Gender Neutrality
Posted: Thu May 26, 2011 1:47 pm
http://www.parentcentral.ca/parent/babi ... der-secret
Above is a link about a Canadian couple that is keeping their child's gender a secret, wanting to let the kid choose for itself when it's old enough. Now, as a gender-neutral myself (I'm a hermaphrodite, as some of you may/may not know) though I identify as male, this is fascinating to me.
One part of me is saying that it's a wonderful idea, that no one should be bound by what society dictates as a 'norm' just because you're born with specific genitalia. In a perfect world, this sort of thing would be amazing, having no constraint to your own personality and no feelings of being 'outside' just because of being yourself.
However...on the flipside, by doing this, are the parents taking away that choice for the child? Are they pressuring the kid into being different because the family is? What if the child should decide that actually, they want to be what society deems is normal. Will s(he) be branded a black sheep? And then there's the social impact. I know myself through harsh experience that society does not like those that are different. What sort of problems is this child going to have growing up? Is the child going to refer to him/herself as 'it'?
As I said, this is lovely - in a perfect world, but this world is far from perfect. What do you guys think?
Above is a link about a Canadian couple that is keeping their child's gender a secret, wanting to let the kid choose for itself when it's old enough. Now, as a gender-neutral myself (I'm a hermaphrodite, as some of you may/may not know) though I identify as male, this is fascinating to me.
One part of me is saying that it's a wonderful idea, that no one should be bound by what society dictates as a 'norm' just because you're born with specific genitalia. In a perfect world, this sort of thing would be amazing, having no constraint to your own personality and no feelings of being 'outside' just because of being yourself.
However...on the flipside, by doing this, are the parents taking away that choice for the child? Are they pressuring the kid into being different because the family is? What if the child should decide that actually, they want to be what society deems is normal. Will s(he) be branded a black sheep? And then there's the social impact. I know myself through harsh experience that society does not like those that are different. What sort of problems is this child going to have growing up? Is the child going to refer to him/herself as 'it'?
As I said, this is lovely - in a perfect world, but this world is far from perfect. What do you guys think?