Tuesday, January 28, 2014
Pertaining to the article, "X: A Fabulous Child's Story", which is about a child who has a gender, but no one but the parents are allowed to know what that is so that the child can define him/herself. Personally, I don't see anything particularly wrong with not wanting to identify your child and give them specific gender roles. It shows them that the world doesn't have to define them, and that they can define themselves. However, I feel like if you raise them in the world we have now, they would be the center of bullying in school and around the neighborhood as other children are taught that they are one or the other, not an X. Also, when referring to a person, no one should ever be objectified as an "it" which would compare a human to an object or animal and is just degrading. So I think that this could work, just not right now. But in reality, I guess we never know the full outcome until it can be done fully. But that just brings up another problem, if this experiment is to be carried out for an entire lifetime, what if the child learns of what is being done and then refuses? How can you even start this experiment with someone who doesn't have the ability to say no?
- Nicole
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I agree, sexism is going to decrease as time goes on and eventually parents will raise their children as gender neutral. This can be seen in the greater number of parents letting their children express themselves as they want. It can also be seen in toy stores that are no longer separating their toys based on gender roles.
ReplyDeleteI agree with both of you. Although I applaud the parents for allowing their child to truly be themselves, but I feel as Baby X grows older, its inevitable that they will find out about gender and how gender roles play a huge part in today's society. I also agree with your last statement however, that it is a bit unfair to the child going through this who never had a say.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your post, Nicole, and these comments, Heather and Jess. I think sometimes we assume that gender roles are getting "better" and that inequality is slowly decreasing over time in a linear progression. This is true in some ways, but I would argue that in other ways gender is becoming even more strictly binary. For example, toys and clothes for children 100 years ago were often gender neutral so that boys and girls could share these items (when families had less time/money to put toward consuming products). Now at the store there are distinct pink and blue aisles. I wonder if there are connections to the increasing relationship between violence and masculinity that Jackson Katz talks about in Tough Guise 2.
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