April 3, 2018

"For a small but growing cohort of parents — ones who see gender as a spectrum rather than a binary — the unisex movement of the ’60s and the 'gender neutral' parenting trends that have followed have come up woefully short."

"For them, society’s gender troubles cannot be solved by giving all children dolls and trucks to play with or dressing them all in the color beige; the gender binary must not simply be smudged but wholly eradicated from the moment that socialization begins, clearing the way both for their child’s future gender exploration and for wholesale cultural change.... 'I knew that I wanted to parent like this years before I ever got pregnant'.... The point was not to have a genderless child but one who comes to an understanding of their gender — whatever it might be — in an environment where colors and objects and activities are not slotted into the arbitrary and binary categories of 'girl' and 'boy'... 'We were just like, Let’s make it look like a rainbow exploded in this house,' Myers explains of wanting to provide Zoomer with all available options, rather than limiting options to those deemed to be gender neutral....

"Parents do not shy away from describing body parts, but are quick to let children know that 'some people with penises aren’t boys, and some people with vaginas aren’t girls,' as one mom told me.... Once Jacobs, whose partner identifies as nonbinary, selected a day-care provider, she sent an email further explaining her stance and asking that the caregivers — who would certainly be changing Scout’s diapers — not share Scout’s anatomy with anyone else. 'It was a little hard at first,' says Jenny Lee, who was one of Scout’s teachers. 'Not because we had any sort of philosophical challenge with it — we were really behind what they were doing — just because of the grammar.'...

"A common fear among gender-open parents, then, is that their family will be isolated, cut off from people for whom interacting would require just too much cognitive work. 'It has been challenging,' says Jacobs.... 'I just think parenting in general is a social experiment,' says Myers. 'That said, I just don’t think I could ever parent my child within a binary. So, like, is this an experiment? I don’t know.'... 'Zoomer is going to have a gender,' Myers says. 'They are going to let us know what their gender is, and it will probably happen when they’re 3 or 4. And we can all just get onboard, you know.... But now that we are parenting this way, it’s actually very possible that Zoomer will be gender nonconforming because we are not raising them to conform to a binary gender.' One of the most nuanced pushbacks Jacobs has encountered is the point that they/them actually is a gender identity for some people and that by using it, she is in fact assigning a gender to which her child may not relate...."

From "It’s a Theyby! Is it possible to raise your child entirely without gender from birth? Some parents are trying" (New York Magazine).

ADDED: Some cruel science experiments that were performed on children.

117 comments:

sparrow said...

Experimenting on children is vile.

Marty Keller said...

The utopian assault on reality continues unabated and unabashed.

FWBuff said...

This is child abuse.

Henry said...

"Small but growing" is good cover.

Rob said...

Naming one's child "Zoomer" also pigeonholes the child, perhaps as a future hippy-dippy weatherman. The child may figure out its gender identity by 3 or 4, but the goofiness of its name will persist.

Fernandinande said...

It'd be more fun to make Zoomer skeletal nonconforming by not raising him to conform to skeletons to which Zoomer may not relate.

"Oh mummy! I have 3.7 fingers on one hand, and 6.1 fingers on the other hand, and 1.3 fingers on the other hand!"

rhhardin said...

Wm. Kerrigan: We are men and women. It almost always matters which we are. Men and women are aggressive. Their regard for each other is clouded by grudges, suspicions, fears, needs, desires, and narcississtic postures. There's no scrubbing them out. The best you can hope for is domestication, as in football, rock, humor, happy marriage, and a good prose style. Jokes trade on offensiveness; PC is not a funny dialect. The unconscious is a joker, a sexist and aggressive creature. Our sexuality has always been scandalous.

Raritan XI:3 p.103.

David Begley said...

Can I just say that this is completely insane?

mockturtle said...

Looney-Tunes.

Unknown said...

It is also possible to raise children in a moralless and standards-free environment, where right and wrong are fluid and have no concrete meaning.

I wouldn't try that, either.

zipity said...

What a great display of unrecognized mental illness masquerading as enlightenment.

Truly delusional.

Ignorance is Bliss said...

They are going to let us know what their gender is, and it will probably happen when they’re 3 or 4. And we can all just get onboard, you know...

How will they know what their gender is? You are teaching them that gender has no correlation with genitalia, nor with fashion, nor with preferred toys, nor with whatever roles they may wish to play in later life.

Okay, maybe your kid is way smarter than you, and will figure out that they should be the same gender as the kids around them with whom they most associate. Why would you be okay with that? Those other kids only got their gender based on all the indicators that you reject! If those indicators are worth rejecting, then why are you accepting them second-hand?

chuck said...

And then there were those parents who took Walden II seriously and wanted to raise their children according to the prescription. Hey, someone had to discover which mushrooms were edible and which poisonous. Thank G*d for idiots.

David Docetad said...

Hard to improve on the first three comments. But I'll try: Evil.

madAsHell said...

'I just think parenting in general is a social experiment,' says Myers. 'That said, I just don’t think I could ever parent my child within a binary. So, like, is this an experiment? I don’t know.'... 'Zoomer is going to have a gender,'

A social experiment?? You want to hand your kid off to society, and hope for the best. Good luck, Zoomer.

Michael K said...

Crazy parents are do slowly, what this lesbian couple did at 90 mph.

Authorities said they believe the three were in the car with their siblings, Markis, 19, Jeremiah, 14, and Abigail, 14, and their parents, Jennifer and Sarah Hart, both 38, when their GMC Yukon dropped 100 feet onto the rocky Mendocino County shore off Highway 1 near Juan Creek.

The fatal plunge appears to have been intentional based on the lack of skid marks and the fact that the vehicle was at a full stop before accelerating off the cliff, the California Highway Patrol said Monday.

Though the investigation is in its preliminary stages, it appears the SUV had stopped about 70 feet from the cliff's edge, then sped off it, the CHP said.

The vehicle's speedometer was "pinned" at 90 mph when investigators found it, but it could have been stuck there for any host of reasons and it does not indicate that the car was traveling at that speed when it crashed, the CHP said.


Mental illness seems to be winning.

DKWalser said...

If we try to force homosexuals or transexuals to conform to traditional gender roles, we're told that we do untold harm to these individuals -- as witnessed by their suicide rates. To avoid this harm, we need to allow them to be true to their natural selves and we need to affirm who they are. So far, so good.

For the overwhelming majority of people -- something like 90% who are born into the world -- who are not homosexual, transexual, or in anyway 'confused', we're supposed to believe that it's healthy to encourage these people (particularly the men with all their toxic masculinity) to be untrue to their natural selves? That is, homosexuals and transexuals have innate gender characteristics, but for the rest of us, gender is nothing but a malleable social construct that we can alter without fear of consequence?

I cannot hold both of these beliefs in my mind at the same time. I should have stayed in school another couple of years, I guess.

Fernandinande said...

Like other young boys of his era, Franklin Roosevelt wears a dress.

WK said...

Maybe Theyby, I'll have you
Maybe Theyby, you'll be true
Maybe Theyby, I'll have you for me (all for me)
It's funny honey, you don't care
You never listen, to my prayer
Maybe Theyby, you will love me some day (someday)

MadisonMan said...

First World Problems. I'm grateful, I guess, that these parents can feed and clothe and shelter their kids. If that were more difficult, maybe they'd spend less time on this silly notion of genderless kid-raising.

I Have Misplaced My Pants said...

A common fear among gender-open parents, then, is that their family will be isolated, cut off from people for whom interacting would require just too much cognitive work.

Most normals avoid high-maintenance insane zealots, so this is a reasonable fear, but not for the reasons they think.

Gahrie said...

Jesus fucking Christ...this is insanity!

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

Well, if you have nothing better to do...

It all boils down to the fact that affluence bores the shit out of some people. They don't know it but, like the cheering crowds of 1914, these people crave war and disaster.

Krumhorn said...

Zoomer and Scout will turn out to be supremely f*kd up critters. I would make sure that school safety officers keep a close eye on them and inspect their backpacks daily.

Just kidding. There’s no evidence to suggest that school shooters are the consequence of bad parenting.

- Krumhorn

pdug said...

@skwalser I was thinking the other day that that Swedish school that makes girls yell and boys massage feet is just a nicer sounding version of gay conversion therapy using electro shock to get a gay boy to stop thinking about how cute other boys are.

mockturtle said...

That is, homosexuals and transexuals have innate gender characteristics, but for the rest of us, gender is nothing but a malleable social construct that we can alter without fear of consequence?

You've got them on the ropes, DKWalser. ;-)

pdug said...

@Dkwalser I was thinking the other day that that Swedish school that makes girls yell and boys massage feet is just a nicer sounding version of gay conversion therapy using electro shock to get a gay boy to stop thinking about how cute other boys are.

NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...

Rob said...
Naming one's child "Zoomer" also pigeonholes the child, perhaps as a future hippy-dippy weatherman. The child may figure out its gender identity by 3 or 4, but the goofiness of its name will persist.

Nah, they'll just do like director Duncan Jones (nee Zowie Bowie) and legally change their name to something 'normal' when they get older.

Anonymous said...

Human nature is immutable. These foolish young parents will find that out eventually.

W.B. Picklesworth said...

It's definitely nuts, yes. But more important than this utopian experimentation is the love they actually show to their kids. If those kids are loved they'll turn out okay. Maybe confused, but okay.

stevew said...

An earlier post referenced a bunch of parents that after having kids decided they didn't really want kids. Now we read about these child-abusing ninnies that had kids but aren't satisfied with the gender choices. I'd like to see society identify these people are before they actually have kids so that they can be prevented for having kids.

-sw

traditionalguy said...

Fifty shades of insanity . Mad Magazine had no idea how mad the educated idiots could become. But it is a myth.

Lance said...

The Simpsons covered the topic in 1991:

The Monroe Box(youtube)

DUSTER said...

We have gone from "spare the rod , spoil the child" to an infant will decide what color I paint my house.

Rick said...

I just think parenting in general is a social experiment,' says Myers.

There's a word for people who experiment on people unable to consent.

"A common fear among gender-open parents, then, is that their family will be isolated, cut off from people for whom interacting would require just too much cognitive work.

How droll they transmute others' preferences into a fear of thinking. Whatever helps you justify your nuttiness.

gilbar said...

"It's definitely nuts, yes. But more important than this utopian experimentation is the love they actually show to their kids. If those kids are loved they'll turn out okay. Maybe confused, but okay."

yeah, but; Love Is... Never having to ask why they did this to you

roesch/voltaire said...

Parenting is always a challenge but you might want to check out the following video of get a more humane and rational approach to this emotional subject.
2:41
America Vs the Netherlands: Sex-Ed
The Netherlands may have a better way of approaching sex-ed

DKWalser said...

My wife's degree is in child development. In many of her classes, she'd been taught that much of gender roles were taught by society rather than required by biology. Our first two children convinced her this was bunk. Our daughter was born almost a year after our marriage. Our son came 16 months later (he was a surprise baby).

I was still in school and, in our married student apartment complex, they didn't do much in the way of baby showers for a 2nd child. So, our son played with the same toys his older sister had played with just a few months before. But he didn't play with them in the same way she did. Dolls and stuffed animals were stacked together to form forts from which he could launch an attack on some imaginary foe. His sister never used her dolls and stuffed animals in that way. It was almost as if they were a different kind of person.

My wife and I both know the difference between our single experience and some rigorous population study. Still, we also know that there is NOTHING but theory behind the notion that gender differences are imposed by society rather than biology. In all these years, there has been zero evidence gathered that supports that theory. All of the data gathered so far suggests that biology is overwhelmingly the largest factor in gender differences.

the 4chan Guy who reads Althouse said...

I'm just guessing here, but I think a lot of the people on 4chan grew up with all kinds of confusion and shit in their childhood. There wasn't any black and white, because sometimes white was black and sometimes black was white and you kinda had to make sense out of everything being gray.

But then there was good gray and bad gray, too, which you would think look the same, and all of a sudden what you see and what people tell you that you are seeing don't look anything alike. Then they started with all the rainbow shit and it just got more confusing.

And it's only getting more fucked up. If you decide when you're four that you are a girl even though you were born with a dick, what happens when you are fourteen and are getting hard-ons by looking at naked chicks on the internet? I mean, when I was four I couldn't even tie my own shoelaces, and I'm expected to make a choice about my gender?

At that age I thought it would be cool to eat nothing but candy, too, but no one was saying I could do that.

I don't hate on these people, some people are wired different and I wish them luck figuring their shit out. But these parents who want to be all woke and shit are just fucking with their kids' heads. Because if you tell four-year-old kids that two-plus-two doesn't always equal four then they sure as hell ain't going to understand math when they get older.

You have to wait until they're, like, studying algebra before you can start with that kind of shit. And when these kids grow up and are on 4chan then 4chan is going to be REALLY fucked-up.

Paddy O said...

gnostics

buwaya said...

Besides everything else, the obsession with language is particularly silly. There are whole language families that lack gender. I am a native speaker of an Austronesian, genderless language. There is no he or she in Tagalog, gender needs to be derived from context if at all. And this is the case for every language (nearly, the exceptions are very minor) native to SE Asia.

It is in fact an obstacle to learning a gendered language. And it is a very significant difficulty in making translations, where the translator into Tagalog often has to insert -something- to clarify gender where this matters.

You have hundreds of millions, approaching perhaps a billion native speakers of genderless languages living today. If a natural experiment is needed here, its been done and done, with thousands of years to change cultures, if this could make such a difference. The reality of these societies, present and historical, does not support the hypothesis.

Ann Althouse said...

@The Germans Have A Word For That

Uh... wrong account??

walter said...

At the job interview..
"So...uh..Zoomer...tell me how you might be a good fit for this position."

The Vault Dweller said...

I don't have kids. But if I did, I wouldn't let them play with other kids whom were taught by their parents that there is no basic boy/girl dichotomy. It seems extremely counter-productive to expose 5 year olds to stupid ideas like that. I think developing kids need concrete ideas to base their other abstractions and fine-tuning of those abstractions they create of the world. Now if the high school kid wants to hang out with genderless weirdo, that seems fine. By that age they can probably handle that some people are just weird, and you don't need to take what they say as a valid idea of how reality works.

Larry J said...

Still, we also know that there is NOTHING but theory behind the notion that gender differences are imposed by society rather than biology. In all these years, there has been zero evidence gathered that supports that theory. All of the data gathered so far suggests that biology is overwhelmingly the largest factor in gender differences.

"Wishing will make it so" doesn't apply to science.

Big Mike said...

Why is it that child protective services will remove children from a home after they've been allowed to walk two or three blocks to a playground by themselves, but children are not removed from these homes for poor parenting? Seems backwards to me.

Ron Winkleheimer said...

"Parents do not shy away from describing body parts, but are quick to let children know that 'some people with penises aren’t boys, and some people with vaginas aren’t girls,'

This is an example of what is commonly called a lie. Also, people live within a society. Some of society's rules may be arbitrary, but conforming to those rules is necessary if you do not want to be ostracized. Pink for girls and blue for boys may be a social construct, but its not pernicious. Some other societal rules that you may not realize are arbitrary (at least if you don't believe in objective morality)

a) Denying women the vote is bad
b) Racism is bad
c) Democracy is preferable to autocratic rule by tyrants
d) Non-consensual torture is bad
e) Consensual torture is good (well some people believe this)
f) Slurping loudly while eating noodles is bad (unless you are in Japan, then it is good)
g) Chewing food with your mouth open and making loud smacking noises is bad
h) Eating mashed potatoes and pudding by placing your mouth in a bowl and licking them up while snorting like a pig is bad, if done in public

Also, what, exactly, is the mechanism that allows a woman's mind in a man's body and vice-versa? Is there some kind of mind/body dualism going on here? Is there a immaterial spirit or soul involved? Am I bad person for thinking these people are nitwits who didn't get sufficient attention from there parental units?

Ignorance is Bliss said...

Ann Althouse said...
@The Germans Have A Word For That

Uh... wrong account??


Accounts are non-binary. Who are we to judge how they self-identify?

Fernandinande said...

"Some cruel science experiments that were performed on children."

Even worser than kids beating-up clown dolls!

buwaya said...

It is interesting to compare texts of Rizals writings, all in Spanish, with translations into Tagalog. These (in Tagalog) are required reading in the national curriculum, and the Spanish versions were often assigned in the once-required Spanish lessons.

Spanish is of course highly gendered and poetry often makes use of this. The results of translation are interesting.

Ann Althouse said...

How are you growing up freer if your parents are making your life exceedingly weird by telling other people that they need to remember to use different grammar when they speak about you (at least in front of you) and the other kids are supposed to learn to speak about you as if you're more than one person?

If they really wanted to leave more to the child (as opposed to grab glory for themselves), they'd just keep everything as low key as possible. The main gendered thing I'd like to get people to stop doing is all that squealing over signs of gender normality — as in "My girl is a girly girl" and "My boy is such a boy" and "Oh, she loves pink!" and blah blah blah.

Just stop talking about your kids so much and let them express to you who they are. Say less. Don't make a fetish out of not talking about anything gender-related, but just, in general, stop being so pushy and so delighted with what you imagine is your luck in getting a gender-normal child. It's not virtuous to preen and bully like that. Don't be so eager and nervous about getting your idea of a good life for yourself.

Karen of Texas said...

Why must they use "they/them"? We have a pronoun that is genderless. "It/its" is perfectly acceptable if you want to refer to someone without pigeonholing them by biology. Quit trying to force me to use they/them inappropriately. Unless you're a Sybil, you are only an It and not a They.

Gahrie said...

Just stop talking about your kids so much and let them express to you who they are. Say less.

Isn't one of the most important jobs of a parent to teach and guide their children how to be a good, productive, hopefully happy, person?

NotWhoIUsedtoBe said...

#1 on the list seems to prove the case that sexual identity can't be assigned by society. IE, that transgender people are right when they say they are a different gender!

I agree with Althouse, except that when you leave values out of your parenting the culture raises your children. They absorb what you don't provide from school and media. It's not the child's ideas that I worry about. It's the mute reinforcement of what they bring home.

I don't mind adult children thinking whatever they want. What I mind is an adult that hasn't learned to think for themselves. That means I need to teach them that what they hear at school, or on the internet, isn't always true.

Gospace said...

Reading the rants of the mentally ill is getting tiresome.

There's male and female, boys and girls. With such an incredibly small number of actual hermaphrodites that they can be treated as special cases. No need to change the world to accommodate them.

buwaya said...

A genderless Austronesian language native to the US - Hawaiian. My wife is learning Hawaiian, just one of her hobbies.

The genderless personal pronoun is ia - compare to Tagalog siya.

Hawaiian seems easier on the whole than Tagalog, which is one of the more complex languages of that family.

So you have a red, white and blue alternative, should you choose to take it. Makes more sense than mangling English.

Ignorance is Bliss said...

Ann Althouse said...

Don't be so eager and nervous about getting your idea of a good life for yourself.

How about being happy that my child will not have a huge stumbling block placed in their way? If my child had a physical deformity of their face ( such that society perceived them as deformed, even if it did not limit their physical abilities ) I would love them every bit as much as I currently do, and I would do everything in my power to help them overcome the difficulties that they would face. But I am quite happy that they have not had to deal with that.

Ron Winkleheimer said...

If they really wanted to leave more to the child (as opposed to grab glory for themselves), they'd just keep everything as low key as possible.

Professor Althouse nails it. The kid is being used as a macguffin.

"MacGuffin (noun)
an object or device in a movie or a book that serves merely as a trigger for the plot."

The parents are the real "stars" of the movie.

walter said...

h) Eating mashed potatoes and pudding by placing your mouth in a bowl and licking them up while snorting like a pig is bad, if done in public
--
There's a word for that in Austronesian

Ron Winkleheimer said...

The genderless personal pronoun is ia

How is it pronounced? eye-awe? And more importantly if I use it will it be cultural appropriation?

NotWhoIUsedtoBe said...

A larger issue for me is how many people on the internet seem to follow the wave of whatever is trending. You get the same opinion from millions of people who didn't have an opinion before. That's terrifying. I get the impression that there are very few people who have genuine convictions, and the rest follow.

I don't like talking to people that simply repeat ideas that they picked up. If I can get the opinion somewhere else, or a thousand other places, what's the point of engaging with that person? It's pointless. I'd rather find the original source.

Christopher said...

Fifty years from now the modern transgender movement will be viewed with the same horror and contempt with which lobotomization currently is.

Oh there are people who genuinely suffer from gender dysphoria and the best treatment for them is open for debate, but this has gone well beyond that tiny percent of the population.

Hammond X. Gritzkofe said...

Seems like a good way to raise a child who will be well grounded in

Ron Winkleheimer said...

Two more arbitrary rules.. Eating Tide Pods is bad, unless it is posted as a challenge on youtube. Likewise with putting a condom up your nose and trying to pull it out of your mouth.

buwaya said...

ia - ee-ah

siya - syah - normally said as a single syllable.

buwaya said...

Snorting up mashed potatoes - kadiri

Manila Taglish "valley girl" - "kadiri to death!"

Ron Winkleheimer said...

Someday somebody will be running for congress or will be a Senator already, and footage of ia will be found doing the Tide Pod challenge or sticking a condom up ia (should there be a `s there?) nose. And nobody will care. In fact, it will probably revive the challenge. And at that point we will know that we have achieved full Idiocracy.

NotWhoIUsedtoBe said...

This might actually be good training for kids: what your parents teach you isn't always true, so think for yourself.

MayBee said...

Whats the point, people?

Anonymous said...

For them, society’s gender troubles cannot be solved by giving all children dolls and trucks to play with or dressing them all in the color beige; the gender binary must not simply be smudged but wholly eradicated from the moment that socialization begins, clearing the way both for their child’s future gender exploration and for wholesale cultural change

For them, it's not about being allowed to be total fruitcakes, it's about thuggishly forcing their delusional ideas on everyone else.
FIFT

Parents do not shy away from describing body parts, but are quick to let children know that 'some people with penises aren’t boys, and some people with vaginas aren’t girls,' as one mom told me

Parents routinely engage in linguistic matricide, attempting to destroy perfectly useful words to advance their psychotic political agenda.
FIFT

Once Jacobs, whose partner identifies as nonbinary, selected a day-care provider, she sent an email further explaining her stance and asking that the caregivers — who would certainly be changing Scout’s diapers — not share Scout’s anatomy with anyone else. 'It was a little hard at first,' says Jenny Lee, who was one of Scout’s teachers. 'Not because we had any sort of philosophical challenge with it — we were really behind what they were doing — just because of the grammar.'

Need to learn the name of that day care provider, so all sane people can avoid it

A common fear among gender-open parents, then, is that their family will be isolated, cut off from people for whom interacting would require just too much cognitive work.

A common fear among gender-open parents, then, is that their family will be isolated, cut off from sane people who don't want to be forced to pander to their insanity.
FIFT

If you claim to be Napoleon, you can (quite rightly) be put under involuntary psychiatric care to treat your delusion.

But, scientifically, we can not prove that you aren't the reincarnation of Napoleon, or of Joan of Arc.

But we can scientifically prove that you are male, or female. If you have a penis, and the majority of your cells have Y chromosomes, then you are male. If you have a vagina, and 90%+ of your cells do not have Y chromosomes, then you are female.

If your "feelings" are in conflict with that, your feelings are wrong. And if you insist on going with your feelings, rather than with reality, you are a psychologically damaged nut case, and should be treated as such.

Pandering to such delusions is deranged. Demanding that others pander to such delusions is evil

MD Greene said...

Only a very rich country without any guiding principles can afford to indulge this sort of silliness.

The antidote to this is children themselves. They arrive hard-wired, and they are very clear about who they are. Parenting is a matter of helping your child see how someone with her or his (not their!) personality and talents can succeed in the world.

Ambrose said...

Advocates of identity politics discover that every person is an individual.

walter said...

Pronoun-ciation guide

MayBee said...

If they really wanted to leave more to the child (as opposed to grab glory for themselves
T
That's just it.

The "modern" feminists used so much energy downplaying traditional motherhood, they need to make motherhood be a boutique, curated experience in order to make it special. And how does the progressive person show how special she is? By caring. Caring deeply. So you curate an experience for your child in which you can demonstrate how far you are willing to go to care. The more problems there are, the more you have to care, and the more you can demonstrate your capabilities under extreme circumstances.

Then you create a boutique environment for your child, so he never has to feel like he is just a Wal-Mart or Sears or JCPenney type kid. No. His existence is not for just anyone to be able to handle. Only you can really manage this. It's not just care taking like the old fashioned parenting. It is full time project management and you have to stay one step ahead of the competition.

I have a friend who is actually a wonderful person, but being around her when her child was little was just exhausting. Baby Emilia never just picked up a block at the children's museum. Baby Emilia explored the sensation of the smooth wood and chose the color that most spoke to her, exploring and comparing the shape she held in her had to those blocks she had rejected.
You know. Everything was analyzed as an experience.

Ron Winkleheimer said...

If all gender differences are social constructs with no biological basis at all the logical conclusion is that there are no genders. And if there are no genders, the concept of boy and girl, man and woman, are meaningless. Human Beings are unique among mammals in this regard.

Unknown said...

It seems like these parents are actually buying into far more overly restrictive gender roles than mainstream culture. "Does your girl like trucks? Then she isn't even a GIRL anymore!" What a narrow and boring definition of gender they seem to buy into.

The problem isn't biology - the problem may be our degraded culture and their sadly ordinary imaginations. Maybe kids raised on cartoons don't understand that girls aren't literally Barbies and boys aren't literally He-Man. They need to come up with some bullshit pseudoscience to explain their inability to fit themselves or their kids into the mold.

mockturtle said...

I think I was raised in a pretty 'gender neutral' home, at least until my teens. My brother and I played together outside most of the time, rock climbing, cowboys and indians and the like. I did play with paper dolls and such by myself and with my girl friends. My father made both my brother and me haul landscaping rocks and mow the lawn. He also taught us both how to fly fish. Never did I feel any less important or less capable than my brother.

n.n said...

Two biological sexes: male and female, two genders: masculine and feminine, and a gender (i.e. physical and mental traits) spectrum, including sexual orientation, where transgender individuals deviate significantly from the male/masculine and female/feminine correlations.

tcrosse said...

For my most grievous sins I was married for a few years to a 70's feminist who believed that it was possible to raise children in a non-gendered way. What was funny is that she thought the whole gender thing was a social construct, yet was a cauldron of boiling female hormones herself. Luckily we never had kids.

tim in vermont said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
mockturtle said...

Yes, as MayBee and others have observed, with these parents, it's all about THEM, not about their kids. Sad.

n.n said...

Men and women are equal in rights and complementary in Nature. Men and women can and should do the same things with rare exceptions that are motivated by the natural order (e.g. evolutionary fitness).

tim in vermont said...

It's not virtuous to preen and bully like that.

Oh, preening and bullying is a full time sport for some people.

Yancey Ward said...

What these parents are doing isn't gender neutral in the sense they believe it is. What they are doing is guiding their children into being ambivalent about it for a longer and longer time. I think if you want to raise a confused child and adolescent, these methods are exactly what you do as a parent. I believe gender dysphoria is a real thing, but it is likel a mental illness, and we are now progressing to manufacture increasing numbers of such people.

Bad Lieutenant said...

The main gendered thing I'd like to get people to stop doing is all that squealing over signs of gender normality — as in "My girl is a girly girl" and "My boy is such a boy" and "Oh, she loves pink!" and blah blah blah.

Just stop talking about your kids so much and let them express to you who they are. Say less. Don't make a fetish out of not talking about anything gender-related, but just, in general, stop being so pushy and so delighted with what you imagine is your luck in getting a gender-normal child. It's not virtuous to preen and bully like that. Don't be so eager and nervous about getting your idea of a good life for yourself.

4/3/18, 10:46 AM



Good talk, Mrs Mather. Ve must alvays remember zee first prinziple of Puritanism: No pleasure!

Anonymous said...

"For a small but growing cohort of parents..."

"Some people I know in my professional/social sphere, and a few other people they know."

There's been a "small but growing cohort of parents" with nutty ideas about gender, determined to overthrow the oppressive sex-role system so we can all be "free to be, you and me", for at least three generations now. Most members of the "small but growing cohort" in each generation wise-up and realize they are not the enlightened people who've figured out something every preceding generation missed, that they thought they were. The next generation again produces a "small but growing cohort", of the same size and class-composition, which gets pruned in the same way. Unfortunately, due to a variety of other social and cultural factors, in the next generation this "small but growing cohort" starts to exhibit, not just the ignorance, arrogance, and naïveté of the preceding "small but growing cohorts", but real social and mental pathologies (including the stark inability to recognize the incoherence of their own beliefs about "gender").

God knows what New York journalists are going to be reporting about their peer-groups in the next generation. ("A small but growing cohort have converted to Islam and adhere to strict sex-roles in their families and communities. They just couldn't take their own crazy anymore and needed some relief.)

walter said...

Mere innies and outies

buwaya said...

Saki (H.H. Munro) of course has something to say on a similar vein -

Toys of Peace

When my little girl was tiny, most of the toys about were her brothers, Lego and trains and airplanes and the like. She liked Lego but what she liked most was making daddy make things for her. And everything was organized in a girl manner - the 747 was a "mommy airplane".

langford peel said...

These people are mentally ill and should have their children removed by child protective services.

That is not to say that the government is any good as witness them giving six young black children to a lesbian couple that abused and murdered them.

There has to be strict oversight. Multilayer and redundant to catch out the deviants.

the 4chan Guy who reads Althouse said...

Althouse said
"@The Germans Have A Word For That
"Uh... wrong account??"

What's German for schizophrenia?

buwaya said...

As for glory -
Well of course there is glory in your kids.
Not much in the way of greater glory in this life really.

SGT Ted said...

Gender is binary and there is a broad spectrum within both. There are also mentally ill people who think they are what they are objectively not. Gender bending 72 flavors is an ideological social construct meant to justify and bolster a political movement based on alleging denied civil rights of people who claim that disagreeing with their ideology and rejecting their assertions about gender is "discrimination".

Mattman26 said...

Crazy Jane: "Only a very rich country without any guiding principles can afford to indulge this sort of silliness."

I take your point, but I'm not so sure we really can afford it. I realize (or at least hope) this is a really tiny fringe, but the west looks increasingly like a society trying its best to commit suicide.

wwww said...

"Baby Emilia never just picked up a block at the children's museum. Baby Emilia explored the sensation of the smooth wood and chose the color that most spoke to her, exploring and comparing the shape she held in her had to those blocks she had rejected."


That made me laugh. I know the type.

One of the best gifts we can give our kids, is Don't Be Crazy. Don't be neurotic, crazy Mom. Don't worry so much about gender, or producing the perfect "learning experience," or the colour of kid's clothing.

Have some fun with the kids.

buwaya said...

"but the west looks increasingly like a society trying its best to commit suicide. "

This is true. Its been going on for a while.
Most women do not need to be in the "workforce" and they shouldn't be.

Gahrie said...

Most women do not need to be in the "workforce" and they shouldn't be.

I agree. However the Left has spent decades telling women they are unfulfilled failures unless they do so.

California Snow said...

Life is difficult enough as it is. No need to make even more difficult. There exist, in fact, some things that are quite simple.

I Have Misplaced My Pants said...

It seems like these parents are actually buying into far more overly restrictive gender roles than mainstream culture. "Does your girl like trucks? Then she isn't even a GIRL anymore!" What a narrow and boring definition of gender they seem to buy into.

One of the most bizarre aspects of the transgender craze. My eldest daughter has a low-pitched voice, hates shaving her legs and often doesn't (much to my chagrin), loves science and math (750 math SAT score, thank you very much), hates talking about feelings, devotedly loves airplanes and plans to be a pilot, has zero interest in makeup, and has a wardrobe comprised of heavy metal t-shirts and jeans. She's had people at school ask if she's trans more than once. No, she's just a girl who isn't into traditional girl things who was raised to be indifferent to gender roles and just do what makes her happy. I thought we all decided there was nothing wrong with that?

SeanF said...

Karen of Texas: Why must they use "they/them"? We have a pronoun that is genderless. "It/its" is perfectly acceptable if you want to refer to someone without pigeonholing them by biology. Quit trying to force me to use they/them inappropriately. Unless you're a Sybil, you are only an It and not a They.

"They/them" has been the accepted gender-neutral singular pronoun in English for centuries, Karen. It's nothing new.

"It," on the other hand, is really inappropriate to use as a pronoun for a sentient person.

mockturtle said...

Have some fun with the kids.

Best advice ever! :-)

Ron Winkleheimer said...

she's just a girl who isn't into traditional girl things who was raised to be indifferent to gender roles and just do what makes her happy. I thought we all decided there was nothing wrong with that?

Apparently there wasn't enough graft and potential to ruin lives.

Jersey Fled said...

Somehow both of my daughters turned out to be girls.

Sebastian said...

Claiming that gender isn't binary shows that sanity is.

buwaya said...

"It," on the other hand, is really inappropriate to use as a pronoun for a sentient person."

True. Even in Austronesian languages there is a distinction between a personal pronoun and "it" - in Tagalog, "ito".

Though "ito" and its variants and compounds, etc., can also be used with respect to persons collectively, impersonally, amusingly and sometimes dismissively.

Michael K said...

Oh there are people who genuinely suffer from gender dysphoria and the best treatment for them is open for debate, but this has gone well beyond that tiny percent of the population.

My understand is that some end up gay and some end up normal with a very few changing gender.

Interestingly enough, the author of "Bourgeois Virtues," Deirdre McCloskey, is a transgender and a very successful one.

The Drill SGT said...

But more important than this utopian experimentation is the love they actually show to their kids. If those kids are loved they'll turn out okay

The Manson family was full of love also.

It didn't turn out well for some people...

Birches said...

Thank you Pants. I agree 100%

Burkemania said...

The problem with socialism is said to be that it takes too many evenings. The problem with the dadaist personal autonomy craze is that it takes up every morning, evening, or night. There's no time left to be anything, build on anything, do anything except try to transcend what you were a millisecond ago, which is already confining.

ccscientist said...

It is hard enough to be a kid. These parents are making this kids life much harder. Men and women are fundamentally very different in almost every metabolic, anatomic, and behavioral dimension. Bone density, skull thickness, response to medications, ability to tolerate heat and cold, muscle strength, ability to spatially visualize. Everything. Medical treatments could especially suffer from dicking around and pretending you are something you are not.

These claims that gender is simply a cultural artifact ignore the remarkable uniformity of male and female traits across cultures and time, in spite of the inability of parents to enforce any other behavior that they would like their kids to do. If parents and society were that successful at cultural indoctrination, would there be criminals, drug addicts, or school drop outs? Would there be athiest children of religious parents (or the converse)?

bagoh20 said...

If my kid wants to crap in his pants and wear a diaper his whole life, who am I to tell him it's wrong? People are so hung up on old fashioned ideas of what's right and wrong. Let kids decide. They have all that experience and knowledge, and yet they are pure and unpolluted with culture, mores, and taboos.

bagoh20 said...

"They/them" only came into use to handle situations where the gender is unknown so that "him" or "her" could simply be wrong. It was always by necessity of accuracy, not choice to avoid it. In other words, it was the only way to avoid being incorrect. Using them when you know the sex, is just being purposefully imprecise, as is the whole gender-less idea. We don't say that 2 + 2 could equal anything, becuase we know the truth, and doing so would just be wrong, no matter how 4 feels about it.

Unknown said...

Yes please more of this! Cram a round peg kid into a square hole and see what happens. When that kid rebels and establishes an independent identity - and they will - it will inevitably be structured around their biological imperative. Probably red-pills the kid too.

MaxedOutMama said...

Portlandia.

Karen of Texas said...

SeanF - The "it" was a bit of snark - inappropriate if one were to refer to a child and I would be loathe to target a child for the parents' idiocy - but I find it ridiculous that a singular person should be referred to as "they" when, as bagoh20 points out, in these cases "their" is a purposeful choice to avoid using "he" or "she". Not to mention it makes reading an article about an individual a study in confusion when referring to that individual in the plural form.

Yes, "they" has been used as a singular pronoun to refer to a person of unspecified gender since at least the 16th century; it really came in to vogue with the whole sexism of using "he" to refer to a person of either gender. Why, even the Catholic Church changed some of their prayers to remove the "inclusive" he. Women hate being referred to as "he" for some reason. And I have no problem using "they" where it follows an indefinite pronoun such as anyone, no one, someone, each, etc. I'm even okay with the usage after a singular, genderless noun - like "friend"; when you don't know the gender of the friend, what are you going to do? But reading, or speaking, "Sean is taking their dog to the vet" is not conveying a straight forward idea anymore. Is Sean taking HIS dog, or is Sean taking his and someone else's dog. Contrary to what this vanguard of fabulous parents who are raising amazing, non-gender-conforming, change-the-world kids might *feel*, "they" is not a specific individual.

TestTube said...

Eh, it could be argued that raising your kid in Brooklyn is a form of child abuse.

I was there a few weeks ago. Before we met family for dinner at a so-so Vietnamese restaurant, we killed a little time walking to Prospect Park. There is a playscape there -- not too bad, really, except there was only this one playscape for about a zillion kids, and I was thinking how rotten it would be that visiting this playscape would actually be a highlight in a kid's Sunday, which it obviously was for the zillion or so kids that were swarming it like rats in a scene out of Willard.

Walking from the park to the restaurant, we passed stacks and stacks of garbage bags. I don't think there was a garbage strike, I just think that the residents had put out their garbage over the weekend to be collected. It was too cold for it to stink much. Everyone just walked by like it was normal, so I guess it must have been.

Martin said...

Humans can be so stupid once they get a little (bad) education.

Animals are incapable of such delusions, only people can convince themselves of things that are completely and totally untrue and dysfunctional, and still survive until next morning. Natural selection and survival of the fittest takes care of any other animal that is this stupid.

Robert Marshall said...

We already have a perfectly adequate gender-neutral pronoun: "it."

Using "they" instead of "it" confuses the number of the subject of the sentence. "They" means the subject is more than one: "They are playing with blocks," when plainly it is only one kid, is a stupid way to talk. Just say "it is playing with blocks," if you don't want to reveal the sex of the kid, or to "influence" the kids thinking about its sexuality.

Don't try to make the rest of us sound like idiots, using "they" for one kid!