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The only thing that gender determines is your belief of what that kid can do, not the kid's actual abilities. You find that out by seeing what the kid can actually do. If you assume, "Hey, that kid's a girl - she can't play football!" you may miss the fact that yes, indeed, that girl is capable of playing football.
Right, and as ive stated the issue here is how we react to people who step out of the gender roles as per their sex. Not with assigning those roles. Yes, ceasing to assign those rules would solve the problem, but its a silly way to go about it.
People saying "my daughter will likely be too small to play football against boys, lets push her towards something else" arent the issue. The issue is when said daughter DOES want to play football or simply is uniquely qualified to do so and we either critisize or insist on pushing her away from it despite evidence to the contrary.
Its a head start on directing your child towards something shes likely to succeed at. If my daughter is a biological rarity that can compete with males in football I will notice that pretty early on and stop pushing her from it. However, theres really no point in her wasting her time getting into football when shes going to weigh 140 pounds, and I could have kept her from that disapointment by pushing her towards something she could succeed at and be happy.
I think that this question is at the heart of this ENTIRE debate.
If your goal is a genderless society then I am happy, no I am proud to be part of your problem.
My goal, and THEIR goal (as far as I can tell) is NOT a genderless society!
The goal is for society to not immediately ascribe someone a gender or gender roles based on what they happen to look like or be packin'
Blah blah blah you will say "but oh ho gender sometimes is biological!" yes okay whatever that is not relevant to this because the problem is not allowing people the freedom to be what they want without having an outside force tell them that is what they HAVE to be!
Honestly, however their kids turn out is their problem. For every weird hippy parent who raises their kids in a bubble, there are several parents raising them all number of screwed up ways. Or parents trying their best and still fucking it up epic. And some kids get screwed up or turn out fine despite all their parents best or worst efforts.
No reason to get personal.
Although I do still think its retarded.
by age 5 the child will be indistinguishable from any other unless the parents prove themselves to be terrible individuals and push a motive, in which case God help both child and parents
(DISCLAIMER: I do not believe the parents will do such)
edited for better grammar.
This is a bizarre fantasy scenario you've concocted to justify your knee-jerk resistance to something unconventional.
Because I believe that some of the rules will help most children live happier, more successful lives and help them avoid some disapointment and failure. If my kid isnt good at math, and he keeps insisting that he wants to be a scientist, I have a few options, I could really help him learn math, but chances are Id be better off helping him find something hes good at and would enjoy.
A daughter trying to play football when she ends up being 120 pounds, I dont have much else I can do except try to get her away from that. Why not get a head start when its almost a guarentee her and football wont mix?
Down would be up! Up would be down! Men would try to have babies and women would try to penetrate men! I mean, how would we know otherwise?
But if you had a son who had slight build and wanted to play football, you'd do the same, right? If so, then your steering your daughter away from football has nothing to do with her gender and everything to do with her size. So why make a point of claiming there's a gender role involved?
There are few people here who would disagree with you, there'd be nothing wrong with a genderless society (just as there isn't anything wrong with a society where we have genders, just a society where genders are imposed upon those who don't want them). The key problem here is Pop has the potential to be introduced as genderless to engendered peers who probably aren't going to be so open minded about the genderless concept.
Wow. How about a society where someone can be genderless if they actually feel that way as opposed to being forced into a role? Or one where somebody can be outside of the socially-accepted binary and not be ostracized?
No wait, it can't possibly be anything benevolent like that, we clearly want to force YOU to become agendered yourself. That's the entire evil plan, actually, to force everyone to surgically remove their sexually defining features and organs and just clone all of our future generations. :?
THIS
shut up you are giving away the plan
The most right.
There is nothing wrong with that, hopefully it will eventually happen. But it should never happen at the cost of your kids future.
I can sit back and say "well that's a nifty idea, I wonder how it will work out". But then I come to the realization that this is happening because of the decision the parents are making for their child. A decision that even if the kid eventually ends up fitting in somewhere, will undoubtedly have a horrible affect on their childhood. Without being a dick it seems to nearing the point of child abuse. In the US dependent on the state and the judge probably would be considered as such.
The problem isn't the genders, its the roles that we attribute to them.
No, I do not want a genderless society, thank you. What I want is a gender role-less society. Or at least a society in which gender roles are not regressive and are used to promote or sustain inequality.
Why?
Why do you think this?
If Pop ends up conforming to a traditional role, which most people in this thread seem to agree Pop will, barring (wholly unsubstantiated) parental pressure, Pop probably won't have any memory of this part of his or her life.
No I'm assuming that the kids I grew up with had worse problems which they got teased over. Like the kid with the malformed hand that was teased ruthlessly. Or the kid who had serious throat scarring that caused his voice to sound like an 80 year old smoker. Or of course, me, who had a serious speach impediment that resulted in years of brutal mockery. Kids have juicier targets then gender to tease over and they will USE them, ignoring gender role discrepency as a 'small potato' compared to more hurtful targets they can go after.
It will grow up to be the president of United Earth Federation and then be like "oh hey guyz I was raised genderless and I turned out awesome (clearly) so it is now my edict that everyone raise their kid genderless."
One day you see a toddler wearing little jeans, a skull t-shirt and playing with a truck.
The next day you see the same toddler wearing a sundress and playing with barbies.
You will instantly assume that the child is a little girl. This child is not being raised gender ambiguous, this child is being raised as a girl. Everyone will assume that it's a girl, because girls can wear what they want and do what they want at this age, and boys don't wear dresses. Girls can do boys things and wear boys clothes and no-one will bat an eyelid if they are little, boys doing 'girls' things will face cruelty at any age.
Gender ambiguity is always going to make you assume 'female' until they are old enough to make it be obvious either way. Pop is, right now, a girl because anyone who meets Pop a few times will treat Pop as such.
The goal they are trying to achieve is one where a person chooses their gender.
Now, maybe that upsets you because abloo abloo you had a shitty child hood along with everyone else, but don't decide to force that horrid shit on other people's kids.
Thing is, as was brought up earlier in the thread, there are so many decisions people can make for their kids that will lead their kids to have unpleasant childhoods based on the culture/area they live in. Raise a child as an atheist in the bible belt, or a biracial child in the 60's, or a black child in a predominately white culture in... lots of places. Gee, my classmates' pet name for me was n****r on top of all the nerdly teasing I got - how abusive my parents were to raise me in a predominately white area, right?
No, children are cruel, period, and you can't raise your child in fear of what other people's children will say, or else I'd probably be grinding in a rap video somewhere because it would be easier than being called a junglebunny in junior high.
You're affected by shit that you can't remember, for starters.
Beyond that, though, if the BEST CASE scenario out of all of this is "Pop ends up gendered anyway" then what the fuck is there to applaud here? The parents are risking their child's wellbeing, for zero potential benefit.
Fuck. Someone gets it finally.
At a young age, girls who want to play with fire trucks and whatever are fine. Little girls might mock them, but little boys will think they are the only cool girl in the class. Conversely a little boy who wears a dress will be mocked FURIOUSLY, possibly more than anything else that could be observed. Kids have jucier targets than little girls who like trucks yet, but a little boy who wears a dress and likes dolls? I can't think of anything a small child would mock more.
Because I can make an easy assumption a girl wont have the right build. Like...very easy! With a boy, I have no idea, so I dont have enough information to push him away from football as a small child. I can guarentee my daughter wont be able to play football, and if I leave that door open for her, and she choses it, shes going to experience failure and rejection that I could have avoided for her.
Its about making decisions with the evidence you have. To discount the facts we can gather about someone based on sex is silly, there are some hard facts which shouldnt be ignored for the sake of the rare exceptions.
The benefit is that if Pop ended up being, say, transgendered, he or she would have had an easier time of it growing up.
This is something that should be blindingly obvious to you.
In the US or Canada I would say you are right.
For Sweden.
No clue, really. I don't know sweden well enough.
My belief is that this will feed a gender role confusion that will continue for quite awhile. I figure that while he will find his place, its not going to be one day him saying to himself (assuming its a boy) "hey I am guy, time to stop wearing dresses, playing with barbie dolls, liking the color pink, pissing in the girls bathroom...etc". Each one will slowly and surely be stamped out by pressure from same sex classmates, possibly even opposite sex classmates, and the later these happen the harder emotionally any damage incurred will be to overcome. Even if its almost all like normal by the time they are 7 or 8. You have successfully made your child's childhood harder on him, just because you wanted to. A child isn't some kind of barbie doll.
No, the problem is extremely complex and can't be boiled down to "it's the roles" or anything easy like that. Your statement completely ignores those who exist outside the binary completely, those who do not identify as either male or female.
I don't think that the "damage" potential is so high that it would make the parents' choice irrefutably poor or wrong, but I am curious whether it confers any real benefits for its being proactive versus reactive.