Gender Issues

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HannaA		#81	[-]
Posts: 43 (07/01/09 5:23 PM) Cheeze Whiz Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	iMissEthan wrote: Does Swedish have masculine & feminine nouns like Spanish & French (and I'm sure others, but those are the languages I know)? I'm guessing no. I wonder how Pop will talk about other people. Will Pop never use he/she to refer to anyone? Swedish does have masculine and feminine nouns (han/hon). I read the original article in Svenska Dagbladet (first time in my life that the mandatory 6 years of Swedish come to good use...joys of living in a bilingual country). They did say that Pop is aware of what is between his/her legs and the parents have talked to the kid about how all kids have something between their legs. The parents have chosen to both work half-time, so Pop is not in daycare. They said they don't stay cooped up at home but go out and meet a lot of other people, both adults and children. I think kids in Sweden go to preschool at the age of 5, so I think this experiment will end then at the latest. A Finnish magazine had an article early this year about a Finnish couple doing this same gender-neutral upbringing with their 2,5 year old child. Finnish doesn't have masculine and feminine nouns, so referring to people in a gender-neutral way is easy. The child didn't call the parents mom and dad, but by nicknames Fox and Wolf. The parents also talked in the interview about an older child of some friends who was raised the same way. What worried me is that the child (a girl) feels pressure from other children at school because she doesn't dress the way girls normally do. I don't think any child should be intentionally raised in a way that pretty much certainly leads to extra pressure from peers, so I guess I'm not so much in favor of gender-neutral upbringing. I'm ok with gender-sensitive upbringing, though. In it the parents recognize that girls and boys are treated differently and try to "rebel" against it in small ways: encourage boys to show emotions, solve problems without using force, do chores that are considered women's work (still, unfortunately) and instead of calling girls nice and cute, maybe call them brave etc. Last Edited By: HannaA 07/01/09 5:32 PM. Edited 1 times.
Zuleikha		#82	[-]
Posts: 4960 (07/01/09 5:32 PM) al-Jubna al-Raaqisa Cheese Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	I think Zee's reference to the child's aesthetic sense was about choosing what clothes to wear, not about choosing a gender identity. Yes, that's what I meant. HannaA, that experience of the girl feeling pressured to dress like a girl sounds like exactly why Pop's parents are doing what they're doing. They don't want Pop to be peer pressured into a box. Which I like in principle, but I think it's too infeasible in practice. There's no way to shelter a child from the outside world. The best you can do as a parent is try to support a child in navigating it.
Stellaluna69		#83	[-]
Posts: 5651 (07/01/09 6:43 PM) Choose Your Own Cheese Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	I just don't support the idea of doing something that feels a little radical to me on your child without knowing the long-term effects on development. It's a kid, not an experiment. I think the parents' energies would be far better served teaching the child how to deal with the reality of gender stereotyping rather than doing what they are doing. But I don't necessarily think that gender is solely a social construct, anyway.
iMissEthan		#84	[-]
Posts: 7730 (07/01/09 7:08 PM) Dilled Havarti Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	Swedish does have masculine and feminine nouns (han/hon). Do han/hon mean the like el/la in Spanish & le/la in French? Are there masculine & feminine word endings too?
FinnanHaddie		#85	[-]
Posts: 11864 (07/02/09 12:23 PM) Fishy Cheese Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	zan, I don't understand where you're getting "shame" from what that article said about how those parents are raising Pop. All I get is that they've embarked on a somewhat silly method of trying to keep Pop's development from being warped by exposure to stereotyped gender roles at an early age. I think it's silly because a) they can't protect Pop indefinitely, or even very long, and b) shielding Pop doesn't give the kid any method for handling problems if/when Pop's behavior or preferences don't match gender roles and people react negatively to that. Hanna, I can't say I'm bothered by a kid feeling pressure from peers because she doesn't dress the way other girls do. First, it's not necessarily a result of gender-neutral upbringing; some kids don't dress like everyone else anyway, and I'm assuming that if it were that bothersome to her she'd change the way she dresses to conform. Second, kids always feel pressure from peers to do/talk/dress/eat/play/like the same things in the same way, so this is normal. Learning how to handle it is a necessary part of growing up.
HannaA		#86	[-]
Posts: 44 (07/02/09 6:45 PM) Cheeze Whiz Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	iMissEthan wrote: Swedish does have masculine and feminine nouns (han/hon). Do han/hon mean the like el/la in Spanish & le/la in French? Are there masculine & feminine word endings too? Oh shoot, I meant Swedish has personal pronouns han/hon that mean he/she. Finnish has only "hän", which refers to both women and men. This is why keeping things gender neutral is much easier in Finland than in Sweden. (And it is also why your basic masculine and feminine personal pronouns are a foreign thing to me.) Swedish nouns are en/ett, which just means there are two ways to say "a/the", but they aren't masculine or feminine. Then there are three different declinations for the "en"-words and two for the "ett"-words, which means a total of five declinations. And then there's the plural stuff. So in the end you have this: a girl = en flicka, the girl = flickan, girls = flickor, the girls = flickorna. Just like el/la in Spanish, it affects adjectives as well: en liten flicka, ett litet barn (small girl, small child). And just to stay on topic: The reason why I brought up the little girl pressured about not dressing up like a girl, is because, as a parent, I would like to think I would try to shield my child from things that I can. I understand that children will always find something or someone to pick on, and it is necessary to learn to handle this growing up, but if there is something as simple as giving my son a boys' coat to wear to school instead of a girls' coat, I would like to think I'd do that. I wouldn't want to intentionally give other children a reason to pick on my son.
FinnanHaddie		#87	[-]
Posts: 11878 (07/02/09 9:57 PM) Fishy Cheese Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	Of course; that's why we don't give them names like Poopsywoopsie. But if your son preferred to wear a girl's coat, would you make him wear a boy's coat, or would you let him decide whether it was worth being picked on to wear the coat he likes?
tiger220		#88	[-]
Posts: 3339 (07/03/09 1:14 PM) Late to The Party Cheese Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	I don't have a problem with what Pop's parents are doing, but I think I come at it from a slightly different perspective than average. I've always had a more stereotypically masculine bent when it comes to personal preference on style, interest and activities, and for the most part my parents let me choose my own path. I'm grateful for that because I always had a handle on who I was and what I liked versus what I was "supposed" to like. When I was an adolescent -- and I'm pretty sure it was a consequence of society -- I did seriously question my own gender identity. If trans men had a little more exposure and my parents hadn't raised me to be myself and damn whatever anyone else thought, it may have been something I had looked into more seriously than private thoughts. I don't think that was any sort of betrayal of my self, because I think we are our headspace more than we are our bodies, but I do know that as I got older and was more exposed to other flavors of female role models I was better able to recognize that liking the things I liked (and disliking the things I dislike) didn't mean I should be a boy, it just meant I was a girl who liked those things, and that's okay (which is in no way meant to deny the rights of trans men who do not feel at all comfortable in female bodies, just an acknowledgment that it's not me, after all). I think if my parents hadn't been so lenient with me I would have had far more years of confusion than I did and been a much more miserable person trying to fit into style that just wasn't me. But getting back to Pop's parents, I think what they're doing is okay in that for now it protects Pop from scornful eyes while s/he is figuring out what s/he likes (which in my experience is not necessarily largely-based on "what the other kids of my gender are doing"). And only because I saw it mentioned above, not necessarily because I have a way to tie it into what I'm saying at the moment, he article DOES in fact say Pop knows the physical difference between boys and girls. Edit: I can see where things may be murkier if Pop is a boy. For instance, these days it's "acceptable" for girls to wear pants, and "unacceptable" for boys to wear dresses. So, if Pop is a boy, they may be encouraging a nudge toward a gender identity "disorder" at an age that's still too young to be determined. Last Edited By: tiger220 07/03/09 1:46 PM. Edited 1 times.
FinnanHaddie		#89	[-]
Posts: 11882 (07/03/09 3:10 PM) Fishy Cheese Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	I doubt that you can "give" a kid a gender identity disorder any more than you can make a kid gay or straight. We don't know how any of these things develop, but even boys who were raised as girls from infancy (because of ambiguous or injured genitals) with no knowledge of their biological gender somehow usually end up feeling like they're boys trapped in the wrong body. The leading theory is that this is influenced by hormonal exposure during fetal brain development; if true, that would mean no amount of wearing dresses among boys choosing their own clothes would be able to nudge them toward a gender identity disorder.
tiger220		#90	[-]
Posts: 3343 (07/03/09 3:38 PM) Late to The Party Cheese Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	I doubt that you can "give" a kid a gender identity disorder... Which is not what I was trying to say at all, but I have to go to work so I don't really have time to expand on that right now, I just wanted to get it out there.
Original Dedicated Fan		#91	[-]
Posts: 4359 (07/03/09 6:00 PM) Booker T. and the M Cheese Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	It also reminds me of a short story I read once, about a kid whose parents did this & the child kept it up even at school, refusing to divulge gender to the great consternation of teachers and other adults as well as a few of the kids. It wasn't a very good story. Maybe it was the same story that I read in an early issue of Ms. magazine. The child was referred to as "It." When he/she was asked if he/she was a boy or a girl, he/she said, "I'm an It." The parents got permission for It to use the teachers' restroom so that he/she wouldn't have to choose between the boys room and the girls room. It loved to play with dolls and toy trucks. But, for some reason, It always wanted to play with toy trucks when with girls, and It always wanted to play with dolls when with boys. I thought that was really contrived. And the girls never wanted to play with toy trucks, and the boys never wanted to play with dolls. It was evaluated by the school psychologist, who announced that It was the most well-adjusted child he had ever encountered. Well, it was fiction. he article DOES in fact say Pop knows the physical difference between boys and girls. From my earliest recollections, I could distinguish boys from girls, but when I was very young, I had no idea what made some people boys and some people girls. I could tell them apart by looking at their faces. I can't remember when I found out another difference between boys and girls. So, if Pop already knows about the other difference, then he/she knows a lot more than I did at that age.
HannaA		#92	[-]
Posts: 45 (07/03/09 6:32 PM) Cheeze Whiz Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	FinnanHaddie wrote: But if your son preferred to wear a girl's coat, would you make him wear a boy's coat, or would you let him decide whether it was worth being picked on to wear the coat he likes? I would let him decide whether it was worth being picked on. If making him wear something he doesn't want to wear doesn't work even now when he's 2, there's no chance it will work later.
FinnanHaddie		#93	[-]
Posts: 11885 (07/04/09 7:24 AM) Fishy Cheese Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	I think that's the same decision as the one made by the parents of the little girl who's being pressured for not dressing like other little girls: they're letting her decide what to wear and whether she'd rather wear it & be pressured, or wear something else to fit in.
Miss Moppet		#94	[-]
Posts: 34120 (07/04/09 8:06 AM) Reporter Cheese Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	I wouldn't want to intentionally give other children a reason to pick on my son. Of course; that's why we don't give them names like Poopsywoopsie. Oh honey, if only that were true. Sigh. Which is not what I was trying to say at all, but I have to go to work so I don't really have time to expand on that right now, I just wanted to get it out there. What were you trying to say? I might have been misunderstanding you as well. I haven't really been in this discussion though because I don't have strong enough feelings about what these folks are doing. How other people choose to raise their children is not too much of an issue to me absence mental/emotional/physical abuse, and this doesn't rate for me. They're just young parents and trying out all kinds of things; kids are resilient and they'll all be fine, I'm sure. My parents had all kinds of strict ideas and rules for their first kid, by the time I came along I was eating off the floor and sticking forks in light sockets and they were all "oh, why don't you just watch some TV and be quiet." So we'll see how long this all lasts. If they're truly letting themselves be guided by their child in this, it'll all work out in the end. Last Edited By: Miss Moppet 07/04/09 8:09 AM. Edited 1 times.
FinnanHaddie		#95	[-]
Posts: 11887 (07/04/09 8:18 AM) Fishy Cheese Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	Oh honey, if only that were true. Sigh. I meant "we" as in "OTBers," not the world in general which includes an appalling number of people who name their children as though they either hate them or believe they're going to be infants forever. My only strong feeling about how these parents are raising their kid is that I don't think it's damaging or likely to have any long-term negative consequences. Like you, I figure as long as there's no actual abuse, neglect, or likelihood of warping the child, I don't see any reason for alarm.
zan		#96	[-]
Posts: 13657 (07/04/09 10:53 AM) Bishop Cheese Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	I have strong feelings about this issue but it is not as if I think that these parents are doing anything abusive or that their kid should be taken away from them or anything. From a woman's perspective, I just feel as if the cause of women is not advanced by smoothing out the differences. You asked, FH, why I read shame in these parents' actions, and I just think that if you recognize that each gender has things to celebrate, then you won't feel the need to hide your child's gender. And I say this as someone who was not, and never has been, particularly "girly." Certainly, I think some parents go overboard in enforcing gender stereotypes. But again, IMO, the solution is not to pretend as if gender differences don't exist. But, as I said, while I philosophically disagree with these parents, I agree that I don't think that there will be any long-term damage to the child.
Zuleikha		#97	[-]
Posts: 4963 (07/04/09 3:46 PM) al-Jubna al-Raaqisa Cheese Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	zan, that's interesting. I read the underlying ideology very different than you do. I read it as being not so much about pretending gender differences don't exist--although I think there's some of that, too--but working against the child being socialized into culturally defined gender roles that may or may not suit the child's inherent conception of self and interests. So I don't see shame here, so much as protectiveness mixed with determination and maybe even some anger. I'm also not sure how many innate gender differences really exist outside of the obvious physical ones. I feel like we still know so little about how genetics, hormones, and socialization really work with each other. How is it that someone can physically see himself as female, be raised as female, yet know that he was really born a boy? Yet another person can be born a boy, be raised a boy, physically see himself a boy, and know in his heart that he's really a girl?
FinnanHaddie		#98	[-]
Posts: 11891 (07/05/09 3:00 PM) Fishy Cheese Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	I'll just ditto what Zee said.
zan		#99	[-]
Posts: 13716 (07/14/09 12:16 PM) Bishop Cheese Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	The women at Salon's Broadsheet have some funny things to say about a British midwife, Dr. Denis Walsh, who is decrying the "epidural epidemic" in Britain and who claims that women should want to suffer through the pain of childbirth because "pain in labour is a purposeful, useful thing, which has quite a number of benefits, such as preparing a mother for the responsibility of nurturing a newborn baby." My favorite?: Lynn Harris: Look, I was in it for the baby, not the birth journey. And let it not be misstated or misunderstood -- even medicated childbirth involves plenty of pain. It's not like you're blissed-out and utterly unaware of your nethers. You are a full and active participant, even with las drogas. Not that I should even have to defend my two epi-tastic births on those grounds. I mean, women can give birth however they want. I'm just not interested in hearing that someone else's way was birthier than mine.
suekel		#100	[-]
Posts: 6819 (07/14/09 12:42 PM) Travelling Cheese Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	Leave it to a man to say something stupid like that about how women should give birth. Until you can do it, just shut up and help her along, 'mmkay?

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