Wednesday 23 June 2010

S/he/it

This is a fascinating one:

A Swedish couple have decided to avoid gender stereotyping by hiding their baby's sex from everybody: an asexual name, male and female clothing, no sexually-identifying pronouns. It's not clear how much the child will be told about its sex and gender.

Here in the world of gender studies, we've long ago accepted that sex and gender aren't the same thing: sex is biology and gender is culture, so it doesn't seem that big an issue in philosophical terms.

However, a lot of people are quite upset because sex is one of the major ways in which we divide the world, for good or ill. We treat people differently according to how we perceive their genders, from clothing to conversational gambits to sexual advances.

Would you do this to/for your child? I'm quite impressed. The gender lines we draw are so arbitrary. Perhaps effacing the cultural signs of gender will make for a balanced, open child and adult. On the other hand, if the rest of the world continues to divide along gender lines, it's going to suffer: choosing which toilet to use, for example. Things will get really interesting (or awful) when the child develops sexually, and has to confront the difference between sex and gender.

Is this experiment child abuse? I'm really torn. On the one hand, I am postmodern enough to admire the attempt, but I can only see unhappiness for this individual because of the fact that the rest of humanity, even in enlightened Sweden, won't be in the same position.

1 comment:

Connie said...

I agree, Vole. I think, in a perfect world, our sex and gender would not be 'qualities' to be judged by. However, the plus side of any labelling is that we see others with which we share something in common. I can't help but feel that it is ethically wrong to use one's own child in such an extreme social experiment. (All parenting, by the way, is a social experiment. We all would like to prove that we are better parents than our own!) I feel this child will live in a world which does not cater for his/her parents' idealistic views. Better the parents insist that they be treated gender neutral, rather than their children, if they wish to make a point. My final thought; I wonder how long the parents will be able to maintain their stance, both because of society as a whole, but also because of their own (presumably) gender entrenched upbringing.