Perusing our friend Timberwraith’s blog, Haunted Timber, I came across an amazing story I had to share. It is about two 24 year old Swedish parents who are raising their child not as a boy or a girl, but as a child. I recommend reading what Timberwraith had to say here. You can go here to read the story in english, or here for some Swedish.
Let me start by saying that this was not intended to be a Pseudoscience Chronicles post (I just enjoyed the story) until I read what one of the interviewees had to say ten paragraphs in. I was shocked at first by what Susan Pinker said (in the english version of the story), but then was not surprised to find out that she is a psychologist and journalist:
‘“Ignoring children’s natures simply doesn’t work,” says Susan Pinker, a psychologist and newspaper columnist from Toronto, Canada, who wrote the book The Sexual Paradox, which focuses on sex differences in the workplace.’
‘“Child-rearing should not be about providing an opportunity to prove an ideological point, but about responding to each child’s needs as an individual,” Pinker tells The Local.’
It’s ironic how she claims that raising a child should be about responding to each child’s individual needs, then goes on to say we should force children into preconceived gender-roles. If anything, keeping the child’s sex a secret allows the parents to respond to their child’s actual needs rather than the artificial needs implanted by a cultural construction that attempts to fit every single person in the world into one of two restricted categories. So I guess what she was actually trying to say was that child-rearing should only be about providing an opportunity to prove an ideological point if that ideological point is ‘gender exists get used to it’.
Pinker goes on to make some more crazy claims:
‘“I don’t think that trying to keep a child’s sex a secret will fool anyone, nor do I think it’s wise or ethical,” says Pinker. “As with any family secret, when we try to keep an elemental truth from children, it usually blows up in the parent’s face, via psychosomatic illness or rebellious behaviour.”’
Of course, the parents are not keeping any truth from the child (I don’t even know how they would do that). They are simply allowing the child to grow into what it wants to be. They are responding to their child’s needs as an individual. They are being good parents.
With that, I would like to welcome Susan Pinker to the Pseudoscience Chronicles.
-Bryan Perkins
(Header Image: Hijras India’s Third Gender)
June 28, 2009 at 4:42 pm
I don’t see anything in either of those quotes to suggest that Pinker wants to force children to rigidly conform to gender roles. All she says is that any given child will have a set of in-born dispositions, and whether these dispositions lead to a boy becoming an effeminate man or a girl becoming a masculine woman, we ought to be aware of it in the processing of raising him/her. It just so happens that most of the time, these gender-related dispositions line up very well with biological gender. If anything, you are proving her point about people turning child-rearing into an ideological platform.
And if you choose to cherry pick one case which proves that gender roles are constructions, I could just as easily give you examples of how they are not.
June 28, 2009 at 4:58 pm
But the set of in-born dispositions are not decided by the sex of the child. By not telling the child’s sex the parents are leaving the option open for the child to choose how to act. They are not making the decision for the child or letting society treat the child in a way that would make the decision for it. They are the most free from ideology, allowing the child to see all view points before making a decision.
And I would be happy to see any examples that you think show that gender roles are not social constructions. If you can give me some citations that would be great.
June 28, 2009 at 5:49 pm
I’m a trans woman. I’ve lived on both sides of the gender divide. I know from first hand experience that there are a massive differences between the way a person is treated by others when they are perceived as male as opposed to being perceived as female. Regardless of biology, there there is no way a person can avoid being shaped by gender related social forces. Women and men are treated far too differently for that not to be the case. These forces can and do shape a person’s behaviors and perceptions of themselves.
It’s also pretty obvious to me that society has an unspoken ideology that governs gender behavior. If you step too far outside of the roles expected of the sex that was assigned to you at birth, there are immediate, tangible consequences. The ideology is clear: there are specific sets of traits and behaviors that you are expected to embody and pushing the boundaries of those rules results in negative social repercussions. Many of those repercussions are considered by law and general custom to be legitimate responses to such deviations from the norm.
So, at worst, you could say that the parents are responding to a widespread repressive ideology with their own ideology.
However, I see it as the parents trying to create conditions that offer the child a few years reprieve from being thrust into larger society’s gender expectations. From what I gathered in the article, the parents are trying to short circuit the differential in treatment that I spoke of in the first paragraph so that the child is not automatically pushed in a direction that is not natural to the child. Instead, they are allowing the child to explore both sets of gender experiences so that s/he can develop in a way that is free of adult prejudice for the first few years of hir life.
You may think that’s woolly ideology in action, but adults usually gender babies like crazy and it doesn’t take an acute observer to see that. Given that sexism is a very real force in the world, it doesn’t take a stretch of intellect to realize that a child’s natural potential can be stunted by the effects of sexism, regardless of being male or female.
The parents are trying to deal with that reality using extraordinary measures because it’s damned hard to do when sexism and the way it effects our behavior toward children is so deeply ingrained into adult behaviors.
June 28, 2009 at 6:07 pm
Aw shucks. You referred to me as your friend. I like you too, Brian.
June 28, 2009 at 6:12 pm
I love your pronoun usage.
June 28, 2009 at 7:29 pm
I used s/he because it would be most recognizable to people, but as someone pointed out on another blog, even that pronoun reinforces the notion that gender can only be a binary system.
There is yet to be a standard set of gender neutral pronouns put into common use and there are currently many variations. The set that I generally use is this one:
ze (nominative): equivalent to she/he
Example: Ze walked into the room.
hir (objective): equivalent to her/him
Example: I gave hir the book.
hir (posessive determiner): equivalent to her/his
Example: I took hir pencil.
hirs (posessive pronoun): equivalent to hers/his
Example: That car is hirs.
hirself (reflexive): equivalent to herself/himself
Example: Ze cut hirself on the broken door latch.
Since few people recognize these words or understand the grammatical rules surrounding them, I rarely use them. However, I think standardizing this in English would be useful. Right now, genderqueer people have a hellacious time dealing with having their identities recognized simply because standard English doesn’t acknowledge the possibility of someone having a gender that exists outside of the binary.
You could use they and it’s attendant variations. However, some pedantic grammarians bust a gasket when they see they used as a gender neutral pronoun. Plus, it can get confusing because they also refers to a group of people.
There’s a lot of information on this topic at Wikipedia. If you scroll down a bit, you will see a handy-dandy chart that explains the many variations on gender neutral pronouns.
December 5, 2012 at 3:54 am
this “gender-friendly” lingo is as good an answer to sexism as discriminating against racist people is to racism. i mean look at the definitions, the whole concept can’t exist without separating the two sides first.
June 28, 2009 at 7:56 pm
And the picture in the header of the blog is pretty awesome, by the way.
June 28, 2009 at 10:59 pm
Gender neutral pronouns and the Hijras of India (from the header picture) are two topics that Sophie over at A Wonderful Day for Anthropology knows a lot about. She should be posting an article about the Hijras soon actually, I will let you know when she does. Her blog is rather new right now, but you can find it here: http://awonderfuldayforanthropology.wordpress.com
June 28, 2009 at 11:19 pm
Cool!
June 29, 2009 at 8:24 pm
She posted it!
July 5, 2009 at 12:47 am
Bryan With A ‘Y’
It’s pretty important.
Ne’er Brian.
http://www.physorg.com/news165950992.html
_Johnny
July 7, 2009 at 12:00 am
There are still certain things that are gender specific. I remember a movie classic that states “Boys have a penis, Girls have vagina” — now, okay, I am aware that this is not always true, and may on some level be also considered a “gender construct”, but the child is eventually going to work out that s/he belongs in Box 1 or Box A. Whether that itself is right or wrong is up for debate, fine. But denying that taking a child outside of the social constructs will not have any potential for other negative extrapolations is just its own brand of crazy shizznits.
July 10, 2009 at 2:42 pm
First, gender != sex. Do ‘boys have penises and girls have vaginas’ or does having a penis make a person a boy and having a vagina make a person a girl. Either way, these denote biological sex, not gender roles.
Second, the potential negative side effects are not being denied in this instance. I believe it is seen more like a strong pill or drug. Every medicine has negative side effects, but if the benefits outweigh the side effect then the drug is worth taking. Of course the child may have some difficulty fitting in with children who were raised differently, but a lot of children have trouble fitting in nonetheless. By allowing the child to be what it is rather than expecting it to act in a certain way because of its sex the parents are leaving the possibilities wide open for the child.
April 8, 2010 at 4:28 am
I think it’s up to the parents how they would like to raise their kid. Raising a child in the way they want is up to them. Other people might have different opinions about this. Like if Pop is a guy and he adopted a feminine characteristic, he might be tagged by the society as a gay. Same goes if Pop is girl. I’m just saying. Because we may be able to control Pop’s environment, but not his/her body if he/she is a girl or a boy. If Pop is a girl she’ll more likely develop humps. If Pop is a boy, a broad shoulder and facial hairs.
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