they shouldn't be allowed to.
Gothelittle: you gotta, they're redefining the meaning of the words to conquer the power.
They learned the Orwellian lesson: if you want to rule the world, you must be able to shape the language.
These people think that they are enlightened, but are really trying to learn basic truths that previous generations took for granted; e.g. gender.
"I am saying to the world, ‘Please can you just let Storm discover for him/herself what s (he) wants to be?'"
Stupidest thing I ever read. What's your role as a parent if you're not going to guide the child in a particular direction based on your experience in the world? This is the essence of the power of parenting and family: we learn how to shape our children based on our own experiences and what is handed down to us by our parents and extended families; it allows each new generation to excel beyond the previous generation.
These parents are abusing their child, setting the child up to be confused and unstable. Good; the more parents screw up their kids this way, the more likely my kids will excel beyong them. Evolution is a beautiful thing if you use it.
You realize these are "straight" parents who procreated and made these babies, right? The family unit considered the ideal? GTL, they sound more like out there, ideological nuts. Not a recruitment tool.