Do stick with this one because it just gets WEIRDER. Yeah, I know. Prepare for a strange journey here.
Here's the link to the article that I'm about to shred. You know, I looked the other way with Princess Boy in his tutu with his exploitative mother - you knew she was just using him. I didn't say anything about the woman putting pink toenail polish on her son for a magazine spread. People who said they saw a trend were shunned and tut-tutted. But you know what? I knew these people were trying to make a fucking point, and I WAS RIGHT. Let them defend THIS bullshit.
Parent's Keep Baby's Gender A Secret.
“So it’s a boy, right?” a neighbour calls out as Kathy Witterick walks by, her four month old baby, Storm, strapped to her chest in a carrier.
Ok. So far they might be a little eccentric and no more. Don't stop there.
Each week the woman asks the same question about the baby with the squishy cheeks and feathery blond hair.
Uh-huh. And it's early to tell unless you have access to his diapers. I get it.
Witterick smiles, opens her arms wide, comments on the sunny spring day, and keeps walking.
Yes, I read the title. Continue.
She’s used to it. The neighbours know Witterick and her husband, David Stocker, are raising a genderless baby. But they don’t pretend to understand it.
No one does. You know why? Because the baby is NOT genderless. The baby's sex was determined in the womb - males get XY chromosomes and undergo an androgen bath during the gestation that makes them male, brain and body. Females get XX chromosomes and no androgen, which makes them female, brain and body. A very very small percentage get mutated or faulty genes that render them sterile and give them XXY or XYY and intersexed genitalia. A small mutation that often comes with a heavy price. It has been the standard to chop off anything that looks male and raise them as females. This is based on LIES Dr. John Money told because he believed ALL males should be "gelded" at birth and because he botched a circumcision on a pair of identical male twins, causing one to lose his penis. He decided to go for broke and talked the family into castration and raising the boy as a girl, complete with hormones, vaginoplasty (well, he pushed for it but the child resisted the pervert's meddling - and yes, he was a pervert as well), dresses, female socialization and the whole deal. It was the perfect experiment because it came with a built-in control (the genetic clone, the identical twin who was a boy) and FINALLY they could prove once and for all that nurture, not nature, determines gender. As the feminists have always said.
The victim of this human experiment, David Reimer, spent his youth and early adulthood in a state of constant near-suicide, and his childhood knowing something was dreadfully, horribly wrong with him. Unlike some people, he did not blame his parents, who really only did the best they could and listened to self-appointed "experts" like Money, who were supposed to help the child. When he finally found out what had been done to him, he stopped taking female hormones, started taking male hormones, and switched identities to his original one as a male. The story became the subject of an excellent book, "As Nature Made Him". Anyone interested in the "fluidity" of gender needs to read that book.
Well, meet the new experiments in fluid gender identity. 3 innocent children, two boys and a we-don't-know. Well, at least no one's burning their penises off. Yet.
While there’s nothing ambiguous about Storm’s genitalia, they aren’t telling anyone whether their third child is a boy or a girl.
Yeah, we get it. Haha, big April Fool; if we don't tell, it didn't happen. Or something.
The only people who know are Storm’s brothers, Jazz, 5, and Kio, 2, a close family friend and the two midwives who helped deliver the baby in a birthing pool at their Toronto home on New Year’s Day.
Eventually the child might catch on, too. Except they're fucking with his head so bad, maybe he won't.
“When the baby comes out, even the people who love you the most and know you so intimately, the first question they ask is, ‘Is it a girl or a boy?’” says Witterick, bouncing Storm, dressed in a red-fleece jumper, on her lap at the kitchen table.
Yeah, they're usually being polite. If you want to play games, no one's gonna really give a shit. Play on.
“If you really want to get to know someone, you don’t ask what’s between their legs,” says Stocker.
And you thought *I* was classy with my F-bombs. That right there? That's REAL class. It doesn't occur to me to think about dicks or meat-curtains when I ask if a baby is a boy or girl, but you just MADE it ugly, thanks. Asshole.
When Storm was born, the couple sent an email to friends and family: “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? ...).”
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Their announcement was met with stony silence. Then the deluge of criticisms began. Not just about Storm, but about how they were parenting their other two children.
And THERE is the rub and the million dollar question. If it were merely a matter of not telling other people about the new baby and what its gender is, that wouldn't be much of a big deal. But the fact is they have two older boys who have been twisted like pretzels with this gender-bending shit, and THAT has their family and friends concerned.
It has me disgusted and horrified.
Allow me.
The grandparents were supportive, but resented explaining the gender-free baby to friends and co-workers. They worried the children would be ridiculed. Friends said they were imposing their political and ideological values on a newborn. Most of all, people said they were setting their kids up for a life of bullying in a world that can be cruel to outsiders.
All arguments that could actually be overcome, if you hadn't already fucked up your two older boys beyond recognition.
Witterick and Stocker believe they are giving their children the freedom to choose who they want to be, unconstrained by social norms about males and females. Some say their choice is alienating.
Yeah yeah, we've done this part - get to the older kids.
In an age where helicopter parents hover nervously over their kids micromanaging their lives, and tiger moms ferociously push their progeny to get into Harvard, Stocker, 39, and Witterick, 38, believe kids can make meaningful decisions for themselves from a very early age.
Yeah yeah, Stocker and Witterick are fools and assnuggets. Get on with it.
(FWIW babies can NOT make meaningful decisions for themselves. Happy to help.)
“What we noticed is that parents make so many choices for their children. It’s obnoxious,” says Stocker.
The irony of her calling other parents obnoxious. Oh boy.
Jazz and Kio have picked out their own clothes in the boys and girls sections of stores since they were 18 months old. Just this week, Jazz unearthed a pink dress at Value Village, which he loves because it “really poofs out at the bottom. It feels so nice.” The boys decide whether to cut their hair or let it grow.
Ahhh yes, there's nothing obnoxious about THAT, now, is there? Now how, pray tell, did these boys get the idea that overly feminine *stereotypes* like poofy pink dresses, are what they really really want? You know, I didn't make a deal out of gender either, and my son *and* my daughter liked to spend their time in comfortable jeans and cotton t-shirts for the most part. There are a majority of girls that you have to push if you ever wanted to see them in something pink, much less a poofy dress. I didn't bother but some people want it on special occasions. I guess I was a'doin' it all wrong - I should have put my SON in the dress and left my daughter in the jeans and T-shirt. Dresses are not acceptable for little girls, who are merely being taught to obey the oppressive patriarchy, but boys need to be...well damnit, they need to be GIRLS. Even if real girls aren't usually like that. The more stereotypical, the better.
Like all mothers and fathers, Witterick and Stocker struggle with parenting decisions. The boys are encouraged to challenge how they’re expected to look and act based on their sex.
The oldest is FIVE. Just WHO is "expecting" him to do anything? Only you moonbats, and YOU expect him to wear poofy pink dresses. Assholes.
“We thought that if we delayed sharing that information, in this case hopefully, we might knock off a couple million of those messages by the time that Storm decides Storm would like to share,” says Witterick.
What the fuck's the difference? Your oldest son has had five years of these alleged messages and he still wears dresses and does his hair like a girl. Obviously it didn't hurt him.
Or did it?
They don’t want to isolate their kids from the world, but, when it’s meaningful, talk about gender.
No, I'm sure you'd prefer the "boys" went out and evangelized for your moonbat gender-bending.
And heaven knows you don't put any messages into his head with every meaningful "talk" about gender that you have with him.
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.
These people apparently don't understand or appreciate politeness in strangers. Like I said, moonbats, they don't REALLY give a shit.
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.
I call bullshit. I know lots of mothers who don't LIKE pink or even blue. I like blue fine, but our daughter was very seldom in pink because I don't like it. She wore dresses of baby blue, white, forest green, black velvet with magenta trim, and deep crimson as an infant. My son wore nightgowns (kimonos, they called them) of white, baby patterns, yellow and green when he was a baby. Both wore one-piece sleepers frequently, or overalls with feet. Of denim, fluffy blue like the cookie monster, yellow, patterns, etc. Both wore baby sweatsuits of various patterns and colors. Hmm...looks like I'm the more liberal parent since as they got older I really did let them pick their own clothes (within reason) and never pushed a set of ideas on either one...which is why my son didn't wear pink tutus "by choice". No one wants to wear that shit.
“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.
Well it's a...nice...thought, but Storm already has a sex, and is either male or female, no matter how long you delay telling other people. We don't just get to snap our fingers and wish ourselves to be another gender.
But we'll know VERY soon if Storm is REALLY a boy or girl. If it wears lots of pink and dresses and grows its hair long into pigtails, it's a boy. If it dresses like a truck driver and sports a crew cut, it's a girl. Because that's what you're REALLY doing, and everybody knows it.
Yeah, I can imagine the look of horror on your face if you ever actually had a girl and she wanted to wear the pink poofy dress. (By the way, it's obvious by the fact you're doing this that he's a boy - a girl doesn't have to make excuses for wearing pants anymore.)
Stocker teaches at City View Alternative, a tiny school west of Dufferin Grove Park, with four teachers and about 60 Grade 7 and 8 students whose lessons are framed by social-justice issues around class, race and gender.
Big shocker there. What's ACTUALLY shocking is that people send their children to this monstrosity. Getcher leftist indoctrination here!
When Kio was a baby, the family travelled through the mountains of Mexico, speaking with the Zapatistas, a revolutionary group who shun mainstream politics as corrupt and demand greater indigenous rights. In 1994, about 150 people died in violent clashes with the Mexican military, but the leftist movement has been largely peaceful since.
Yes, a group of citizens in a declared war against their country since 1994. Images of Che Guevara dominate Zapata villages.
Last year, they spent two weeks in Cuba, living with local families and learning about the revolution. Witterick has worked in violence prevention, giving workshops to teachers. These days, she volunteers, offering breastfeeding support. At the moment, she is a full-time mom.
Hey! What do you MEAN staying home full time and breastfeeding? Don't you know you should let the MAN breastfeed and stay home full time while you go out and work for the bread? Otherwise you're being oppressed! Oh, you're too lazy to work; good for thee and not for me, eh? Yeah, I got it.
Both come from liberal families. Stocker grew up listening to Free to Be ... You and Me, a 1972 record with a central message of gender neutrality. Witterick remembers her brother mucking around with gender as a teen in the ’80s, wearing lipstick and carrying handbags like David Bowie and Mick Jagger.
DAMN, Marlo Thomas/That Girl. I was raised on the same shit, that album is the soundtrack to the early grades. Hey, I didn't know WHY I was feminist, I just knew I was. They didn't exactly explain their indoctrination. As for Bowie and Jagger...eh, no. I don't want to distract from your lovely narrative here. Pray go on.
The family lives in a cream-coloured two-storey brick home in the city’s Junction Triangle neighbourhood. Their front porch is crammed with bicycles, including Kio’s pink and purple tricycle.
Naturally. My daughter rode her trike many hours every day, until her thigh muscles were as strong as mine. It was dark red. So was my son's. But you're not trying to prove a point, oh heavens no.
Inside, it’s organized clutter. The children's arts and crafts projects are stacked in the bookcases, maps hang on the walls and furniture is well-used and of a certain vintage.
Well I'm sure you won't let them play with anything traditionally masculine, so what the hell else are they gonna do? They can't go toss a football or roll tonka trucks around, or Thomas the Tank Engine trains, as my son loved to do, right?
Let me break in here for a minute - I raised them the same and they were almost the same age. Toys were all shared in the beginning. (Until I wised up and started letting them OWN things individually.) The gajillion Thomas the Tank Engine incarnations around the house were played with quite differently by the children. While my son didn't care that they had faces and merely wanted to see wheels move and figure out how they worked, as well as stuff the compartment with toy cargo, my daughter had another way of imagining. She looked at the faces, and arranged the trains according to size. The biggest one was the daddy, the middle one was the mommy, and the little one was the baby. So then she played house. I did not direct this; I was actually kind of surprised to discover it. But boys and girls are different.
On a recent Tuesday, the boys finish making paper animal puppets and a handmade sign to celebrate their dad’s birthday. “I love to do laundry with dad,” reads one message.
So mom's home full time while dad works, but he still has to do the laundry. It's a woman's world! You men are just living in it. Oh, and you bring home that "money" stuff we need. Good, now scrub the floor and dream of a just society where we won't HAVE to "work" as you call it for that green stuff.
Yes, I know I already don't have to, but if YOU didn't have to you'd have more time to clean. Now shut up and finish the dishes.
Witterick practices unschooling, an offshoot of home-schooling centred on the belief that learning should be driven by a child’s curiosity. There are no report cards, no textbooks and no tests. For unschoolers, learning is about exploring and asking questions, “not something that happens by rote from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. weekdays in a building with a group of same-age people, planned, implemented and assessed by someone else,” says Witterick. The fringe movement is growing. An unschooling conference in Toronto drew dozens of families last fall.
I don't have anything against home or un-schooling, but let's wait until we find out WHY this family does it, considering dad is a teacher in a hippy-dippy school to begin with.
The kids have a lot of say in how their day unfolds. They decide if they want to squish through the mud, chase garter snakes in the park or bake cupcakes.
3 guesses which they usually choose. I mean, mom's home and she needs her SWEETS, dammit, so get baking already.
Daddy'll do the dishes when he gets home.
Jazz — soft-spoken, with a slight frame and curious brown eyes — keeps his hair long, preferring to wear it in three braids, two in the front and one in the back, even though both his parents have close-cropped hair. His favourite colour is pink, although his parents don’t own a piece of pink clothing between them. He loves to paint his fingernails and wears a sparkly pink stud in one ear, despite the fact his parents wear no nail polish or jewelry.
Oh REALLY? Well, isn't that surprising, I WONDER where he got the idea to start painting his nails and pierce his ear for the sparkly pretty things? I mean, considering they stay home, don't have peer influences, and basically spend their time with mom and dad?
Kio keeps his curly blond hair just below his chin. The 2-year-old loves purple, although he’s happiest in any kind of pyjama pants.
“As a result, Jazz and now Kio are almost exclusively assumed to be girls,” says Stocker, adding he and Witterick don’t out them. It’s the boys’ choice whether they want to offer a correction.
OUT them? That's an interesting choice of words. It's almost...not quite but almost...as if you WANT them to be transsexual and lop off their male parts to become women when they can.
And I bet you DID think the older sibling in the original picture was a girl, didn't you? Well, he looks, acts, and dresses like a stereotypical girl, why wouldn't you?
On a recent trip to High Park, Jazz, wearing pink shorts, patterned pink socks and brightly coloured elastics on his braids, runs and skips across the street.
Yeah, we get it. It's sickening.
**I** didn't traipse through the park looking like a Barbie reject in head-to-toe pink; I hated pink. In fact, I don't know any girls in SCHOOL who wore pink. So what's the deal with the pink and the idea that he's being feminine? He's not being feminine, he's being a stereotype.
“That’s a princess!” says a smiling crossing guard, ushering the little boy along. “And that’s a princess, too,” she says again, pointing at Kio with her big red sign.
Heh.
Jazz doesn’t mind. One of his favourite books is 10,000 Dresses, the story of a boy who loves to dress up.
I'm sure. So you already have books of indoctrination and that's where he got these ideas about pink and dresses and dressing up even though mom doesn't.
But he doesn’t like being called a girl.
You just said he doesn't mind. Figure it out before speaking to me, piker.
Recently, he asked his mom to write a note on his application to the High Park Nature Centre because he likes the group leaders and wants them to know he’s a boy.
Early signs of rebellion?
Jazz was old enough for school last September, but chose to stay home. “When we would go and visit programs, people — children and adults — would immediately react with Jazz over his gender,” says Witterick, adding the conversation would gravitate to his choice of pink or his hairstyle.
That’s mostly why he doesn’t want to go to school. When asked if it upsets him, he nods, but doesn’t say more.
And, the money quotes! She KNOWS it upsets him, and the whole thing is going against his grain, but he needs to please mom and dad, so he wears pink and pigtails and prances around like a filly. I mean, kids are rotten, they can make fun of another kid for anything or nothing, so I'm not complaining about that. But the need to please mom and dad is extremely powerful, and the way to please THESE barking moonbats is to go against your maleness and masculinity in any way possible - no wonder the kid picks stereotypical clothes instead of stuff ANY little girl would want - because it DOESN'T come natural, it ISN'T what he really wants, and he's acting to please parents who make it clear they would like him to act like a girl if he's a boy and a boy if he's a girl. (I would almost wish they'd actually have a girl, but the last thing fucktards like this need is another innocent mind to warp and psyche to damage.)
Instead he grabs a handmade portfolio filled with his drawings and poems. In its pages is a booklet written under his pseudonym, the “Gender Explorer.”
Clearly he made up the pseudonym himself. What, didn't your 5 year old use words like "Gender Explorer"?
In purple and pink lettering, adorned with butterflies, it reads: “Help girls do boy things. Help boys do girl things. Let your kid be whoever they are!”
In a nutshell. Boys should do GIRL things and girls should do BOY things. THAT I believe he might have written. After all, it's the message he's been given.
Storm was named after whipped winds and dark rain clouds, because they are beautiful and transformative.
“When I was pregnant, it was really this intense time around Jazz having experiences with gender and I was feeling like I needed some good parenting skills to support him through that,” says Witterick.
Oh brother, try leaving him the fuck ALONE for a few hours.
Face it, lady, you ARE the helicopter parent you hate; you just make different decisions than they do.
It began as a offhand remark. “Hey, what if we just didn’t tell?” And then Stocker found a book in his school library called X: A Fabulous Child’s Story by Lois Gould. The book, published in 1978, is about raising not a boy or a girl, but X. There’s a happy ending here. Little X — who loved to play football and weave baskets — faces the taunting head on, proving that X is the most well-adjusted child ever examined by “an impartial team of Xperts.”
OH FOR FUCK'S SAKE, Do these people get ALL their parenting ideas from FICTIONAL CHILDREN'S BOOKS ABOUT GENDER-BENDING? Do they think that's a BALANCED or SENSIBLE approach to child-rearing?
From
the book.
So they bought plenty of sturdy blue pyjamas in the Boys' Department and cheerful flowered underwear in the Girls' Department. And they bought all kinds of toys. A boy doll that made pee-pee and cried, "Pa-pa". And a girl doll that talked in three languages and said "I am the Pres-i-dent of Gen-er-al Mo-tors". They also bought a story-book about a brave princess who rescued a handsome prince from his ivory tower, and another one about a sister and brother who grew up to be a baseball star and a ballet star, and you had to guess which was which.
I'll take ONE guess, and I guarantee I get it right the first time.
Apparently X's parents were so fucking stupid THEY got their parenting ideas from children's books and toys too. How meta.
“It became so compelling it was almost like, How could we not?” says Witterick.
Yeah, we get it. Your new boy is an experiment to you. As were the other two, but you want one that's untainted now.
There are days when their decisions are tiring, shackling even. “We spend more time than we should providing explanations for why we do things this way,” says Witterick. “I regret that (Jazz) has to discuss his gender before people ask him meaningful questions about what he does and sees in this world, but I don't think I am responsible for that — the culture that narrowly defines what he should do, wear and look like is.”
First of all, a child's gender isn't meaningless, and you'll find that out. But more importantly, if you don't like those questions, there's a simple answer to it - STOP DRESSING YOUR BOY LIKE A GIRL. Stop making him feel bad if he doesn't wear pink and purple and sparkly earrings and nail polish and braids, you assnuggets! Then he can start answering "meaningful" questions about who he is without having to explain why in hell he's dressed like a princess if he's a boy!
Longtime friend Ayal Dinner, 35, a father two young boys, was surprised to hear the couple’s announcement when Storm was born, but is supportive.
“I think it’s amazing that they’re willing to take on challenging people in this way,” says Dinner. “While they are political and ideological about these things, they’re also really thinking about what it means and struggling with it as they go along.”
Lemme explain something, Mr. Dinner. You're not SUPPOSED to use your children to challenge the world. You're not supposed to conduct human experimentation on them. You're not supposed to use them to work out your theories. You're not supposed to USE them at all.
Dinner understands why people may find it extreme. “Although I can see the criticism of ‘This is going to be hard on my kid,’ it’s great to say, ‘I love my kid for whoever they are.’”
IF that's what you're doing. Hint: that isn't what these people are doing. They're not loving their children for whoever they ARE but rewarding them for opposing their own gender's stereotypes by using the opposite gender's stereotypes. That doesn't fall under loving them "for who they are". Loving them for who they are is when your child turns out to be gay (which they discover FOR THEMSELVES) and you don't offer them any rejection; that they in fact are comfortable coming to you and telling you what they are because they know you love them no matter what. This? Isn't THAT.
On a recent trip to Hamilton, Jazz was out of earshot when family friend Denise Hansen overheard two little girls at the park say they didn’t want to play with a “girl-boy.” Then, there was the time a saleswoman at a second-hand shop refused to sell him a pink feather boa. “Surely you won't buy it for him — he's a boy!” said the woman. Shocked, and not wanting to upset Jazz, Witterick left the store.
Oh, SHE was shocked. Why the fuck are you buying a little kid a BOA? What is he, Ava GABOR? I've never KNOWN a girl who had a boa - they're certainly not age-appropriate (hell, they're dumb altogether, really). Just proves to me anew that you're NOT letting him be himself; you're pushing this shit on him left and right. That didn't come out of nowhere. And YOU'RE shocked. Asshole.
Parents talk about the moment they realize they would throw themselves in front of a speeding truck to save their child from harm, yet battle the instinct to overprotect. They want to encourage independence. They hope people won’t be mean. They pray they aren’t bullied. No parent would ever wish that for their child.
Heh, yeah I remember that moment. My son was racing towards the stove on which sat an enormous pot (gallons) of boiling water. He was just going headlong, straight at it. Well, I had to get there faster (and he was a fast little fucker) so I ran, knowing that **I** was going to take a few gallons of boiling water and end up dead or ruined for life. But you do it, because you have to. If it were a bullet or a speeding truck or train, same thing. In that case, the nice thing was my daughter caught him first, halfway there (I don't know if I would have made it, but I've exhibited superhuman abilities other times, so it's possible.) Yeah, there's no stopping that chick. She's awesome. I didn't much care about teasing but I didn't want anyone beating on them. I needn't have worried - my daughter was strong enough to foible any would-be beater, male or female, and eventually he got there too. And they have mouths of their own - instilling a little deserved confidence seems to go a long way - it's a shame no one did that for me. Could have avoided years of bottomless pain.
On a night after she watched her husband of 11 years and the boys play with sparklers after dark, Witterick, in a reflective mood, writes to say we are all mocked at some point for the way we look, the way we dress and the way we think.
Uh-huh. But you just had to make SURE it was inevitable, right?
“When faced with inevitable judgment by others, which child stands tall (and sticks up for others) — the one facing teasing despite desperately trying to fit in, or the one with a strong sense of self and at least two 'go-to' adults who love them unconditionally? Well, I guess you know which one we choose.”
Yeah. Unconditionally. See how much you love him if he's in karate class taking down his sparring partner and retiring home to push his Tonka bulldozers around in the sand for a while and work on his model trains, dressed in jeans and camo. (Hey, that was one of my favorite outfits when the kids were about 2 or 3 - the camo outfit with the matching hat. Pants, top, hat - all camo. BOTH the kids wore it because it was too cute to waste.) See how unconditionally you love him when he's doing boy things and he isn't dressed in a poofy pink dress and boa. Get back to me then.
Diane Ehrensaft is a California-based psychologist and mother of Jesse, a “girlyboy” who turned his trucks into cradles and preferred porcelain dolls over soldiers when he was a child. Her newly published book, Gender Born, Gender Made, is a guide for parents of nonconforming kids.
I guess it could happen. But "Jazz" isn't a non-conforming kid. He's conforming precisely to what's expected of him and what he's been raised to do. If Storm is a girl, she will be expected to dress masculinely and play with "boy toys" and so on. If Storm is a boy, he'll have to conform to feminine stereotypes. This really isn't hard to see. Left to his own devices, chances are very good Jazz would dress much more like a boy and play with rough-and-tumble toys and activities. Even now, he's sensitive about being mistakenly labeled a girl. Because it's one thing to put on a poofy pink dress and boa and nail polish, but quite another to be CALLED a girl. Heh, maybe the kid has spunk deep down inside. Here's hoping it can get out someday.
She believes parents should support gender-creative children, which includes the transgendered, who feel born in the wrong bodies, and gender hybrids, who feel they are part girl and part boy. Then there are gender “smoothies,” who have a blended sense of gender that is purely “them.”
Jazz isn't really gender-creative. He's just been raised to pretend he is. And he's certainly not a "smoothie" - intersexuality is actually pretty rare, it is a genetic malfunction, and yes, research shows it's best to let the intersexed alone body-wise, and let them grow up AS intersexed as opposed to labeling them. This? Isn't THAT.
Ehrensaft believes there is something innate about gender, and points to the ’70s, when parents experimented by giving dolls to boys and trucks to girls.
Yeah, I remember.
“It only worked up to a certain extent. Some girls never played with the trucks, some boys weren’t interested in ballet ... It was a humbling experiment for us because we learned we don’t have the control that we thought we did.”
No, you don't. Unless you just blare it at them day and night year after year and wear them down, like little Jazz has been. His parents have plenty of control. But even they can't stop him from wanting to be identified as a boy. Hell, I'm in favor of unschooling and even *I* feel sorry for the kid, being kept out of any activities because they make him such a freak that he can't take the pressure.
As to ballet - bullshit. First of all, ballet NEEDS men. They have to be very strong, very disciplined, and train for many years. You can't put on a ballet without men. Who's gonna catch the ballerinas? And some of us girls? HATE FUCKING BALLET! Oh, I hated that class more than any other. Just 2 hours of pain and strain for no discernible gain. The minute I was given the choice, I got the hell out of there and started taking Karate. Which was a nice mix of boys and girls. As difficult as the exercise was, at least that was fun.
But she worries by not divulging Storm’s sex, the parents are denying the child a way to position himself or herself in a world where you are either male, female or in between. In effect they have created another category: Other than other. And that could marginalize the child.
Oh stop with Storm - he's too little to understand anyway. Start worrying about what they've done to their other sons and if you can get through their pointy heads about it, tell them NOT to fucking escalate the damage on their new baby. THAT'S the issue.
“I believe that it puts restrictions on this particular baby so that in this culture this baby will be a singular person who is not being given an opportunity to find their true gender self, based on also what’s inside them.”
As they've ALREADY DONE with their other sons...why don't you worry about that for now?
While she accepts and supports Jazz’s freedom “to be who he is,” she’s concerned about asking two small boys to keep a secret about the baby of the family. “For very young children, just in their brains, they’re not ready to do the kind of sophisticated discernment we do about when a secret is necessary.”
Oh FFS talk about missing the point. You know, Storm must be a girl after all, because this character doesn't give a SHIT about what's been done to these boys; all she's worried about is the new baby.
Jazz says it’s not difficult. He usually just calls the baby Storm.
Yeah, Jazz is confused.
Dr. Ken Zucker, considered a world expert on gender identity and head of the gender identity service for children at Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, calls this a “social experiment of nurture.” The broader question, he says, is how much influence parents have on their kids. If Ehrensaft leans toward nature, Zucker puts more emphasis on nurture. Even when parents don’t make a choice, that’s still a choice, and one that can impact the children.
Did anyone send him the memo that this "experiment" is being conducted on innocent human children? Yes? Oh, he didn't give a shit. More interested in developing his theories, I get it.
When asked what psychological harm, if any, could come from keeping the sex of a child secret, Zucker said: “One will find out.”
I know, who cares? The point is that since they're doing it, let's write shit down and see what happens! What if the child is hurt - oh stop bothering me with irrelevant details; I want to re-prove what Dr. Money unwittingly PROVED with Reimer. Yes yes, I know our theories were originally founded on Money's discredited conclusions, but we have believed them so long it doesn't matter anymore. What matters is working on it until we can figure out a way to eliminate all masculinity from the earth. Yes, I know I'm a man - naturally I'm an exception; I'm a scientist, duh!
Out with the kids all day, Witterick doesn’t have the time or the will to hide in a closet every time she changes Storm’s diaper. “If (people) want to peek, that’s their journey,” she says.
Yeah, we already know she's lazy.
But if these neighbors are so up in arms, and the family members don't like it, why don't they take that "journey", peek at Storm's junk, and let the word out loud and clear? Fuck it, I would.
There are questions about which bathroom Storm will use, but that is a couple of years off. Then there is the “tyranny of pronouns,” as they call it. They considered referring to Storm as “Z”. Witterick now calls the baby she, imagining the “s” in brackets.
The tyranny of pronouns *giggle*. As to the bathroom, come on, everybody's gonna know by then. This woman isn't diligent enough to keep any secrets.
“Everyone keeps asking us, ‘When will this end?’” says Witterick. “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?”
/cue the violins/
Or when will someone, you know, peek in the diaper already.
There's also the 2-year old stage, when you can't KEEP a diaper on a kid. 2 year olds are NOTORIOUS streakers. Good luck trying to hide anything then LOL.
