Babies, gender and controversy, oh my!

I’ve noticed when someone is expecting, usually the first question becomes “Is it a boy or a girl?”  I found myself guilty of this just two weeks ago.  Now this phrase itself is assuming and suggests that sex and/or gender is a very binary thing-you’re either one or the other.  Announcing that it is a girl brings to mind tea parties, dress-up, frilly dresses, and perhaps most prevalent of all, the color pink.  When an expecting mother states that it’s a boy, people usually picture dump trucks, dinosaurs, rocket ships, and blue (of course).  

When parents choose to raise their baby “genderless” it creates notice in the news.  There is always a hubbub about the “backlash” that it will cause the child.  I’m always stunned to scroll down to the bottom of the comments section on these news stories, expecting to read comments that are varied in nature.  However, almost every single comment has to do with viewing these parents in a negative light, how it will cause identity confusion, and how the child will be subjected to torture and cruelty.  I just find the negativity and overwhelming amount of hate both surprising and appalling.  

There is a popular story last summer about Storm Stocker from Toronto, who at the time was a 4-month-old baby.  Only the immediate family was were privy to the sex of the child.  When Storm was born, the parents sent out an email stating: "We decided not to share Storm's sex for now -- a tribute to freedom and choice in place of limitation, a standup to what the world could become in Storm's lifetime."  I applaud their efforts and don’t dare to condemn them raising their child how they see fit, especially when it appears to be out of love.  Many parents believe they have the right to raise their child how they want to, but almost all of these commenters seem to think that that particular rule only applies to them.  

The kaleidoscope of gender has different facets of prisms and shapes as we’ve often talked about in class.  This also suggests that it is changeable and constantly in flux-not static.  How strange it is that we look to shape others lives though through the simple disclosure of sex.

 http://abcnews.go.com/Health/baby-storm-raised-genderless-gender-dangerous-experiment-child/story?id=13693760#.T0QDl3mqazl