Gender-neutral parenting: nutty or nice?

This screenshot from a fragmentary YouTube comment on the issue shows Sasha Laxton and his mother.

This screenshot from a fragmentary YouTube comment on the issue shows Sasha Laxton and his mother.

Published Jan 27, 2012

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The news that the parents of a five-year-old boy had brought him up a “gender neutral” prompted at least two British newspapers to run columns on the issue - one for such a parenting strategy and one against. Here are both those columns:

Against: the Daily Mail’s Malanie Phillips says:

YOU'VE GOT TOBE A FEW SEQUINS SHORT OF A TUTU TO RAISE YOUR SON AS 'GENDER NEUTRAL'

When Sasha Laxton was born five years ago, his parents decided they wanted to avoid class- ifying him as either a boy or a girl.

They felt that to do so was a kind of “sexual stereo-typing” which had to be avoided at all costs.

So instead of referring to their son as a boy, they talked about him as the “infant”, and kept his gender secret from all but a few close friends and family until he started school.

So proud were they of what they were doing that they even posted on YouTube a video of Sasha saying it was “silly” to talk of differences between boys and girls, and sent friends pictures of him dressed as a pink and glittery fairy.

To which most people will probably be shaking their heads in disbelief and thinking: “That poor child.”

Doubtless, Sasha’s parents love their son and want to do only the best for him. But really, it is hard to believe that people can be quite so desperately misguided, not to say completely out to lunch.

It’s one thing for parents to encourage their sons to be a bit more gentle and caring, and their daughters to be a bit more adventurous and mechanically minded.

But to believe that the innate difference between a boy and a girl is something that is “shaped” by other people and slots a child “into a damaging box” labelled gender is, frankly, to appear a few sequins short of a tutu.

For Sasha is a boy, and there are differences between boys and girls, males and females.

Would these parents similarly feel that they are being slotted into a damaging box if they are referred to as Sasha’s father and mother? Perhaps they would reject as “sexual stereotyping” any suggestion that they are themselves a man and a woman?

They seem to be motivated by the aim - perfectly laudable in itself - that their son should be free to reach his full potential.

But Sasha’s full potential lies in what he will achieve as a boy, not in turning into a girl. And the stark truth is that by telling him that the latter is an option, his parents are putting him at a terrible disadvantage.

Not only are they likely to make him the butt of ridicule, but far more seriously they risk plunging him into damaging and long-lasting psychological confusion about what he actually is.

For someone’s gender - along with their sexuality - is a key element of that individual’s identity. If they are confused about their gender, they are likely to grow up confused about their identity.

Indeed, it is hard to think of a more fundamental way of mucking up a child and imperilling his healthy development.

People suffering from innate gender confusion, when they feel they are trapped in the body of the opposite gender to the one to which they belong, are tragic cases. Deliberately to try to bring about such confusion in a child’s mind by using him as a kind of guinea-pig in a social experiment is really quite shocking.

Nevertheless, Sasha’s parents are by no means a one-off aberration in pursuing this aim. Last year, a Canadian couple insisted they would also raise their baby, Storm, as a gender-neutral child. In certain circles, this is becoming a fashion.

The fact is that for more than three decades, Left-wing ideologues have been determinedly unravelling sexual and gender differences - on the grounds that the very idea that people are different amounts to a kind of prejudice.

Bizarre as it may seem, what started as a campaign for equal rights progressed into a movement to abolish altogether the differences between men and women.

This movement consisted of an alliance between, on the one hand, radical feminists who were consumed by hatred of men and, on the other, gay activists intent upon blurring the distinction between hetero-sexual and same-sex unions.

What arose from both was a push towards androgyny, based on the false belief that biology had little to do with gender differences - which were instead said to be artificially constructed by society.

Denying the biological facts of life in this way might be considered a form of lunacy. Indeed, scientists have shown there are many differences between male and female brains. And in general, men and women clearly have different approaches to their environment, relationships, children and so on.

Nevertheless, promotion of androgyny has become a kind of default position among progressive thinkers, writers and politicians.

It all started with the idea that men and women should have interchangeable roles both at home and in the work-place, and that fathers were no longer essential to the family unit at all.

Right from the beginning, however, there was a deeper agenda to redefine relations between men and women by nothing less than redefining men and women themselves.

Accordingly, radical feminists such as academics Judith Lorber and Susan Farrell wrote with a straight face that “being a woman and being a man change from one generation to the next”.

And the immensely influential psychologist Sandra Bem wrote that to free people from “culturally imposed” definitions of masculinity and femininity people should become androgynous, adapting male or female behaviour according to their situation.

This would mean, she gleefully predicted, that distinctions between male and female would “blur into invisibility”.

Goodbye testosterone!

Astonishing as this may seem, this madness has now become mainstream. For example, the Council of Europe, no less, has drafted a definition of gender as an artificial social construct which has little to dowith biology.

In the U.S., some therapists have demanded “genderless models of marriage and parenting”.

Recently, the California Teachers’ Association held a conference advocating “gender liberation”. It issued instructions on “gender etiquette”, which said it was polite to ask people with which sex they identified - and, accordingly, by which pronouns they preferred to be described. The instructions added helpfully: “Each of us can decide for ourselves in which bathroom we belong.”

And a few months ago on U.S. TV, a “gender coach” was filmed indoctrinating children that they could choose whether to be a boy or a girl.

It all sounds too ludicrous to be true. In fact, it is deeply sinister. Our society is being brainwashed into pretending that the differences between male and female don’t exist - in order to reconstruct society into some unattainable utopia of sexual and gender identicality.

The dual goal is to marginalise men and to upend society’s fundamental moral codes. Having first been told they can behave sexually in whatever way they want, people are now being told they can be sexually whatever they want. And anyone who objects to this will be told they are a bigot.

The result will be an increasing tide of misery. Human identity is formed by the union of male and female. Sexual and gender differences lie at the very heart of what it is to be a human being.

Denying those differences to a child not only threatens that child’s own sense of identity and well-being, but also starts to unravel what it is to be a person.

Dressing a boy as a girl and pretending he can choose his gender is not merely bizarre and cruel. It is part of a wider agenda to re-order our society.

Far from ushering in a better world, this threatens to stamp out the individual right to know what we are, and to rob us of humanity itself. -

Daily Mail

For: the Independent’s Julie Bindel says:

BOYS AREN’T BORN WANTING TO WEAR BLUE

When Sasha Laxton was born five years ago, his parents refused to disclose his sex to avoid gender stereotyping. Until Sasha started school recently, when it proved too complicated not to attach a label of “girl” or “boy” to the child, he was simply encouraged to like the colours and play with the toys he favoured, as opposed to those deemed suitable by the gender police.

But reading some of the angry comments generated by reports about Sasha's unusual upbringing highlights how obsessively the gender defenders fight their corner. A Canadian couple insisted they would also raise their baby, Storm, as a gender-neutral child last year, prompting outraged voices who said it was almost becoming “fashionable” to “dupe” people out of the precious information as to whether or not a person is male or female - but unfortunately not.

These days we appear to be more entrenched in notions of gender than we were 10 years ago. Despite the “mad science” behind experiments to attempt to “prove” that there are different male and female brains and that inherent characteristics exist, there is no evidence. Yet, strangely, there is little dissent from those who normally tear apart such quackery like rabid dogs.

People regularly confuse sex with gender. Sex is the biological and physiological characteristics that define male and female. Gender is socially constructed and learned behaviour that society considers appropriate - a set of rules laid down to benefit males and keep females in our place.

As a feminist I want to see an end to the tyranny of gender. I am sick of the way girls are socialised into loving pink and Barbie, and how boys are forgiven the worst behaviour because “boys will be boys”. Characteristics and behaviours of boys and girls are not biologically determined. However, females are severely punished for stepping out of line if we behave in a manner not suited to our gender role.

It used to be fairly non-contentious to argue the feminist point that gender is not innate. However in recent years we appear to be returning to the bad old days where it was assumed that humans are hard-wired to be masculine or feminine in behaviour, rather than socialised into it. Only a handful of radicals today dares to challenge the meaning of gender and remind us that it is constantly and wilfully substituted for “sex” by essentialists who wish to defend the notion of a “real man” and “real woman”.

Many a reasonable person will no doubt argue that what Sasha's parents have done is a cruel experiment that makes him a sitting duck for bullies. That may be the case, but only because he lives in a world which has become crazed about gender. What a shame Sasha, whether he likes Lego or angel wings, is the exception, and not the norm. - The Independent

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