SultanOfSurreal wrote:PLAYER57832 wrote:And there is a huge difference between those issues and this. Ironically, this child may well be in for just those sorts of problems.
how? do you actually know who david reimer is? his life was destroyed because his parents forced him into a gender that was wrong for him, because of purely biological concerns. his entire existence is a repudiation of the idea that people can be shoehorned into one gender role or the other. (read that article i linked, it's long but extremely elucidating)
so why is allowing the child to develop naturally, without constraints on perceived wrong-gender behavior, detrimental?
Yes, I do know. Except he presents exactly the reason why accepting and knowing a child's true gender is important. It is because it IS genetic and is biologically based that guiding a child to accept who they are is so important.
Kids who are born hermaphrodites, quite rare actually, have an inherently difficult time. Parents can help or hurt. Helping is recognizing who your child is and leading them to accept that. Harm is forcing a child to fit a role that doesn't fit. But, to do that properly, you have to actually FIND the role. That requires a parent's guidance. Few children are really able to find or know those things for themselves at an early enough age to fully develop those trends.
Barunt mentioned karate. Here, they start kids in Karate at 2 or 3. Music needs to be introduced very early as well. By ignoring their child's sex, they are inhibiting, not helping their child.
SultanOfSurreal wrote:PLAYER57832 wrote:What these people are doing is conducting a social experiment on their child.
once again they are doing what they think is best. since when do unorthodox parenting tactics you disagree with automatically become sick, mengele-like experiments? you, like the others here, are having a knee-jerk reaction with no basis in reality, and in many ways you're misconstruing what the parents are actually doing.
For that matter, most boys today do play with dolls. They also see their dad's holding babies, cooking,etc.. so they are as much copying Dad as Mom. BUT, and this is pretty key.. though they will hold, "love" their dolls and stuffed animals, they way they relate to them is not like girls. Those differences are inherent very, very early. I see in 2 and 3 year olds, for example.
so then,
again, what exactly is wrong with what the parents are doing? they are letting the kid decide on its own how it relates to the doll or the truck or whatever, instead of telling them how it should. if those feelings are so natural, where does this vague need for "guidance" come into play?
This child is not learning any of that. They will be thrust into a world that has gender expectations and specific rolls, but they won't understand them. They won't understand and so will have even more difficulty, whether they wind up being a normal heterosexual or not. They will make "miscues" and are likely to be just plain misunderstood in the way that kids with things like mild forms of Aspergers are misunderstood. (classic "geekism")
oh jesus, of course pop will
understand gender roles. you cannot live in a world as fiercely gendered as our own and not see it. pop isn't retarded.
These parents are not really paying attention to what their child wants, they are simply trying to fulfill their own ideas and expectatioins.
the same could be said of a couple who forces a certain gender and all the baggage that goes with it on their kid. at least in that instance it would be valid. how is letting the child decide what it wants "not paying attention to what it wants"?
it was tempting, and it would have been easier, to just quote your whole post, call you dumb, and move on. but i want you to start thinking about this instead of just feeling. think about what the parents are
actually doing instead of assuming that because it's unusual, it's sick and wrong. they are giving the child a more nurturing environment by telling pop that it's ok to be the person pop wants to be. if pop displays a proficiency for the piano, pop's parents will probably guide pop towards that. if pop instead shows great athleticism... well you get the point.
in fact the very point of this "experiment" is to allow the child to display its own strengths and weaknesses, preferences, desires, and attitudes without fear of not fitting into some arbitrary perception of what those things
should be. think of all the poor bastards who were forced onto the football team by oblivious parents when they really wanted to be in home ec (and vice versa for girls)
you've yet to actually describe in what way these parents are failing to "guide" their child, only that they are, because they're not telling their kid to act more like the completely fictional ideal. i really do think that your own ingrained sense of the rigidity of gender roles is coloring your view of the article, and i hold out hope that you can look past that and think about it rationally. instead of imputing neglect, callousness, or whatever else it is you're saying the parents are, just because they have ideas about parenting opposed to yours.
snuffkin wrote:Gender is not essentially a social construction.. the human spieces are a kind of animal and the different sexes are designed (or for you atheists: just happen to be) slightly different.
this is another issue i want to tackle real quick, because it's a major source of misunderstanding. gender
roles are largely a social construction. there is absolutely no biological basis for saying that pink is for girls, or that hotwheels are for boys. or that men fly airplanes and women answer phones.
the idea that gender is a rigidly defined binary system is also a social construct, and a very poor one at that, which has ruined many lives and made countless more just a little bit shittier.
gender itself, however, is very real, albeit much more fluid than anyone here wants to admit. i suspect it's inborn, given the wealth of data on fetal development, and i suspect the parents in this article think gender itself is also inborn.
children self-discover and self-identify their gender in a certain way, completely separate from whatever their parents want, sometime around 3-5 years. there is nothing a parent can do to stop or guide that, though they can force the child into hiding or suppressing it... for a few years, at least.
OK, barunt actually addressed thihs pretty well, but let me say that I grew up in California, watched a lot of "hippies" who's ideas of child-rearing ranged from quite conservative to, well "loose". So, I have first-hand experience with what happens when kids are given "free choice" in most things.
What happens? What happens is that whatever we do is really directing kids. When you say you are "letting the child decide" what you are really doing is saying that you want their experiences limited to what they can percieve and see. It is happenstance. Maybe your child will luck into someone who knows music or sculpting or martial arts. Maybe they will latch onto that person and learn that they have skills in those areas. BUT, more often what happens is that lakcing the direction of parents, they take only the easy parts. Maybe they really enjoy "making music", but it is a rare kid indeed who can take that onto the next step of being a musician without the direction and guidance of adults. At some point, I can gaurantee you that even the best, most talented, most dedicated musicians and artists of all kind had a "child" moment when they just did not want to practice, etc. That is when a parent steps in and says "hey, you started this, you need to finish, THEN we can talk about it" or some similar statement. If instead, the parent says "oh, gee johnny, you don't like this? ... don't worry, we'll find something else", what the child REALLY learns is that its OK to just quite when things get tough. There is no such thing as looking forward, past the immediate to see the real benefit.
So, how is that related to gender? In key ways.
First, I completely and utterly dismiss your assertion that gender roles are completely social. This is just wrong and part of what I was addressing earlier. Sure, gender does not mean that a girl can't play with trucks, a boy become a good cook, be wonderful with children, etc. That is wrong and misguided stereotypical thinking. THOSE sorts of things are absolutely societal. Gender, however involves much more than the color of a child's clothes. Take a moment sometime and watch young kids (2-5) at the park. Stand at a distance, and try to see if you can figure out the gender just by how the kids act. I can virtually gaurantee that in most cases its pretty evident. Its not the big stuff. Sure, parents tend to dress girls in pink. Hard not to nowadays! (I mean, have you looked at kids clothing stores lately ... ) However, the real differences are in how they relate.
Now, also look around in your community. Look for those kids that don't seem to fit those same lines. They are there. We typically call the girls "tomboys" and boys "mommas boys" or sometimes "sissies", though that is much more negative and not used much any more (in my experience). Even that looks mostly at superficial stuff, though. The fact that a girl likes to climb trees, doesn't mind getting dirty, the fact that a boy likes to play with cooking sets and maybe even wear pink really DON'T have anything to do with whether they will be heterosexual or homosexual. Except, what happens to those kids.
One of two things. In the old days, those kids would often be told "bad, wrong, you can't do that". And you wound up with kids that were mildly or majorly screwed up. Boys, in particular, might avoid pink and cooking like a plague. Girls, ironically, often had a bit easier time. Males/boys "after all" was a "superior" thing, was sort of the given message, so why wouldn't a girl want those things, too. Of course, she had to learn she couldn't have them ... (mostly). That is the bad part. That is the worry these parents, and perhaps you have. That the child will grow up just thinking that any exception to the "stereotypes" of gender is just wrong.
HOWEVER, that is not the only option nor is it the most common any more. Instead, what really happens is that parents tend to accept who their kids are. Some boys are just naturally sensitive. Does that mean they are not masculine? Of course not! And THAT is the key. Without the true
guidance of a parent, then what the child learns IS just the "surface". What makes the difference is not telling a child "you have no gender". That's like saying "you have no particular skills". What makes a child succeed is knowing that they HAVE identity. They have skills, they have gender... they have multiple facets which all fit together to make them who they are. Its telling the young boy "OK, you like cooking, you like color, and you are a boy.. you are DEFINITELY a boy and you should be proud of who you are". Later, maybe a few of those boys will find that they are ALSO attracted to other boys, not girls. If they have been taught that who they are is basically OK, then that won't be such a tragic, horrible transition. Religious issues are different and separate It certainly has an impact to know that following your impulses is sin. HOWEVER, even in that, if a child has been raised to accept who they are, truly and to know that they are inherently OK, at least as OK as anyone else, then they are more likely to be able to deal with the religion, also. In religion, some pain will occur. There is no getting around that part, but again, it is seperate and apart. It is an ADDED element.
These parents are not giving their child any of that. Oh, I know you say they are just waiting to see what the child will do. But, how do they do that? The truth is that they ARE teaching that child about gender, but in the wrong way. They are actually teaching that child to go against their natural insticts in subtle ways. If they did not, the sex of that child would already be apparent. Instead of teaching that child to accept who they are, whatever they like to do, instead of celebrating ALL of the child, they are teaching him/her to ignore a very basic part of who they are.
Children don't simply pop out and raise themselves. Yes, this applies to morals, but it also applies to most all facets of a child's life. People try to pretend that they are "not guiding"/"not deciding" for their children, but that is all it is .. pretense. In reality, children are ALWAYS guided by all around them. Except, when that guidance is "flim-flamy" or "happenstance"...the results are usually far from successful.
A few of those hippie kids I mentioned before have grown up OK. But, far many have not. Too many now leap from job to job, activity to activity, never finding the "key" to "real" satisfaction. Too often, they have never learned that satisfaction is something that comes after work, after a bit of struggle and, even, pain. They take a job and the first time they face a difficult situation, they just leave. After all, that is what they were taught.
Now this is NOT always the case, but the interesting part is that if you really look at the kids who do succeed, you find that they really were not raised with all that "open freedom" after all. Their parents might not have freaked out if they decided to wear polka dots and plaid or to put on thier clothes inside out. BUT, they were very intentionally given many options. Their parents did not just leave the choice of music to chance, they were given lessons from an early age, in definitely age and temper-appropriate ways, but not just chance. Once those kids began something, they were strongly encouraged to finish. Yes, even perhaps forced to stick until the end of class or perhaps even the end of the set of lessons. Only then would the child be given a chance to decide...and usually the parents would seek out other opportunities, until eventually they found things that were well suited.
Gender is an even more fundamental part of who we are than artistic or athletic ability. These things have to be nurtured and directed, not simply left alone.
