https://youlookfab.com/welookfab/topic/ot-article-about-gender-neutral-baby Style Advice for Fashion Lovers en-US Tue, 28 Apr 2026 17:44:58 +0000 http://bbpress.org/?v=1.0.2 q https://youlookfab.com/welookfab/search.php https://youlookfab.com/welookfab/topic/ot-article-about-gender-neutral-baby#post-355162 Tue, 24 May 2011 23:54:27 +0000 catgirl 355162@https://youlookfab.com/welookfab/ <p>But I will recommend the book "She's Not There" by Jennifer Finney Boylan as a book club read on gender and identity - written by an English professor who had M-to-F surgery and is the author Richard Russo's best friend.</p> <p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Shes-Not-There-Life-Genders/dp/0767914295" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/Shes-Not.....0767914295</a> </p> https://youlookfab.com/welookfab/topic/ot-article-about-gender-neutral-baby#post-355160 Tue, 24 May 2011 23:51:46 +0000 catgirl 355160@https://youlookfab.com/welookfab/ <p>Melissa, I think this is a fantastic discussion topic, and I've reposted the article on my Facebook page for people to read and debate. Thank you for bringing it to my attention!</p> <p>However, I rarely post OT subjects of interest here, precisely because there is no way to know what direction the discussion will take or who might be offended. If we were a book club, it would be open season! Realistically, I have to remember we're all here for fashion advice - though our diversity, strength and collective intelligence would make for incredibly interesting debates.</p> <p>That's why I haven't posted on this topic here, which is of INFINITE fascination to me. </p> https://youlookfab.com/welookfab/topic/ot-article-about-gender-neutral-baby#post-355110 Tue, 24 May 2011 21:08:32 +0000 Irene 355110@https://youlookfab.com/welookfab/ <p>Hi mrseccentric! I know about that -more or less-, but I was generalizing. Anyways, I believe most of those people have trouble with identity issues at some point in their lives, although I like to think most of them overcome them. What I don't get is why would you deny someone their gender. I know some children may develop gender issues during their childhood or teenage hood and feel their bodies and feelings don't match -which is what I believe happens to transexual people, only it is way more complex than that- but even then, transexual people or people who suffer from intersexuality have gender issues and have a defined gender, even if it's only in their minds/personality. I may be too harsh here, but even if you have a vagina and a penis, or if you have none, or if you have one of them but feel like you should be having the other one, it doesn't matter, you still are either a man or a woman (if only in your mind). That doesn't mean that all men are the same, or that all women are the same, since we are all individuals, but the 'classification' exists and I can't see that disappearing any soon, unless we become snails or something like that. I mean, we always talk about how gender is something cultural that we create, and it is true to some extent, otherwise there wouldn't be huge differences in that sense among different societies, but there is also something intrinsically there, for instance, birds don't have cultural issues but still the male bird has its role in the family (or while copulating) while the female bird has its own role, and the same happens with most -if not all- species. I can't imagine a 'King Bee' or a male Mantis killing its partner after copulating, or 50 cocks happily living together while two hens fight over their territory.</p> <p>PD: I get that the so called parents are waiting for the child to decide, but what happens until then? Wouldn't it be easier for the kid to just let him or her be what she is supposed to be right now, and if he or she is not comfortable with that, well, we'll see? And anyways, the fact that transexual people or people with intersexuality go through surgery in order to define their sexuality and therefore gender proves that gender and sexuality are tightly related, and that your genitalia does define your gender (that and other physical features), so it does matter. If they didn't feel it mattered so much, they wouldn't take the risk, but for them to feel completed it is necessary to do it (and also for legal reasons, of course). </p> https://youlookfab.com/welookfab/topic/ot-article-about-gender-neutral-baby#post-354987 Tue, 24 May 2011 19:05:44 +0000 Tessera 354987@https://youlookfab.com/welookfab/ <p>It is perhaps asking a lot of human nature to present an extremely odd situation and then instruct people not to express opinions about it. </p> https://youlookfab.com/welookfab/topic/ot-article-about-gender-neutral-baby#post-354966 Tue, 24 May 2011 18:12:31 +0000 mrseccentric 354966@https://youlookfab.com/welookfab/ <p>hi Melissa! Greg has been prompt and very helpful when i had a technical question - you can send him a note here:</p> <p><a href="http://youlookfab.com/contact-us/" rel="nofollow">http://youlookfab.com/contact-us/</a></p> <p>i think you were brave to start a discussion on such a hot-button topic! as i said, my family is full of eccentrics of various types, so we've grown thick skins i'm sorry you feel badly about your thread.</p> <p>i hope the rest of your day goes more smoothly! steph </p> https://youlookfab.com/welookfab/topic/ot-article-about-gender-neutral-baby#post-354932 Tue, 24 May 2011 17:18:00 +0000 Melissa 354932@https://youlookfab.com/welookfab/ <p>As I said above, I've deleted the text of my original post as I don't feel good about the direction our discussion has taken. My apologies. If anyone knows how I can close or delete this thread, let me know. Thank you. </p> https://youlookfab.com/welookfab/topic/ot-article-about-gender-neutral-baby#post-354918 Tue, 24 May 2011 16:48:19 +0000 Patty 354918@https://youlookfab.com/welookfab/ <p>I read this article on Saturday--all I could do was roll my eyes and say--Toronto--it figures LOL! </p> https://youlookfab.com/welookfab/topic/ot-article-about-gender-neutral-baby#post-354852 Tue, 24 May 2011 15:28:15 +0000 mrseccentric 354852@https://youlookfab.com/welookfab/ <p>hi airin! most people have normal genitalia and are clearly male or female. but some people have organs that don't fit into normal categories due to various hormonal troubles during pregnancy or in puberty. in addition, not all people have only two sex chromosomes, some have more and this can cause various troubles including with development of the reproductive system and external genitalia. here's an intro article:</p> <p><a href="http://tinyurl.com/3nudrsq" rel="nofollow">http://tinyurl.com/3nudrsq</a></p> <p>you can also search for 'intersex'. hope this helps, steph </p> https://youlookfab.com/welookfab/topic/ot-article-about-gender-neutral-baby#post-354851 Tue, 24 May 2011 15:28:13 +0000 Melissa 354851@https://youlookfab.com/welookfab/ <p>I will chime back in when I've had a chance to thoroughly read all these posts, but PLEASE let's keep this discussion limited to our thoughts about gender, and not stray into judging the choices of others. I'm a little worried by the tone this thread has taken, although I really appreciate the thoughtful comments that have been made. </p> https://youlookfab.com/welookfab/topic/ot-article-about-gender-neutral-baby#post-354845 Tue, 24 May 2011 15:19:42 +0000 mrseccentric 354845@https://youlookfab.com/welookfab/ <p>thank you for starting this interesting discussion Melissa! my family is full of 'non-gender-normative' people going back a few generations, so it's always been an interesting topic to me. hormones influence us, but all those societal messages do a lot of the work in turning us into 'boys' or 'girls'.</p> <p> it's strange to me personally since mentally and emotionally i'm more stereotypically male, but my body is so stereotypically feminine that a lot of people just don't notice how 'manly' my thinking is (thinking in pictures, very good with moving shapes in 3-D space mentally, not too keen on discussing feelings ad nauseum, etc.). sometimes they do notice and then you can see them deciding to forget about it as quickly as possible. the same hormones that my brain soaked in gave me this 'bombshell bod', which makes me suspicious as to how different the sexes really are behind it all. but that's just my own experience.</p> <p>i've also seen parents force children to conform to societal ideas about gender, schooling, career choice, and so on with very unhappy results, so i'm not so ready to judge these parents. it IS very interesting to take a step back, as it were, and see how much we see others thru the 'gender filter' now and then! steph </p> https://youlookfab.com/welookfab/topic/ot-article-about-gender-neutral-baby#post-354843 Tue, 24 May 2011 15:14:36 +0000 Irene 354843@https://youlookfab.com/welookfab/ <p>Maybe I'm very conservative here, but you can't avoid being the sex you are unless you have surgery, and even then, it sort of comes through. Let's face it, a transexual person may feel male or female, but they still look the sex they were born with. You may feel like a woman and have breast implants, but if you were born a man, there is no way you can be shorter, have narrower shoulders, a slim waist, big hips, soft facial features and a vagina. And ok, I know that there are some tall women with broad shoulders, no waist, slim hips and strong facial features, but that's not the rule, and even then, they look like women because they are. I think you cannot desexualize someone for two reasons: one, sex is obvious sooner or later hen we grow up, two, we are an extremely sexualized society so we DO care about sex, and a lot. Now, gender is something different, but it is something that lies within the person, not the physical appearance. I'm ok with giving boys some dolls, and not dressing girls in super sweet and pink dresses, because it's good to break with stereotypes, but by telling someone the sex of child you are not giving in to stereotypes. And I think the question of 'is it a girl or a boy?' comes mainly because we have two different personal pronouns to refer to people, and English actually has the pronoun 'it', which you guys use for babies and dogs, but Spanish doesn't have such thing, so even dogs, furniture pieces and cities have gender. My cat is a female and people refer to it/her as 'gata', whereas if she/it happened to be a male cat, they would talk of her/it as a 'gato'. It's this plain and simple. Not telling people the sex of the baby is actually making it harder for people to talk about the baby. So what, when s(he) becomes ten years old, they will refer to her/him as 'it'? As in, 'oh, Storm? it's a great person'. That's just ridiculous to me, and it's nothing compared to the identity issues a kid may happen to suffer from just because he or she is denied a sex and is different from the rest of the kids. And it's still a lost battle, because Storm WILL know his or her sex, because kids become aware of their genitals at an early age, and become aware of the other's genitals at an early age as well, and what will happen when he or she asks for certain toys or clothes? Will they deny him or her this or that because he or she is falling to the stereotypical roles? Silly. Someone said they didn't want to know their child's sex until it was born, and I think that's up to the parents, and there's nothing wrong in waiting, but I guess that if you are planning everything ahead -including names- it's reasonable that you would want to know the child's sex so you can think of appropriate names for it. It just happens to be that Personal Names are the most sexualized ones, and even though you can always call your kid 'Storm' or 'Tree', the truth is that names like 'Mary', 'Johnattan' or ' Jesus' are extremely 'genderized' and if you try to change that and call your boy 'Mary', wait and see what happens when he hits school and everybody starts making fun of him. </p> https://youlookfab.com/welookfab/topic/ot-article-about-gender-neutral-baby#post-354840 Tue, 24 May 2011 15:06:08 +0000 Tessera 354840@https://youlookfab.com/welookfab/ <p>It's always interesting when people conduct extreme experiments on children, based on their own theories of humanity. In this particular case, the baby is surrounded and raised by people who do know its gender and that is going to affect their interactions with it. Keeping its gender secret from the rest of the world just makes it a curiosity<br /> and dehumanizes "it." And I'm really not sure how one would convince a 3 year old not to tell anyone whether it is a boy or girl without making it feel there was something wrong with its own gender, especially since the older siblings are allowed to self-identify as boys. Or are they planning not to tell Storm what gender it is? I'm not sure why these people are so terribly afraid of gender identity. It would be fascinating to follow the developments in this story and see how it all turns out. </p> https://youlookfab.com/welookfab/topic/ot-article-about-gender-neutral-baby#post-354834 Tue, 24 May 2011 14:53:08 +0000 Isis 354834@https://youlookfab.com/welookfab/ <p>To get back to the original poster, Melissa's point, which was not to get into a discussion of the family, but rather a discussion of defined genders.....</p> <p>I had no clue how much gender influences how we raise children until I had two of my own, one boy, one girl. </p> <p>First, I'd like to say, good luck to DanaLynn in finding gender-neutral clothing! Children's clothing is extremely gender-specific, much more than adult clothing! My son, as a preschooler, decided that pink was his favorite color, especially hot pink. While you can find pink shirts for men, there are NO pink clothes for boys, zero. He wore his cousin's hand-me-down pink pants every single day until they completely wore out. He outgrew the pink clothes when he went to kindergarden and must have realized that boys don't wear pink. My daughter liked frilly dresses as a preschooler which were easy to find (I got them at thrifts so she could play in the sand and mud in them).....Now they are teenagers and both dress in sort of a grunge style. I've always let my kids choose their own styles and clothes.</p> <p>Second, it floored me how much responses to clothes little girls receive. When my girl wore her frilly dresses to preschool, all of the teachers, fellow parents, etc, would exclaim, "Don't you look pretty!". Of course she loved it. There was nothing that my son could wear that would elicit that kind of attention and response.</p> <p>It was interesting. Made me realize that the cultural forces that shape gender are so strong and so pervasive that they shape even the gender-neutral, feminist,liberal circles that I travel in....... </p> https://youlookfab.com/welookfab/topic/ot-article-about-gender-neutral-baby#post-354824 Tue, 24 May 2011 14:34:39 +0000 Anonymous 354824@https://youlookfab.com/welookfab/ <p>Really. They should, by all means, raise and empower their child to be the anti-girl or the anti-boy and buck stereotypes, but this gender neutral stuff? Unrealistic in the long term. What does "gender neutral" look like on a first-grader, anyway? Who gets to define that look? </p> <p>And gee, wouldn't it be nice if we could all camouflage our skin color in order to be racially neutral, as well? Think of all the people being subjected to racial stereotypes and prejudices. There are worse things to endure in society than being a white male or female. </p> <p>As Modgrl said, if they believe in this so much ... why aren't THEY the ones taking on gender neutral identities? </p> https://youlookfab.com/welookfab/topic/ot-article-about-gender-neutral-baby#post-354775 Tue, 24 May 2011 13:33:16 +0000 modgrl 354775@https://youlookfab.com/welookfab/ <p>I feel sad for the baby for being subjected to this. If the parents want to know what it's like to be gender neutral, they should try this experiment on themselves.This child is going to grow up not knowing how to interact with his peers and not being able to fit into any social group. Growing up is difficult and painful enough without being subjected to this extra and unnecessary stress. </p> https://youlookfab.com/welookfab/topic/ot-article-about-gender-neutral-baby#post-354746 Tue, 24 May 2011 12:28:27 +0000 krishnidoux 354746@https://youlookfab.com/welookfab/ <p>"Gender" as a fix, inmutable identity is a constructed modern notion. Stems largely from the 18th century's obsession of classifying everything into categories (encyclopedias...). Before then women were not viewed as a separate gender but as a lesser man: weaker, smaller, less intelligent. </p> <p> Later in 19th century gender became more "clinical". Classifying people under one or the other gender became a thing for doctors and was being used in Europe as mass control tools : solidify the family cell structure which supported the existing regimes; and benefiting military by better defining the soldier, i.e. establishing criteria for being male as opposed to female. </p> <p>Somebody could be "more" male, "more" female... or on the flip side "less" male or female... buzz words of the times: virility, femininity, hysteria (an illness that supposedly came from the uterus), etc.</p> <p>In reality there is a diversity of genders. Our sexuality is largely determined by hormones...and there are so many different possible mixes. But our view is still very backward, very dualistic: you are to be male or female, with the point of reference being the male. The victims of this are those who fall in between clear categories. They become rejected by our rigid society, viewed as defective or monstrous. That helps explain our own subconscious attitudes. We tend to direct our children in one direction or the other by fear of them falling in between categories and suffering. So it's not that we are bad, at least not totally: we are only responding to a collective brain wash and trying to give the best to our offspring. </p> <p>Judith Butler. Impossibly difficult read. Unsettling, even. But very interesting. </p> https://youlookfab.com/welookfab/topic/ot-article-about-gender-neutral-baby#post-354691 Tue, 24 May 2011 06:24:23 +0000 DanaLynn 354691@https://youlookfab.com/welookfab/ <p>They are extreme but I know how they feel. My husband and I have been discussing this and whether we want to know our children's gender before they are born. Rationally we feel like it shouldn't make a difference. Emotionally though...I think it would help with bonding. We'veagreed that we will have gender neutral nursery and clothing until they are old enough to make their own minds up. At the same time if grandma bought something over the top girly or boyish we would still wear it. </p> <p>I think that children should be free to be children, but I also think shielding them entirely from the nature of our society is not helpful. It's a careful line to walk and I am sure everyone finds their own way. It was an interesting article! </p> https://youlookfab.com/welookfab/topic/ot-article-about-gender-neutral-baby#post-354660 Tue, 24 May 2011 03:39:25 +0000 Kate 354660@https://youlookfab.com/welookfab/ <p>It's amazing how much our interactions with others (both children and adults) are shaped by what we think their gender is. Kids pick this up pretty quickly too - in kindergarten a boy told me that I couldn't have red as my favorite color because red is the color of blood and fire (which apparently are things that only boys like). That night I decided hot pink would be my new favorite color. </p> <p>My boyfriend and I have even talked about how gendered our interactions with our cats are. Jack is dominant, likes to play rough, and when something is new or scary he gets mad at us. Lui is small and fragile, lets her brother boss her around, and when something is new or scary she comes to us to protect her. They both respond to high pitched voices, but only Jack likes to be talked to in low or raspy voices. The ways that we talk to, cuddle, call, and reprimand the cats are all very gendered. It's hard to know how much of this is our way of best interacting with each of our cats based on their personalities, and how much is us projecting genders onto them or if maybe they were in some way socialized to behave differently. </p> <p>Either way, we've decided that our extremely gendered interactions with the cats are ok, but not something we want to every perpetuate with children. Little girls (even when wearing pink and purple dresses) benefit from being told how big, strong, and powerful they are, and little boys benefit from being told how beautiful and caring they are. </p> https://youlookfab.com/welookfab/topic/ot-article-about-gender-neutral-baby#post-354643 Tue, 24 May 2011 02:55:35 +0000 Maya 354643@https://youlookfab.com/welookfab/ <p>Gender is a fascinating subject to me, and I could go on about it forever. But I won't.</p> <p>But this reminds me of a documentary I watched about <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer">David Reimer</a> (warning: it's a really sad story).</p> <p>Also of the second act of this episode:</p> <p><a href="http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/220/testosterone" rel="nofollow">http://www.thisamericanlife.or.....stosterone</a> </p> https://youlookfab.com/welookfab/topic/ot-article-about-gender-neutral-baby#post-354640 Tue, 24 May 2011 02:47:42 +0000 Melissa 354640@https://youlookfab.com/welookfab/ <p>I've deleted the text of my original post as I don't feel good about the direction our discussion has taken. My apologies. If anyone knows how I can close or delete the thread, let me know. Thank you. </p>