Topping Google news today is the story of the Toronto couple who have decided to keep the gender of their 4 month old a secret so they can raise him/her to be gender neutral.
May I give my thanks to Storm's parents for busting the myth American's have (and perpetuated by Michael Moore) that Canadians are boring, polite, sane (okay, slightly socialist) people who ski a lot.
Before this story went viral, I was already giving some thought to the role of masculine/feminine biology because of something that happened recently at the YMCA : Do men steal more often than women? Could it have to do with the hunter/gatherer part of their brain that drives them to take what they need? I mean, in the way, way, old days, men went after things to provide for their woman and children, and there wasn't a price tag on the elephant, or a pre-purchased bear. If you could take it, it was yours to claim. Perhaps some ancient urge at work?
In my totally unscientific experiment of one, my eBook was sitting alone on the exercise bike, and after I left, someone in the adjacent free-weight room (totally guy land) decided to take it. It was abandoned after all, fair game. After sneaking off with it (the cyclist next to me didn't even notice), the thief took his prize back to the weights but ether discovered it wasn't an iPAD, or that it was just a simple book reader, or just too puzzling to figure out, and left it behind. Four hours later someone found it there and turned it in, after I'd already been to the Sherriff's Department to report the theft.
Once I heard what had happened, I admit I did have an image of one of those beefy guys in a muscle shirt and shorts pawing over it with a quizzical look, turning it this way and that, then dropping it on the floor to run off and start beating his chest and screeching at the others in frustration. Not nice, I know, but I put it down to mini-PTSD.
I do love my eBook.
Back to poor Storm: On KPCC's "Air Talk", host Larry Mantle had a great interview with a child psychologist to discuss this issue and these are the comments I left on the website:
Unless Storm's parents plan to raise their child in a vacuum, there would be no way to tell if their goal to raise a gender neutral child is successful - just too many factors will come into play as the child navigates the world. I agree with your guest that kids gender identity depends on a blend of nature/nurture/and culture. Freedom of expression aside, some things you cannot change no matter how you obscure their origins.
Biological imperative is a strong determinate here - and to think one could erase these DNA cues so easily is to underestimate, and over-simplify the evolution of the human species. True gender neutrality would have to evolve over time and I believe we're already in this process - intellectually, perhaps biologically, but a long way away from understanding how it will manifest. And the future of gender neutrality may not be what Storm's parents envision, or even desire. Even today, what is defined as masculine and/or feminine in one part of the world may be very different in another, so our idea of 'neutrality' is subject to our own cultural biases.
Any parent today who is raising a child by letting them pursue their interests and self-expression without regard to traditional male/female roles is in fact working towards the goal of a gender-neutral person, and this is far more common than the media attention this story about Storm deserved.
In this age of reality fame, Storm's parents are getting something out of this, and I'm afraid their child will suffer for it over the long run. And I suspect this move was one born out of frustration with the issues their other two kids are struggling with, thinking they can solve the problem by artificially removing Storm's birth gender. How controlling is this? Not much room for a child who may not live up to their experiment.
Sadly, I think Larry was right about a future book deal....
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