those canadians who won't 'reveal' the gender of their baby...
'oh cool guys, i think that's a really positive thing today in an age of.... *glances at picture*....oh, a boy. never mind'
idiots.
Thread not appearing correctly? Click here to rebuild | Report this
Twitter
Facebook
Last.fm
SoundCloud
MySpace
Friendster
RSS
Oh Ho_Fo
A mutant who could control the weather for good.
Working under a professor tying to get equal rights for mutants.
I think the kid will opt for blue the moment he notices that he's got a bellend
:D
P.s. ''By'' is a stupid name...but I'm glad to see that the babies already got some qualifications.
Actually...ignore this.
I've just realised that I'm over tired and not funny. :)
I used to work in a restaurant bar where a couple would regularly
bring in their 6/7 year old boy, who was always wearing a dress. They seemed to have no other children so my theory was they were just dressing him up cos they wanted a girl.
My ability to form a watertight case to support this claim was ruined when I was fired for getting drunk & stealing Drambuie from behind the bar and coming in off shift at 1am to demand christmas pudding. But I was bloody well on to something...
Actually, could have been a girl...
That's got to be child abuse, hasn't it?
I mean...other 6/7 year olds will realise that that's weird.
what if the child chose to wear the dress?
Yeah. His choice.
...but he might need to take a long, hard look at himself in the mirror.
interesting to see how much attention this is getting
I actually think their aim is quite admirable, ultimately they're just trying to give their child a little more free reign in forming their own identity.
what's your point, spaceman?
...
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/169/421008297_4809bd7b35.jpg
this is the lovely irony of most of the discourse surrounding this
THEY'RE FORCING HIM TO BE EMASCULATED! THEY'RE FORCING THEIR CRAZY LIBERAL IDEOLOGY ON THE POOR INNOCENT CHILD! whereas normal gender identity is completely natural and spontaneous and biological and has nothing whatsoever to do with coercion and ideology. whatever other implications you think this might have, they are literally doing the exact opposite of 'forcing' anything
(yeah yeah, i realise that post wasn't really worth a srs response)
Feminist rhetoric is used by the bourgeoisie to emasculate the proleteriat and
therefore prevent them from taking revolutionary action.
CLASS TRAITOR.
oh hi, david willetts
David Willets doesn't like revolutionary action and does like public castration
who says this...?
(i know you're joking or w/e but i'm interested)
'Who says this'?
The notion that individuated personal identity maps straightforwardly onto individual physical bodies, or body-substitutes such as online profiles, is a social construct.
The reader is free to assign my comments to any individual they choose, and my comments free to assign themselves to any speaker.
Of course, I say 'my' comments, but really this is shorthand for 'all of our comments'.
oh.
oh
o
it's magic
^underrated
not really sure what you're trying to say here
but since gender can be defined as:
"socially constructed roles, behaviours, activities, and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for men and women."
the fact that the baby is gender neutral, would allow them to form their own identity.
and again
what's your point, spaceman?
I'm kinda with the shaky Arsenal centre-back on this one
It does scream of attention seeking. There's no reason this couldn't have been kept within their private circle of friends if they absolutely had to do it.
sex != gender
and for good measure
sex != gender != sexuality
whoaaa there spaceman
(I like your pic)
forming his own identity?
they called him storm ffs, they stamping his identity on his forehead. How do people know about this news story? Their is nothing admirable about their intentions. This is something they could do without anyone batting an eyelid yet the whole world knows so you have to question how great this is for storm.
spelling mistakes, tired.
there is an important point here
i agree that it has very little to do with 'forming his own identity'. there's no such thing as a self-formed identity, and 'gender neutral' is a marked category with its own established relations to gender ideology. ON THE OTHER HAND, this 'stamping' of identity is a universal phenomenon. everyone is stamped by their gender and by their parents and by the world they live in. the 'abnormal' ones and the crazy ideologue parents only serve to intensify our awareness of that proccess. ideally, this stunt would've got people talking and thinking about all the different ways in which gender ideologies, both dominant and radical, impact on our notions of 'identity' and so on and so on BUT OBVIOUSLY THAT HASN'T HAPPENED because people are boring and shit
hey man, do you reckon has an oddly large percentage of super-hot players in comparison to the rest of the premiership? y/n?
*arsenal
exhibit a: jack wilshere
exhibit b: theo walcott
um. ok. that's all i can think but that's 2 more than most teams huh?
i'm really very surprised that you feel that way
Although they are obviously trying to do this
I think they're pretty straightforwardly going about it the wrong way. In their haste to eliminate all gender identity from their sons, these parents are inadvertently building up gender into a *huge deal*. Expect an aggressive, macho teen rebellion from all three boys, followed by an unhappy adulthood characterised by difficult relationships, gender hang-ups, and generalised confusion.
If they were really relaxed about gender, they'd be fine letting their sons behave along the lines of the gender roles society foists upon them as children, because they'd realise that in the logn run, it doesn't really matter, and once they're adults they can begin to think critically about the nature of masculinity etc etc (and if they're anything like me, become decent, offal-eating, amateur dentistry-performing citizens).
GENDER.
I like how you made a typo of 'long' so it became 'logn' so it reads as logan run
Yes, once they take our balls it is only a matter of time before they kill us at age 30.
Maybe most people don't think critically about gender as an adult
Because they're pretty happy with their gender identity?
Maybe all that's important, given the imperfect world we live in, is that people who aren't happy with their gender identity have the freedom to think critically about it as adults?
Idk because I'm not someone who has ever been troubled by my gender identity, but it seems to me that someone who is troubled in this way *does* have the freedom to think about it as an adult.
Also, worry about gender identity probably shouldn't be confused with worry about gender *roles* (given a male-female gender duality, which I think although a social fact, not a biological one, is an inevitability given the biological facts which are working against the human world here), which if anything is more important. Although it should be added, that just because something is a social fact, not a biological one, doesn't make it any less 'real' for those experiencing it than it would be otherwise. And I do think that the haste one might have to dismantle gender (having realised that it was a social construct all along) is in part caused by a post-Enlightenment prejudice towards scientific realism. But if we dismantled all social constructs, we wouldn't have a language, for example.
What I suppose I'm trying to get at is
It's one thing to be impressed by the contingency of gender.
It's quite another to seek to dismantle gender.
I think that gender is just a form of identity that, like (for example) nationhood, we can either take comfort in, or put behind us. For some people it might be easier to do this than others, but *technically* we can all do this.
But people who would seek to destroy or modify gender, are effectively trying to destroy a form of identity that I for one take some degree of comfort in, that constitutes a fair part of Who I Am (to put it in rather individualistic terms).
Therefore, there is something about gender duality worth maintaining... and even if most people didn't accept a gender duality, it would be worth maintaining, for example like how a minority language is.
(this is just one argument for gender)
(completely tangential to the OP really by now)
don't think anyone really argues that gender should be 'destroyed'
just allowed to proliferate beyond the binary, oppressive, exclusionary form in which it currently exists. your language analogy is kinda interesting; minority languages are cool, but only because we're allowed to speak more than one language. not many people would choose to preserve a minority language if it came with the condition that they'd never be able to learn another language and would be stuck in that particular construct for the rest of their lives
and similarly with nationhood, people might not embrace that particular identity so much
if it meant they'd never be allowed to leave their own nation and would have to consistently conform to the majority of its prescribed behaviours and ideas about selfhood
i mean, some people would, obviously, like nick griffin. but you see the general point i'm driving at here?
Actually I read Julie Bindell claiming she wants to see gender destroyed in a Guardian discussion of this very issue
Here it is:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/may/26/how-important-is-gender
But to focus on the language analogy: of course, minority-language speakers might not only want to only speak that language. But that would be presumably because of the related (for example, economic) disbenefits of being unable to speak more widely-used languages. It might well be the case that they have a strong preference towards their first language, and would always prefer to use it when possible.
Now, perhaps we should see gender more like language in the sense that new gender roles can be learned, but accept that one might have a romantic attachment to one's original gender role.
I like this idea up to the point where it seems as if it is needlessly complicating an already complicated lifeworld. Pragmatically, it is far simpler to retain the muddled gender duality-plus-ability-to-perform-otherwise-than-gender-roles-would-dictate system we pretty much have operational across (western) society at present. And as such, these parents are wrong to deny their child the ability to meet their peers on equal terms, gender-wise.
don't really understand your last point
if anything, the recent trend for evolutionary psychology-style rationalisations of gender roles suggests the 'prejudice towards scientific realism' is being utilised to consolidate a gender binary far more widely than to dismantle it. the gender-dismantling discourses are mostly all coming from poststructuralist or historical-materialist places, not ones that are particularly friendly towards enlightenment values
What I mean is,
it's a prejudice towards the 'real' being the physical, not the social.
The idea of 'evolutionary psychology' is based around a (to my mind, illegitimate) move from biological or chemical facts to human-level explanations/behaviour...
But that's something that is distinct from the prejudice towards the physical being the real. We can have one without the other: so, we could take natural-scientific facts to constitute good human-level explanations whlst denying the applicability of natural-scientific laws to the world as it is in itself (for example), or we could take the world to ultimately consist in real, physical objects (not linguistic objects like social facts) whilst denying that natural-scientific facts can provide human-level explanations.
So it's pretty much by-the-by that scientism might be used more widely to consolidate a gender binary rather than dismantle it, because it can be used to do either and I'm accusing the anti-gender party to be guilty of it too.
but again i'm not really sure where you're getting this from
i mean maybe you've been reading some gender theory that i'm not aware of but in my experience most of the good stuff does exactly the opposite of that. the whole point is to revise our social reality so that it doesn't have to be tagged to these arbitrary 'real' physical categories of sex. the whole point, for the vast majority of radical gender theory, is that the 'real' of biology is largely irrelevant and the social is what is at stake. which you seem to agree with? i think judith butler is pretty great on this whole topic tbh (if you can get past the pretentious poststructuralist prose, which personally i rly enjoy but different strokes)
Right
But, what I'm saying is:
there is a tacit prejudice towards the 'real' here in the sense that, the social fact (of gender) is seen as less real than the physical fact (of sex).
BUT, to human experience, the social fact is more real. It is something we can change, but its something we're far more engaged with, day-to-day.
Radical gender theory seems, to my mind, to be using gender's status as a social fact to prop up the distinct claim that we ought to do away with it, or move beyond it. But just because something is a social fact, doesn't mean it isn't something 'real', given the society in which it obtains.
This is actually a pretty weak claim, becuase all we can get from it, as far as gender goes, is that we can't ignore that it is a fact. But I think this is significant, because something like the fact I call my hands 'hands' is a social fact in the same way. So, gender isn't some big illusion foisted on us by the patriarchy. It is something that is real on the social level, given the biological facts human understanding has to work with.
I hope this has cleared up your confusion?
Reading this back... just to pre-empt a possible objection:
it might well be 'foisted on us by the patriarchy' (understood abstractly). But it's not an illusion.
and, yet again, a very large strand of feminism completely agrees with you
social reality wasn't invented by a scary cult called 'the patriarchy'; 'patriarchy' is just a name for the way in which social reality actually functions. mr_duh i really think you should stop being so feminism-resistant just because you've read a few pieces of bad feminism, there's a lot of stuff out there that is very much in concordance with your view of things
Quite possibly
I mean, as long as it doesn't compromise my ability to act in a brutishly masculine way or engage in heteronormative desire, I'm all for it.
i kinda see what you're getting at, but again i'd just recommend reading some better gender theory than julie bindel
srsly think you might like judith butler. she's not a fan of the whole sex/gender distinction that feminists are usually so keen on, whereby sex='real' and gender='social construct', because 'sex' is not an unsignified reality, it's always already a gendered category that can only be accessed through the mediation of 'social constructs', which seems to be the same kinda thing you're saying. but you seem to have a bit of a strange faith in 'social facts' as immutable. wanting to dismantle gender doesn't mean trying to demystify some 'big illusion' so we can all find our suppressed 'real' selves hiding under all the social constructs. it means trying to interrogate and modify the real social facts of the way gender identities form, operate and sometimes oppress, and create new possibilities for different social realities.
Fair enough
And I'm totally up with the sentiment. Of course, we should note that this stretches beyond gender to all social facts, the critique of many of which I find more interesting than the critique of gender specifically.
of course
but let's be honest: the reason you find other things more interesting is obvs cos you're a man and it's in your interests to maintain the present social reality of gender, right? ;)
Genes affect personality, physical appearance, health etc
So what's the problem with moving from 'biological or chemical facts to human-level explanations/behaviour'?
Because biological/chemical facts don't provide us with good human-level explanations
They might provide us with necessary conditions for human-level behaviour, but they can't provide us with sufficient conditions.
(this is my hunch, anyway: if you would like to give me some AHRC funding to prove this to be the case over 100,000 + words, PM me)
hey that's a pretty good way of putting it
gonna use that next time i have an evo-psych argument
Ok. makes sense.
I guess the evolutionary benefit of having a large prefrontal cortex is that it means we can act and adapt to our surroundings much more rapidly than having specific genes for a behaviour will allow. So that means much of our psychology/behaviour cannot be explained from an evolutionary perspective *other than* the general fact that the plasticity and adaptability of our brains are genetically encoded traits.
yeah also, all the stuff about how it's totally going to fuck him/her up for life
and give him/her 'gender confusion' and he/she is going to get bullied to death at school and have a miserable alienated life and so on; it's all terribly reminiscent of those old arguments about how gays shouldn't be allowed to raise kids. because abnormality is BAD FOR CHILDREN. just sayin'
But this isn't like gays being allowed (or not allowed) to raise kids
This is like people whose religion dictates their children always carry around a big sign that says 'Kick Me' being allowed to raise kids.
hmmm
i think even if we refrain from that sort of 'it will fuck him/her up kind of argument...' we can't know for sure what it actually would do to the kid. and whilst i'm 100% sure any negative impact this decision may have on the kid(*) is entirely the result of what is wrong with *society* and not at all what is wrong with *your child* or *you* raising your child without a gender, it still may affect the kid in a negative way (or more negative than if they had followed traditional roles and standards). e.g. is there no way this kid might grow up to disagree with the decision to be given freedom to choose his or her own gender? would he/she just be wrong to disagree? maybe the kid will grow up to believe he had a right to be consigned a gender like everybody else. i guess mr_duh has this point covered in a way though (or where this point leads to ultimately). i don't think it's analogous to having gay parents though because even your parent's sexuality is so far from any realm within which you might exercise freedoms, rights and responsibilities.
(*)of course you can negate this point of causation pretty easily by saying they're not even doing anything proactive. so it kinda boils down to whether or not we are even making a "decision" when we intentionally set our kids apart from other kids through stuff like this. even though it's by no means the purpose of the parents, they have still "intended" to cast their children as abnormal in some way. of course its ok for kids to be different. but there's no denying that some negative effects of experiencing abnormality exist for many kids. potentially being the only one in your class without a gender might be one instance. thus children *may* want to enjoy a freedom from these negative effects as far as that is possible.
yeah i agree with all this
and i don't actually unreservedly think this whole thing is a good idea, or anything. i just think it raises a lot of really interesting issues, and find it pretty frustrating how the VAST majority of responses on the internet at large have been along the lines of 'those selfish fucks! child abuse! bullying!' and a complete refusal to engage with any of the points that the gesture is supposed to be making (which we can do even if we don't necessarily agree with the gesture itself). i was being a bit flippant with the gay parents comparison, but there is definitely a similar tone in all the THINK OF THE CHILDREN responses. also, they're clearly not actually depriving the child of gender - if he/she chooses to be normal then that choice is still open (though of course my main problem with the whole idea is how far real 'choice' is actually possible when it comes to something like gender). i think more than anything it's the the media furore and the idea that he/she will forever be marked as 'THAT kid' that's gonna be a bit damaging
yeah i know they're not depriving him/her of a gender
but they are depriving him/her of gender consignment. which may have some value for some people. some people may not want choice (but i agree they are getting it anyway because of factors external to the family).
This is just like the negative freedom/positive freedom thing
The parents have secured negative liberty for their child: freedom *from* the intervention of society's (apparently) rigid attitude towards gender.
But we might say that by participating in the rigid gender duality of the straight world, we gain the freedom to do all sorts of things that this child won't have.
yes and I think it's so so difficult to speculate how those things would manifest.
and so I don't think we can equivocate on this at all.
And correction to my above post. Should say "(but i agree they are *not* getting it anyway because of factors external to the family)."
I'm not saying avoiding the issue of gender is abnormal, at all.
I am not going to speculate about how this family are going to go about this. I'm not even saying this whole thing wont work out perfectly. I am just saying that yes POTENTIALLY there is less social pressure, but POTENTIALLY there is a pandora's box of unforseeable stuff too, depending on many factors. Some of it might not rest easily with your or my ideals of how society should function but yeah most people are shit, remember.
I'm absolutely nowhere near homophobic/transphobic territory with any of this and I'm quite disappointed that you've suggested this tbh. How is this like someone exercising an opinion on their parents' gender identity? The parent's being gay is not what made the child "abnormal" and it wasn't even a decision made by the parents let alone a decision made by the parents about how they should raise their child. I don't think growing up in a "homosexual, bisexual, transsexual" household is harmful at all. It's just one of those things that might make us a bit different but probably even a better person for it. But ultimately, I don't think it's something we have *any* choice over because I think everyone has an equal right to family life. So it's not in any way akin to making choices about your child's gender identity. It's akin to anyone growing up to not liking their parents. Like those cases, this is one where we should just not humour the people involved - if you didn't like your parents, yeah, too bad. So, as far as I'm concerned, there's nothing to be discussed there.
All I'm saying is that this child *may* have a right to later question the parents decision to treat him/her differently and unequally from his/her siblings and peers. Don't know though, cause I don't know how drastic that different is going to be cause as I said, I'm not going to inquire into the parents' minds and planned course of action. If all of his/her peers were being raised in a similar way, I'd see fewer potential problems. But yes therein lies my concern.
I think if there was litigation surrounding this, it wou
ld be very, very interesting.
I think I could argue either side.
but it's not "natural" to be the only person in society who has been given full and impartial gender autonomy
so how can you be sure the child is not missing anything?
yeah some kids are allowed to play with whatever toys they want. my parents encouraged me to play with boys and it was my (girl)friend who actually pointed out that they were different and had different toys and that maybe we as girls should play with dolls and bake. its weird, even as a small child you're like wow her parents are a lot more stupid and reactionary than mine, cringe. my point is, interaction with other children is going to be pretty important for this kid and i do wonder what that's going to go like if she/he hasn't got her/his act together and chosen his gender by about primary school.
and what effect will being called "it" have in the meantime?
- *it* was not be taken literally.
- I know that the child won't have full and impartial gender autonomy and I've already said this. The point could easily be read as - *Attempting* to give your child full and impartial gender autonomy in a world where nobody else does, is not "natural."
- The point of my story was that other children enforce gender roles, not just adults. So they care about each other's gender roles. They might want to just do whatever they want with their own gender identity but this doesn't mean they give their peers the same freedom
- I've not assumed a child always knows what gender or sex he/she is by school age.
Hmmm and see if he chooses to be, lets say, a boy. Does this have retroactive effect so that he was always a boy? Or will he have to "become" a boy (that he was previously genuinely genderless)?
On the first point, you've just changed the subject and not actually responded to my point about what is "natural"
Re the rest of the stuff you said...I'm sorry to be one of those annoying people but I am just bored now. I'm not going to respond to/with semantics and speculation. I think we agree on most of it.
Disagree.
You argue that what this child is undergoing is more 'natural' than being raised with an assigned gender. Your argument for this is based on the apparent fact that, of all the animals in the world, only humans have a concept of gender.
I agree with you that only humans have a concept of gender. But I think this because I buy into the kind of McDowellian stance (as in, the contemporary philosopher John McDowell) that only human beings have the ability to exercise conceptual capacities. This is very much linked to our use of language.
Now, it would be very odd indeed to say that our use of language wasn't 'natural' in any way. Of course, our use of particular words to signify particular objects certainly wouldn't seem to be innate, or pre-destined by our genes. But they do seem to have a lot to do with our upbringing. But being brought up in a human community isn't unnatural. This is why McDowell labels these sort of capacities 'second-natural'.
Now, this child would undoubtedly be missing out on something that is part of the upbringing (that fosters second-natural capacities) of almost every single other child in the society it is being brought up in. That's point one.
Point two is really just spelling out what I've been trying to saying all along which is: upbringing *isn't* unnatural. Neither of course is questioning one's upbringing... but we are as post-Enlightenment moderns in general far too impressed with the claims of the disenchanted world beyond humanity to ultimate validity.
No, your post was arguing that *not having* concepts like gender, time etc was *more natural* than was having them
Which I maintain is incorrect.
I never said anything about having a 'complete human existence' or anything like that (I wouldn't start talking in those terms anyway because I'm not a moron).
Also don't believe the headline because that tribe clearly *does* have a concept of time, just not the same concept of time we have. But I'm not saying that, for example, a concept of time is a necessary part of human existence. I'm just saying that it isn't 'unnatural' to *have* one.
Er... I hope the baby isn't Ryan Giggs, because this article just broke an (abstract) superinjunction
Storm's two older siblings — both on-the-record boys — know the baby's gender, along with a close family friend and the midwives who delivered him.
might be just be being sexist? idk
i think this is pretty interesting and the reactions to it have mostly been utterly idiotic
...surprisingly enough
I blame the parents' parents
Witterick and Stocker?
GIVE CHILDREN REAL NAMES
those are the last names...
I guess I could be forgiven for scanning the article and that they called their kids names like Kio and Jazz
I'm still the winner in all of this
wait, whats the point of this?
are they just deciding not to tell people its a boy in the hopes that people wont treat him like a boy? they do realised they called him storm aswell right?
Nothing wrong with being called Storm
I turned out fairly normal.
THAT'S NOT A NAME IT'S A WEATHER
YOU'RE MUM'S A WEATHER
I realised as I pressed post I used you're instead of your
I'm just going to leave now.
Pfft
Ebony and Ivory from satirical animated comedy 'Rick & Steve: The Happiest Gay Couple in All the World' did this years ago. They called it 'Echinacea'.
Except even *they* didn't know the gender of the child
That's doing it properly. Plus 'Echinacea' is a way better name than 'Storm'.
http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2011/05/a-new-life-unexamined-may-be-more-worth-living/
"Suppose that you’re part of an interracial, black African and white Caucasian, couple. You have a baby together, and immediately after the birth you phone around your friends and family to tell them the happy news. They all seem to have just one question, which you keep hearing over and over, immediately after you tell them that you have a new baby: “What skin tone does it have?”
As soon as you consider replying “light” or “dark” or “in-between”, you begin to wonder why the people you love are so strangely focussed on an unchosen and ultimately unimportant feature of your baby’s physical make-up. Do they think that your baby should be thought of or treated differently, merely on account of its skin colour? Instead of answering the question, you tell them this: “What does it matter? It’s not for us to impose our categories and expectations on the child. Let’s leave the child the freedom to form and choose its own identity as it grows old enough to do so.”"
That's retarded
it's just like asking what colour it's eyes are or if it had hair or how much it weighed (or whatever other trivial shit people ask new parents).
except it's really incredibly clearly not 'just like' any of those things
How is it not? They're just asking about it's appearence
Yeah but it's still retarded
cos, y'know, skin colour has no direct effect on one's behaviour, whereas there's sufficient evidence to prove that sex does.
DURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR LETS ALL BE WELL LIBERAL AND BREAK DOWN BARRIERS COS ITS COOL AND WILL MAKE THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE. No it won't it'll just make you tedious.
Sex may have an effect on behaviour, but surely not significantly until puberty?
Before then any effect will simply be cultural definitions of gender.
people argued for a very long time that there was 'sufficient evidence' that skin colour did have an effect on behaviour.
some people are still arguing it.
that's another stupid argument
there have been cases where a hermaphrodite was chosen to be a particular sex by their parents, brought up normally as that sex yet rejected it their whole life from birth practically and eventually had a sex change. One's sex is not nurtured.
LOLOLOLOL
...yeah smug ratings OFF THE SCALE in this thread, as usual. The usual people proving how SO MUCH MORE LIBERAL AND POST STRUCTURALIST AND CUTTING EDGE they are than US PLEBS whilst somehow managing to decide that science is just as normative as philosophy which gives them ample room to spout unsubstantiated bollocks and quote from books no one's read just so everyone knows HOW GREAT THEY ARE LOOK I'M SMUG NURR YOU'VE NOT EVEN READ BOOKS GO AWAY. And then hofo goes through the thread ^thissing all the posts he thinks will make him the most intelligent/the least misogynistic.
TEXTBOOK.
I forgot to add ''glib'', mildly offensive one-liners the don't address any point but serve as an attempt for you to presumably gain ''rep points'' from those you consider social equals
to the list of things that you do in this thread that make you look ridiculous.
Consider it added.
*these threads
the funny thing is that if you were an actual science person
you could probably give us smugs some real shit to think about. but you're obvs not, so instead you just kinda come across as that not-very-bright, science-leaning but mainly apathetic internet person whining about how everyone else 'tries too hard' to think about things because, appallingly, they've read some books. i mean, come on, you haven't actually made any proper arguments in this here thread. be a normative scientific realist if you want, but at least go and learn properly about science
^ metasmug
They're not doing it for the sake of the kid
they're doing it for their own self-image. As such, it is an empty gesture.
That's my input bye.
Storm, Kio and Jazz
whatever happened to bland conservative names like Bob and John and Wayne
*Kik
They looked to DiS for inspiration.
^^ So Rand is definately back, then
yeah....
no one talks about baby p nowadays? and where's all the white dog poo now? does anyone remember opal fruits?
I'm tempted to shun all debate and become a full blown Relativist.
yeah, chill out bammers...
i was only mucking around with the only intention being to try and get cheap lols by juxtaposing your observation about something that has gone out of fashion, with other much less serious observations about things going out of fashion.
i don't know what I think about this yet
I haven't read what you guys have said about it either and I'm not going to. Going to form my own view then get back to you. Maybe. Might not.
storm in a he-cup
wow...
i wasn't expecting such discourse...especially that late on a saturday night.
my serious view is....i'm all for parents being less focused on stereotypical gender roles when bringing up kids.
so like....not automatically making a girl dress in all pink and play with princesses. boys in blue and
mucking around with trucks and diggers as a matter of course.
i think we need to break down those strict boundaries when it comes to raising kids, and leave a little more room for the self-expression of a child in allowing them to decided if they actually like pink or blue instead of making them think that pink or blue is what their gender automatically gets
but to go on some egotistical attention seeking crusade in which you essentially appropriate the birth of your child for your own bat-shit rhetoric, just seem plain wrong.
by all means, create a relaxed, open and questioning environment in which your child is allowed to find their own way in the world and, when the time is right, potentially interrogate concepts of gender and their roles within them......but don't make pretend like having a pee-pee or a po-po don't matter squat you hippie idiots.
i assume...
that the parents quite happily conformed to stereotypical gender roles in the conception of the baby.
a man putting his penis into a woman's vagina and then spraying his eggs all up in her place. way to stamp your rigid ideas of gender roles on his births guys. jeez. fucking hypocrites.
then spraying his eggs all up in her place.
:D I think you need to ask Mrs.Rowe for a belated sex-ed lesson.
Hm. Biologically it does.
Yes. Biologically it does.
P.s. I only enjoy a Venn when it overlaps.
Overwise it's just a Microsoft Paint version of Hirst's ''Dot Paintings''
Well, we might say that it has *something* to do with gender.
For example, the fact there exist two (usually) distinct sets of genitals that human beings can have, would seem to encourage a mapping of two distinct gender-categories on to human beings.
And we can also make some biological generalisations about the type of physical features that males and females tend more towards having (so men tend to be taller, for example).
And then we can construct a sort of armchair picture with gender roles somehow emerging in part from the biological facts some time way back in primitive history (although this may not be accurate for a number of reasons, for example animal societies have gender roles defined along sex lines, but we might not want to assign the relevant conceptual capacities to animals that they would need to instantiate social facts... this is an issue for philosophers of biology I suppose, the natural-scientific or social-scientific nature of certain biological facts).
Either way, we can certainly see how gender roles might have been *influenced* by biology, even though we can certainly question them, and even though the biology cannot count as a sufficient reason for the development of gender roles, or (especially) for the particularities of gender roles. The biology might even in part be used to justify a broad gender duality, on pragmatic grounds. Of course though, this would something that would be decided on the human level and not the scientific level. The alternative is: as intelligent beings with fully-developed conceptual capacities, we technically have the ability to critique gender roles in whatever way we like, so depending on the aims of our critique, we could obviously decide to honour as many gender categories as we wanted, or none at all. If our main criterion for a good theory of gender was a mapping on to the biology, though (and I'm not saying it ought to be, but I'm sure many people would want it to be one of their criteria), we'd probably pick a system where most people fall into one of two gender categories, and some people falling into a third, ambiguous gender category. Of course, this need not then imply that gender roles map to our gender categories in a rigid fashion.
In conclusion, the mantra that sex has *nothing* to do with gender is at best too strong.
i think these are mostly good points
the thing is, though, we live in a society where a specific constuction of gender is so deeply embedded in our psyches and our history and our everyday practice that any science of 'sex' simply cannot operate from a place outside of that gendered reality. so 'sex' is always, necessarily, interpreted through the lens of gender - i think it could be argued that a lot of the biological rationalisations of gender roles are at heart about taking observable characteristics of 'sex' and mapping them interpretatively onto the reality of gender rather than the other way around. but yeah as i pointed out above i agree with butler that the rigid sex/gender distinction raises a lot of problems in itself, to do with how we see ourselves as relating to a concept of 'nature' (which is actually a social concept in itself) and how we produce the 'real' in discourse and so on. srsly will everyone just go and read Gender Trouble please
but anyway, thanks mr_duh for making some meaningful and interesting arguments about this instead of just 'BUT BIOLOGY' which is more than most people on this here forum are capable of
but on the other hand i do think it's often necessary to stick with the sex/gender distinction
when dragged into arguments with rabid science-fetishists who will probably just punch you in the face if you try to tell them that the biology of sex is a category of gendered discourse and stuff
that's not a venn diagram...
that's just someone scribbling random phrases on a dice and, in turn, probably ruining a game of yahtzee.
That's
an Euler diagram. Venn diagrams have to show all possible relations.
You're welcome.
god...
don't you know? there's no correlation or relation between anything....sex, gender, male, female... everything should just be free to float around in untethered, category free bliss, and to suggest it should be any other way is brutish in the extreme.
Yeah you're sort of wrong and projecting something that fits your value system but doesn't actually stand up to evidence
oh dear.
science isn't value-free
in regards to not actually standing up to evidence
there are numerous examples of gender not necessarily matching someones biological sex, in fact such phenomena is behind the formal medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria.
But, because the cemented confines of gender roles for the under 13s are so rigid, most children will fall into the accepted positions anyway.
The autonomous individuals will open themselves up to bullying and...even though we realise that they'll be the ones laughing when they turn 18...I don't know if I could sit back and watch my girl/boy get slaughtered by the nasty cakey-faces of primary school bullies just because they chose to deviate from the standard. I would never force them to play action man/barbie but I may try to gently coax them out of pre-pubescent role reversal.
....what age would they start to realise, though?
Surely a 1/2 year old wouldn't acknowledge the difference betweens boys toys and girls toys?
Maybe I'm underestimating the observational skills of toddlers
havent read the thread
but this seems like a bad idea, gender roles may be socially constructed but they are still a reality for most people. I don't think there is anyway to really escape gender roles, all identities are going to be socially constructed including 'gender neutral', it may be freeing them from male or female but gender neutral is gonna have its own set of expectations/sterotypes/ways in which people act towards them and this kid is gonna be forced into that role, it may be worse than forcing male or female roles because theyve got most of society to contend with. Its not that I dont think gender roles are natural or shouldnt be challenged but this seems so forced and places the struggle on one little kid, im sure they wont thank their parents for it in the long run.
this except i'm not going to say i'm sure they won't thank their parents for it in the long run
because i have access to about 7% of the information I think I'd need to do this.
maybe sure was too strong
But given the majority feel comfortable with their assigned gender roles I think it is safe to say its atleast unlikely they will thank their parent for the extra confusion and singling them out as different, but I guess maybe for every 9 children it would screw up maybe one it would really help.
i think the point is this child now doesn't fall into these categories and hopefully never will
although this whole thing, done under the right circumstances, might be great and a really productive method for moving things forward, it really is an experiment. i'd want my child to be happy no matter what and yeah like you said, many people are happy with gender, rightly or wrongly. i just don't know the consequences of this so i'd be too scared to do it. maybe that makes me a crap gender theory person, but w/e.
I guess thats it, it is an experiment
one that would never get past an ethics board. Think the safest thing to do is raise kids in traditional roles but if they ever show any signs of being unhappy with that support them in whatever they want to be.
yeah i know that when I raise kids I'm going to try very hard not to impose stereotypes and stuff
and encourage non-traditional hobbies and stuff. But I don't think I could even be capable of setting aside knowledge of their assigned sex and the fact that this traditionally corresponds to x or y. Or if I was, I don't know how I would do that. I would worry that I'd end up treating them too differently from their siblings or not showing affection enough or in the right way (because what cute words would you use? etc.) Being a hermaphrodite must be so difficult.
yeah this wouldn't get passed an ethics board.
it depends how early the kid chooses an identity for themselves
but if their classmates family and teachers etc dont refer to them as one gender then they are going to develope a gender neutral idenity, im not expert but I imagine idenity formation is very bound up in how others see you and intereact with you rather than just a pure expression of something within
ok, wishpig is correct
i'll admit i am confusing 'sex' and 'gender'.
Interesting thread.
Don't like what they've called their children, but that's because I'm extremely conservative.
I'M CALLED STORM TOO
WANNA FIGHT ABOUT IT?
No but really, it's not that bad.
Can Storm be a girl's name too?
I can't imagine a girl called Storm. Therefore everyone should really know it's a boy.
It can be both, I think it's usually girls and not boys to be honest
:/
It's usually weather phenomena
well yeah, that too.
anyone who supports this is a total fucking retard. Just sayin. You dont get to choose your gender, your junk does. I hope these parents get all 3 of their kids taken away.
Ridiculous.
Sex and gender is different fings though innit
give a hoot, read a book
Hasn't this basically already been done?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer
Completely different
COMPLETELY different. Completely.
No, it's one of those reasonable Zapsta points you don't get because you're thick
Oh yeah, you're right
I hadn't thought about it in that simple, superficial way. Thanks for setting me straight.
come on then zapsta
can you give us your non-simplistic non-superficial account of this instead plz
No
It's too late now.
I guess its relevant as cases like that would suggest gender isn't learned
and is something innate for most people and that being brought up a different way wont override it, if thats the case this kid will probably just gravitate towards their sexes traditional gender and it might not do any harm but it still might cause some unnecessary confusion and negative treatment by others
aw thingsthatfly you just completely contradicted your really good earlier point
http://drownedinsound.com/community/boards/social/4289061#r6075837
yeah im not really sure which side im on, guess not even experts really know, not sure if I agree with my last post
I was just saying why I thought that case is relevant to this discussion
I mean there is probably evidence on both sides
cases like that david reimer would suggest that gender is generally innate, but there is probably plenty of other evidence that shows otherwise, im not qualified to say which but its probably neither but some complex interaction between the two. I just thought wishpig dismissing that case as being completely incomparable wasnt true as both cases deal with people not being raised by their traditional gender
Incidentally, the David Reimer case doesn't really show that gender is (generally) innate
The child was reassigned as a girl at 22 months. So, they had a relatively long period of not being socialised to be a girl/being biologically male (including 8 months with a penis) beforehand.
It would be interesting (if inhumane) to repeat the experiment with someone who was reassigned at birth.
Like this:
http://www.isna.org/node/564?
Summary of the experiment/results on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_identity#Nature_versus_nurture
Don't know why that Wikipedia summary simply refers to the subjects as '14 children'; the review itself notes that they were all 'chromosomally male'.
That's an interesting experiment
But just because I feel the need to take the side of those who don't accept that biology is destiny (since I don't want to end up having to concede to compatibilism):
This experiment obviously fails to account for one potential source of bias. Namely, the fact that these children's parents will have had knowledge of the fact that they were born male. They might then have (subconsciously, or no) treated them as males even if the experimenters told them not to. So, parents who might have taken the truck away from their 'real' little girl would have let their 'fake' little girl play with the truck so as not to potentially stifle them if the experiment didn't work, and this built up over time into a higher likelihood of male identification.
I'm not saying this is what happpened, I'm just saying the experiment failed to account for it.
but even in purely scientific terms, high-profile cases like that
result in pretty extreme selective bias. so there have been some cases of gender apparently being 'innate' (even though this is a completely unscientific example that doesn't take into account any of the other factors surrounding the case). i'm sure (though don't rly have time to research this right now) that there have been innumerable cases where this apparent reverting to 'natural' gender actually hasn't happened. the only way we could come to any kind of 'scientific' conclusion on this is to raise a huge number of children in a completely isolated, controlled, gender-neutral environment, which is pretty much not possible
yeah good point
and people without any complicated issues like his change gender all the time, so I guess it is not surprising to expect the same level of changing genders between people who coincidentally happen to have been raised in their non sexes gender, if that makes sense
yes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pheromone
...what's yer point?
Not exactly the same but...
I didn't tell my 8 year old boy Wesley he was a lad until he was about 6. Just never thought to. It was only wen he started smoking & drinking that I thought we needed to have that conversation. Also didn't know he was a
lad for sure until he'd pissed off the law & spent his first night in the cells. That's like a bar mitzvah in this family
So this is why we're all doomed.
Oh OK I see it now.
good thread
naaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat
How
do you even go about bringing a child up this way, I mean seriously? It's fucking retarded. Do you just not give it any toys or whatever?
you just give it gender neutral toys like
cardboard
:')
:D
I think
that this is basically fine
did you know that make nipples are fully functioning and can provide milk?
not much and not much nutrition, but they can mostly all secrete something.
Also humans are not just one thing or another.
there are many many types, take big macho men who body build, for instance, who select petite women and like them all in lace and girly stuff, basically these guys just want to play with dollys.
people fetishise about all sorts of things and society and the influences that cause this are not normally realised.