What’s in a gender? A question that arises more and more in an evolving open-minded community is how much influence the area between a person’s legs has on the way he or she is perceived by the world. But a question not so often asked is how gender affects a personal view of the world. Does a woman see things differently than a man? And if so, is this a product of being a woman, or a product of how society believes women should view their surroundings? Are women inherently different than men, or socially different?
According to Parent Central, a Toronto couple has chosen to keep the gender of their four-month-old child secret from family, friends and any other inquirers. This has happened before: A couple in Sweden made news in 2009 for doing the same thing with their 2-year-old. But the fact that such stories in obscure little towns make news should tell you something: Gender perception means much more than people realize.
Support is lacking for such couples. If the comments on these stories are anything to go by, the general public is horrified that these parents would do this to their child. Claims are made that it is “unnatural,” and these parents are forcing their children through some kind of social experiment that will end in years of psychotherapy.
What readers don’t seem to understand is that the parents are not hiding the gender from the child; they are hiding it from the public. They are not changing the gender of the child; they are changing the way that child is treated and perceived by others. In this way, these children are being given more opportunities than others. They can wear a dress without people sneering in disgust. They can cut their hair short without people making assumptions about the people they will grow up to have sex with. They can play baseball, or do ballet, or get a pet snake, or watch Disney princess movies without the automatic judgments made by a public who believes it knows what that child ought to be doing. These stories highlight how important the public believes societal perception is on a person’s gender.
This story brings to mind a different story that blew up the media. In April, many people were up-in-arms over a J. Crew ad that showed a top designer mother bonding with her son — by paining his toenails pink. The ad was accused of promoting the transgendered agenda, and Culture and Media Institute writer Erin Brown called it “blatant propaganda celebrating transgendered children.” I suppose the ad is also promoting feminist propaganda, seeing as the mother is not in the kitchen. Imagine, then, if her husband has been in the shot with an apron. Obviously, this would be an example of homosexual propaganda. What if her husband was black? Well, then we’re looking at interracial propaganda.
What seems to have been forgotten is that gender is not a social construct. Gender is a chromosome change, a genitalia difference. It is a physical and genetic characteristic and should not be the mold by which one is allowed to acceptably express himself or herself in society.
If social constructs had never been challenged, the United States would still be stuck in the 1920s, with an obedient pregnant wife in a dress, a white man with a swell job and a black man with a lisp. If those that had challenged social perception gave up every time someone was disgusted with what they were doing, nothing would ever change. The oppressed would still be oppressed, and the rest would still be living their cushy, predictable, carefully and specifically socially constructed lives.
One reader said about the Toronto couple, “The world around us has been set by thousands of years of social evolution. To try to undo this evolution through your child is very selfish and very inconsiderate to the child.”
Evolution is not going to be undone by this couple and their child. Evolution is simply going to evolve. That is how we improve as a species and as a society.