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Or what if Pop has chosen a specific cis-gendered role? Pop is now much more confident that is "who Pop is" instead of going through the dilemma of wondering whether they are the wrong gender or not!
This exact scenario happened to me, and I was raised cis-gendered!
I think this is reasonable. I think this is what I believe. What the parents are doing is excessive but I doubt it's harmful.
I added something to your post, do you see how it invalidates your entire argument? Because by raising them cis-gendered you are raising them in a way you want to which ignores the problems a transgendered individual raised cis genderedly can face! You have just made their childhood harder on them!
except that there are OTHER ways to be accepting of a transgendered child without creating a whole artificial secrecy thing.
Again, it is unnecesary risk without justifiable reward
For sweden, exactly the same. I've been to sweden. The little girls wear whatever they want, and the little boys wear little boys clothes. Europe is more 'permissive' than the US, but nowhere near to that extent. Again, there is a difference between gender equality which the scandinavian countries are EXCEPTIONAL at (see, paternal leave in those countries, and female CEOs there) and the absence of gender identity. A man can be a stay at home dad for four months and everyone will respect him, but if he does so while wearing a dress people will be less accepting.
Some of those "bullies" still plague us; for instance if I wanted to wear a nice business-casual skirt to my business casual environment (let us pretend I don't work in a science lab, where skirts are unsafe) I would be mocked
But you said both you and your wife were fairly small people. Why would you guess your son would have a chance at being a beefy linebacker? That's evidence you have, right there.
Also: what's wrong with your daughter playing football as a child anyway? Something she's interested in even at a high-school level doesn't mean she has to go pro - like most child sports. So what if she (hypothetically) is interested in playing football at age 6, and plays it with other kids her age (whom she is not destined to be smaller than just because she is female, since we are talking pre-pubescent children). She can easily lose interest, as children do, for lots of things.
She will probably figure out on her own that she doesn't have the right build to continue in football once everyone hits puberty anyway.
I wanted to be a ballerina (a gender-appropriate role!) when I was a child. I turned out to be very short. Oh well.
I get that in your example you're trying to avoid giving your children unrealistic expectations, but you might be being a might extre pre-emptive in deference to gender roles when, really, kids do sort out these things themselves.
It's more of the fear that you know there is nothing socially acceptable you can do to protect your child from this.
The best you can do is prepare them for it and hope they can weather it.
what should a parent do if their child is born with ambiguous genitalia? pray they get it get right?
Transgendered is something that should be handled (with care) when it happens. Not something you try to make your child in the first place.
This would be like in Georgia circa 50's if genetic engineering was possible, a white couple having the pigment of their kids skin changed prior to birth to be darker. Sure the kid isn't African-American, and even if he was shouldn't affect the way he is treated. But why in the world would you go out of the way to make life harder on your kid as a social experiment.
Notice that Hach said "dictates"
Really? The more you know. Thanks.
We must prevent children from being raised by mixed race couples because that will make them mocked. We must also forbid them from being raised by anybody outside the norm lest they be mocked.
I think we tend to underestimate the resilience of children, especially young children.
Hmmm I thought the implication was there that this gets passed down to our children because we don't want them to be mocked like us.
If it wasn't there it is.
Is Pop confident?
An assumption is being made that the parents are teaching pop all of the different gender options for Pop to decide among, but that is nowhere in the article. The article actually seems to suggest that they are giving Pop as little information as possible, and forcing Pop to create Pop's entire identity popself.
Which is not a bad thing in and of itself, but DOES NOT lead to a lot of confidence once Pop gets out in the word, and sees that the vast majority of other folks conform to a binary proposition.
I am ALL ABOUT building a child's confidence in who they are. I don't see this experiment as doing that. I see this experiment as serving both as an isolation booth and an echo chamber, essentially leaving Pop completely unprepared for introduction in to society at large.
nothing there requires the excess this couple is going through, which is why Hach and I are questioning whether it's superfluous
First, I think that is Pop is sexwise male, and decides to wear dresses, everyone will assume 'he' is a girl, and won't know different because 'his' parents sure aren't going to correct them. So the kids won't know or care, at least until facial hair starts growing. And by the then gender idenity will be firmly established for Pop and their parents can help them deal with it.
You may be disgusted with my posts, but I'm just as disgusted with those who are proclaiming that children should bow to the pressure of their peers or face exile, and that parents should make sure their precious darlings fit societal molds so well that they won't get teased. Heaven forbid anyone rock the boat. God help anyone that chooses who they want to be instead of succumbing to what others tell them they SHOULD be.
I feel good for the kid that their parents are giving them the room to choose, and sorry for all you geese that are screaming there's something wrong with that.
The status quo seems to be just fine
No, it would be as if they let the kid choose their skin pigmentation.
The parents aren't forcing jack shit on the kid. They are letting the kid choose whenever the kid wants to. Can you grasp this?
The kid chooses, the parents support. The horror.
Dude fucking seriously. I swear you either lied about reading this article, or just plain can't fucking read.
Unless you have a vagina or are a guy who wants to do something "traditionally" feminine.
Actually, in the specific case of an intersex child, I think that some variant of what these parents are doing is the only responsible choice.
Hmmmmmm I think that lots of people really really disagree with you. And you may even be objectively wrong here.
I think that you are right though, you should at least have made that much effort as a parent so that they can always look back on those very early, very formative years and see from the beginning that their parents had zero presuppositions about who their child was :^:
Well, I haven't LIVED in Sweden, so possibly there is an underlying layer of permissiveness that I missed, but I saw lots of little girls running around in long pants and doing 'boyish' things, and no little boys in dresses. It's just the way the world is right now.
Yes, we have the parents' word that pop has "shaped [a lot of] self confidence and personality". Except for the little detail that, a lot compared to what? How did they measure it? Is Pop significantly and noticeably more self-confident than other kids her age?
Again, you're waaaaaay too biased towards the parents here, and giving them the benefit of the doubt when they don't really deserve it.
Sorry, had to add the bolded
But again, the kid isn't choosing. Society assigns 'female' to a child who wears dresses at all regularly and plays with dolls if not informed otherwise. The parents have assigned female to their child by their plan.
And the opposite viewpoint is frankly, MORE ridiculous (that is, the view that these people are irrational lunatics who should not be trusted with children)
Having an androgenous society is quite a big shift, I'd like to see some evidence that it would solve any of the problems people are bitching about, and not lead to a whole set of other problems. From what I can gather, it's just what people feel would be better, not any actual hardcore data.
This is precisely why I am supportive of Pop's parents. Because the observation of the "way the world was" 50 years ago was fucking unacceptable, and we are immensely better off for the horrible people who experimented with their children, putting blacks into white schools and making crazy mixed-race babies and teaching their children that there was no reason to believe in a deity.
You are entitled to your opinion on that, but the FACT stands that we do not know whether Pop is actually more self-confident and has a "better" personality, and, even if she does, it can be attributed to her genderless upbringing (and not to countless of other possible factors).
That is a very different statement than "The Status Quo is just fine", and I hope you realize that.
None of that please, comments like this explode quickly.
Then this thread gets closed and no more discussion.
Pop's mother is a 24 year old mother of Pop, not a behavioral expert, or gener expert, or whatever.
Just because she says that she thinks what she is doing will make Pop confident doesn't mean it actually will.
Tell me, how do you know that a two and a half year olf is confident in its gender identify?
Stop reading the article as you WANT it to be, and look at it honestly.