My problem with the whole story that ultimately it isn’t newsworthy- plenty of parents are already acting in a roughly similar manner- and that there shouldn’t really be a conscious effort to do this. Just leave the kids alone to do what they want, don’t contact the media to inform them of your utterly righteous decision.

Not the first time something like this has attracted media attention: http://www.thelocal.se/20232/20090623/

I’m ambivalent about the media attention itself but the issue is a fascinating one. I teach a lot of undergraduate social theory and have ended up using this a case study / discussion point so many times in the last year…

Again this line ‘why are we so obsessed with… what’s between their legs’. Clearly thats ascribing an overtly sexual motivation for merely wanting to know what ‘type’ of child they have, rather an unfair value judgment which says a lot about those making it.

I think the parents problem here is that they give a little too much weighting to the nurture element of their childs development, as humanists are prone to do. This is evident in the fact that they have said they want it to be the childs choice which ‘gender indentity’ they ‘choose for themselves’, as though the kid will look in the mirror and make a conscious decision either way, independent of what nature has chosen for them.

I doubt very much the child will be adversely affected by this experiment, though it wont thank its parents for it, these things are innate, nature will sort it out for them. No worries.

“The real question is: why are we so obsessed with judging people on the basis of what’s between their legs?”

Like the parents in question, you seem to subscribe to the perverse, discredited, unscientific and false view that there is no difference between a male and female person other than the configuration of their genitals, apart from what prescribed social roles and political ideology have allegedly inculcated…

This is false because we know that the human person is a complex mix of biological (genetic, epigenetic and hormonal) influences with social and environmental factors. And, furthermore, in no way do sexual differences have any substantive bearing on sexual equality. We can be different but equal. Men and women tend to have significantly different but complementary perceptions, preferences and attitudes. But that does not matter if boys are brought up to respect women, and girls are brought up to believe they can achieve what they want. My daughter is very feminine in many respects — and has been from an early age (unlike her mother) — but she has a fine intellect, is intimidated by no man, and is a high-achiever. We will be impoverished socially and emotionally if we lose what Henry James called “the sentiments of sex”.

” But that does not matter if boys are brought up to respect women, and girls are brought up to believe they can achieve what they want. ”

And what about women being brought up to respect boys? The fact you mentioned one over the other doesn’t really do the argument any favors.

Nice one Jennie.

“” But that does not matter if boys are brought up to respect women, and girls are brought up to believe they can achieve what they want. ”

And what about women being brought up to respect boys? The fact you mentioned one over the other doesn’t really do the argument any favors.”

I don’t pretend to speak for that particular commentator, but I’d bet that you know perfectly well why he/she alludes to men having respect for women, and doesn’t bother with the other way around. Self-righteous, pedantic, obsessive PC-ness does noone any favours in this kind of debate – and it’s worthy of a DM commentator!

@ Alex

I’d agree that lack of respect for women is much more of a problem than lack of respect for men – although I think you go too far in attacking someone who points out that we should cover both bases. I don’t see how it could possibly have harmed the point to say that we should try to encourage respect on both sides.

“But that does not matter if boys are brought up to respect women, and girls are brought up to believe they can achieve what they want.”

Let me re-phrase that comment of mine:

‘But that does not matter if boys and girls are taught mutual respect, and both sexes are brought up to believe that they can achieve what they want’.

“Like the parents in question, you seem to subscribe to the perverse, discredited, unscientific and false view that there is no difference between a male and female person other than the configuration of their genitals”

If we are going that way, then what about the people with a penis between their legs that are women, or the men that have vaginas?

Gender isn’t just what’s between their legs, it’s what’s in their head. Claiming that women are different from men is obvious, but what about the women that even a few decades ago were classified as men? and vice versa.

That said, the discussion here isn’t so much about gender identification, it’s about the accretion of gender stereotypes at a young age, independent of brain chemistry and genitalia, that do severe harm to both men and women.

If the kid can grow up without the thousand small things in childhood that inculcate myths like women are worse at maths, or men should suppress their emotions, then it’s a good idea. That said, there isn’t any evidence that it does or will, the psychological experiment that the parents are running may make things worse, or have no effect at all. It’s certainly something that deserves scientific rigour and not google university theorising.

@ 9 Paul

Awesome.

@Chaise Guevara (witty nickname!)

Apologies. I did rather let rip unnecessarily there, and it is entirely correct that both sexes should be raised in an atmosphere of mutual respect. In my defence, it’s just very frustrating that whenever there is any discussion of equality between the sexes (particularly in rightwing circles) there is always some pompous so-and-so who hollers self-righteously about ‘equality for men’ or something similar, whilst completely ignoring the facts as they stand.

I think that paul ilc’s comment is very sensible, though. Particularly the bit about how we can be different but equal. Homogeny is not equality, and I sometimes feel that the failure to recognise this has been a kind of core error at the heart of liberal thinking in recent years.

Excellent, much better than the previous offering on this site. If we were able to raise children free from the shackles of sexism the world would be a better place – and anything we can do to loosen those chains is a good thing in my book.

@ 12 Alex

I think the problem starts when people claim that men (and generally white, British, Christian, straight men at that) suffer far more prejudice than anyone else. While there are specific areas where men face more prejudice – child custody may or may not be one – they’re few and far between.

Agree about the break between equality and homogeny. Liberals tend towards unhelpful infighting when it comes to identity politics, and I include myself in that comment. One of the problems is when people can’t talk about the factual average differences between men and women without being labelled as sexist.

Jennie, thank you for saying something sensible on this topic. It goes some way towards counteracting whatever bizarre editorial slip-up led to the previous article being published here.

@4. paul ilc

“Like the parents in question, you seem to subscribe to the perverse, discredited, unscientific and false view that there is no difference between a male and female person other than the configuration of their genitals, apart from what prescribed social roles and political ideology have allegedly inculcated…”

You seem to be presupposing that male==penis and female==vagina. This isn’t entirely true in the real world. Some children with penises grow up to become women, and some without become men, precisely because of the “complex mix of biological (genetic, epigenetic and hormonal) influences with social and environmental factors” that you mention. You can’t know with certainty whether a child will become male or female when they grow up – the only thing you can know is what type of genitals they have. Hence the question of why our society is so obsessed with judging people — children, even — by what’s between their legs.

Akheloios @ 10:

“the discussion here isn’t so much about gender identification, it’s about the accretion of gender stereotypes at a young age, independent of brain chemistry and genitalia, that do severe harm to both men and women.”

But we don’t know exactly which male and female behaviours are “gender stereotypes” and which have a biological basis. And, even if we could conclusively identify which is which, it is by no means clear that all or even most alleged “gender stereotypes” do “severe harm to both men and women”.

In which case regarding men and women as different but equal is all that matters.

It’s all a rather pointless discussion. I think everyone here is generally in agreement that you shouldn’t punish a boy if they want to play with dolls and you shouldn’t punish a girl if she wants to play football- whether there are intrinsic and significant biological differences between the genders is irrelevant because if there are then boys will naturally tend to float towards boy things and girls to girls things regardless.

Akheloios @ 10:

I’m not sure what point you are trying make by pointing to examples of people who are borderline male/female. If your point is that the existence of borderline male/females shows that sex is not an objective biological category but entirely socially created (ie is just ‘gender’), then this is like saying that black and white do not exist because there are shades of grey.

ndv @ 15:

“You seem to be presupposing that male==penis and female==vagina”

No,I’m not presupposing that at all; and nothing I said, according to the laws of logic, implies that view. I am however of the view that sex is in part an objective biological category and not an entirely a social construct. Unsurprisingly, given that women have vestigial penises and men have vestigial clitorises, sex cannot always be determined solely by genital configuration. But borderline male/females do not in any way show that sex is a social construct.

@OP, Jennie Kermode: “All the parents have done is refuse to label their child, so that Storm can grow up and choose the gender that feels right. As most children do this by the age of three, it isn’t likely to affect how Storm experiences school.”

Storm has a five year old brother called Jazz. Jazz does not go to school. Jazz did not have the confidence to go to school.

Given that most children are brought up according to their physical plumbing and that gender dysmorphia is uncommon, it would be remarkable if most three year olds had not established the gender that suited them. The reality is that people change their minds (or become confused) after the age of three years. Identity crisis is strongly associated with teen hormonal change, work stress, marriage and retirement. Crises happen throughout life.

The parents of intersex children have a terrible problem. The plumbing may look like it is for a boy or girl, but gender identity may take years to establish. So the parents are on tip toes whilst their children become themselves. Those are real life experiments, happenchance.

Which are not the circumstances in which Jazz, Kio and Storm have entered the world. Two boys and one unannounced; I don’t care about non-announcement of identified birth sex. I do care that two adults are conducting an observational experiment on their own offspring.

I care most for the children, but the parents need help too.

@OP, Jennie Kermode: “Frantically trying to ensure that kids play with the right gendered toys is just as problematic as trying to do the opposite. It’s all about imposing adult insecurities on children too young to understand what’s going on.Why not just let them be themselves? Really, what harm is it going to do?

The harm, we are told, will occur when unconforming children try to fit into a tightly gendered world. But the adult world is full of women who like football and men with long hair; they may experience prejudice from time to time yet for the most part they are still able to lead happy, productive lives.”

Two excellent arguments, ideals that we can use in everyday life.

But the story of Jazz, Kio and Storm is, most generously towards the parents, “about imposing adult insecurities on children too young to understand what’s going on”.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFBOQzSk14c

This is a dreadful example of parents using their children as moral weapons. You’d have thought they might have learnt their lesson over their eldest sons’ inability to attend school. (Round my way, a boy with a pink ear stud would be a tad unusual. Did he ask for it? I somehow or other doubt he did.)

You might have thought that these kids, treated in a loving and caring way may have grown up normal, not a freak show for you or I.

I’d like to say this is parental abuse, but I can’t. Because religious folk do exactly the same things to their kids.

So, your are getting Larkin:

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.

On second thoughts, it is child abuse.

‘It’s all about imposing adult insecurities on children too young to understand what’s going on.’

Yes – although that can work the other way. I used to be of the view that sex was an entirely social construct, and, as a staunch feminist, I vowed that if I had a daughter, I would not allow gender to define her.

A similarly-minded friend had a daughter about two years before I had mine. She does not let her daughter play with Barbie dolls. She has refused to live with or marry her daughter’s father (despite the fact he wants to very much). She does not allow her daughter to play with make-up, and cuts her hair at home, because she thinks that taking her to a hair salon will encourage her to conform to ridiculous expectations of female beauty.

I thought this was all brilliant and terribly enlightened at first. But then my daughter begged for a Barbie, and I saw the delight she got from dressing it up and brushing its hair. And I saw how much she loves to play with my make-up and try on my jewellery and accompany me to the hairdresser. And most of all, just how much she adores her father (wonderful man – now also my husband – very boring!) and how valuable their relationship seems to be to her happiness and development. And I just ended up thinking – if this is what she wants and enjoys, then who the hell am I to tell her she can’t have it – just in order to massage my own petty little socio-political sensibilities? Will eschewing traditional values really result in some greater social good – or will it just mean pissing on your kids’ present happiness?

Anyway, I guess the proof will be in the pudding. If my daughter grows up to be a lap-dancer and her daughter’s Prime Minister, we’ll know who was right!

Wait until Toronto mayor Rob Ford hears about this. He’ll dress T.O.’s child services up like the Swat Team. Oh, there’s going to be trouble…

@24 Heh, you do know the correct response to your comment is “And what’s so bad about being a lap dancer eh? EH?”

Alex,

I liked a lot of what you said but this is just plain wrong:

‘It’s all about imposing adult insecurities on children too young to understand what’s going on.’

Yes – although that can work the other way.

Not until the age of about fourteen, anyway. Some idiots are talking toddlers here.

“And even if Storm were to adopt a gender neutral identity in a school context, that wouldn’t automatically lead to bullying.”

This above incorrect. a “gender neutral identity” will, with a probability approaching 1, cause very severe bullying in school. That this is neither a good thing nor something that shouldn’t be challenged when it occurs, does not mean that it wont happen. Ignoring or dismissing the inevitable bullying shows a greater concern for social theory than for the welfare of the child subject to this experiment.

Of course this does rest on the premise that a child raised in a “gender neutral” fashion will adopt a gender neutral identity. If the girl or boy adopts a stereotypical identity, I wonder if the parents in this case would support that or deliberately undermine it?

@28 Falco: “Of course this does rest on the premise that a child raised in a “gender neutral” fashion will adopt a gender neutral identity. If the girl or boy adopts a stereotypical identity, I wonder if the parents in this case would support that or deliberately undermine it?”

Or perhaps whether three children are allowed to make a choice.

@23 is pretty much what we thought over here. How horrible to experiment on your own children. How nasty to use them as political pawns for a sociopathic protest. How despicable to demonstrate how “enlightened” you are by parading them on the news.

The really horrible thing is that when it goes wrong, as it already clearly did for poor “Jazz”, the parents are too stubborn and proud to admit their mistake. Instead they blame the world for not being sufficiently tolerant.

And I just ended up thinking – if this is what she wants and enjoys, then who the hell am I to tell her she can’t have it – just in order to massage my own petty little socio-political sensibilities? Will eschewing traditional values really result in some greater social good – or will it just mean pissing on your kids’ present happiness?

Best couple of lines on here for a long time. While the parents’ notion is wonderful in its idealism, it also smacks of a dubious experimentalism,and seems to be misfocused: more about them as parents,than about the child. Now, if they’d been explicit (to be fair,maybe they have been but it’s not been reported) that they might reverse or soften their stance if, down the line, it appeared to go against the child’s desire then we’d be talking.

“But what, ultimately, is all the fuss about?” – well I suppose the short answer is the decision by the parent’s to involve the media in their child’s upbringing (assuming I have understood this correctly).

Why couldn’t they just get on with the job like the rest of us do – anyway for the child’s sake I hope this, er, ‘storm’ in a teacup blows over very quickly so he/she can get on with his/her life.

According to this report, “Stocker and Witterick sent out an e-mail announcement that said, “We’ve decided not to share Storm’s sex for now”
http://www.wnem.com/news/28033827/detail.html

I wonder if it was a spur of the moment thing, or if the birth itself took on the dimensions of some sort of political vehicle?

The Modern Parents in Viz come to life…

Arguing about Gender is like arguing about Israel-Palestine, only without the bonhomie, the general assumption of good faith, or the prospect of a quick resolution.

Gawd help us.

I hate to bring what I like to think is bluff provincial common sense here, it gets shot down in such a blaze of polysyllabic ideology here, but can no-one see that this is how the left gets hated and tagged “loony”?

I know nothing about this couple. Indeed I know nothing about transsexuals, not knowing any. I try not to be prejudiced over transsexuals but they form a non-existent part of my life because, as I say, I don’t know any.

So what I see from across the Atlantic, in my (no doubt) ghastly suburban unenlightened redoubt – all I need is to be called a Mail reader, which is the ultimate insult here – is the Modern Parents from Viz transported to Canada, and living out their New Age toss on a four month old child. In my neck of the woods even calling the kids Jazz, Storm and Kio gets people’s goat: what sort of pretentious tossers name their kids Jazz, Storm and Kio? What are they, children, or the new Ford Focus range? It seems from this standpoint that, to the parents, the children are less than even the accessories to a new Focus.

Is that too prejudiced? I mean, if “Storm” is a boy but he doesn’t want to play soldiers and prefers playing with Ken and Barbie, I couldn’t care less. Just don’t push him into wearing pink dresses then send him off to primary school, proud at his five year old way of “facing down gender stereotypes”, then act shocked that he gets bullied.

And it’s this the left has to understand. I’ve read a thirty-comment thread here talking about gender dysmorphia and the biological, social, or otherwise, differences between males and females. All well and good, but if you want to get back into power, can we accept that some four month old children are boys and some are girls (the anatomy tells you which), that you should tell the neighbours “We had a wonderful little boy, we called him Sam and he’s the prettiest little thing!” (inserting “she” and “her” if it’s a girl), rather than wallowing in self-pity at society’s supposed gender prejudices. If the kid desperately feels at some stage, when he/she is even conscious of gender differences, that the mind doesn’t fit the genitalia, that then is the time to make decisions, not at the birth certificate stage.

If places like this can’t even get that this is one where the kneejerk “oppose everything right-wingers would say!” left is quite wrong, the game’s up.

Am I alone in thinking these parents have damaged their kids more by giving them ridiculous monikers than anything else?

Did the parents decide which of them would give birth before or after conception?

‘Am I alone in thinking these parents have damaged their kids more by giving them ridiculous monikers than anything else?’

Actually, Storm’s pretty cool.

pink was considered a masculine colour until just a few decades ago

Was it really? That’s fascinating – do you have a source?

Charlieman – is there a reason you write dysmorphia when the word is actually dysphoria? Is it a conscious choice or a mistake?

@39 You could google it, however the story goes – Red was regarded as a man’s colour and Blue a woman’s colour, something about blue being calm and passive and red being aggressive and dominant or some such. Anyway, because baby’s clothes required a lot of washing and this led to fading of colours, pastel blue ended up being considered a ‘girls colour’ and faded red, or pink a ‘boys colour’.

Roundabout the middle of last century baby clothes manufacturers were somewhat displeased by the recycling of baby clothes by parents not giving much of a stuff about what colour they dressed their little darlings up in. So they all started deciding to hammer home that some baby clothes were for boys, and some for girls and that you should never swap between. Half the companies went with the existing vague notion of blue=girl, pink=boy while others did t’other way round. Those that went other way round came out on top and so that’s how business determined that blue was a boys colour and pink a girls colour.

Cylux,

You’re telling me that our perception of gendered colours was manipulated by corporations? Why am I not surprised?

As to the child – no-one should have to register gender anyway, since it is a construct (at least partially by corporations) and it serves no purpose other than dividing us into little boxes. Show me one practical use of gender…

@40. earwicga: “Charlieman – is there a reason you write dysmorphia when the word is actually dysphoria? Is it a conscious choice or a mistake?”

Neither really. Dysmorphia is perhaps a wider term because it is about the physical body, encompassing non-gender anxieties about appearance. But in the same way that sex and gender have changed meaning in TG circles, dysmorphia and dysphoria have become interchangeable.

This is probably frustrating to professionals who want a word to mean what they have defined. The world doesn’t work like that; English speakers redefine words. I know the difference between uninterested and disinterested, but most English speakers do not.

If you are looking for a political angle to my use of the word dysmorphia, it isn’t there.

Charlieman – I wasn’t looking for a political angle. Just trying to understand where people are coming from tbh. ‘in TG circles, dysmorphia and dysphoria have become interchangeable.’ is something I have never encountered, quite the opposite in fact.

The parents of these three children are middle class, “liberal”, brighter than the average bulb in the box.

Do we accept that parents outside that bulb are permitted to conduct experiments on their offspring?

You’re telling me that our perception of gendered colours was manipulated by corporations? Why am I not surprised?

Hmm, not so much manipulated as settled upon I think. The idea that colours are gendered didn’t even exist till around the 1880′s, with the first musing tending toward the pink-boy/blue-girl type. (Apparently the fact that blue was associated with the Virgin Mary had a hand in the original thinking)
It wasn’t comprehensively agreed upon for a good few decades, not as set in stone as it appears to be now*, so post world war 2 when baby clothes sellers decided to ‘formalise’ if you will, what colour belonged to which gender, you ended up with many deciding either way. The masses shopped more at the pink for girls and blue for boys stores, so here we are today.

*The pink triangle that gays had to wear under the Nazi’s is thought to indicate that pink was falling out of favour as a ‘boys colour’ around the WW2 period, in Nazi Germany at the very least. Course given that gays in this country were treated with female hormones because the quacks of the day believed gayness to be caused by excessive ‘maleness’, that might not necessarily be true.

I tend to fall on the “sex-over-gender” side of the argument; gender strikes me as an attempt to re-build the boxes into which we seem to insist on putting people, now that we know that sex isn’t really sufficient (something we actually seem to know less than we did before, what with the ongoing re-traditionalization of the Western male in the wake of the ’60s). Any mind ought ideally to be able to feel comfortable with whatever set of genitalia s/he was born with. But that’s just me.

I do have a sense that “gendering” occurs far earlier than we suspect, and because of that we have a tendency to overestimate the “inborn” part of it, as well as a tendency to regard, well, “tendencies” as hard-and-fast components of “gender”. I can see viewing “gender” as a sort of “complete package”, one component of which is genital sex, but I just think it’s an unnecessary abstraction that preserves a tendency to “box” people or regard the non-conforming as “mistakes” of some sort when they’re perfectly fine as they are.

BTW, just for the record: Storm Thorgerson, the first among equals of ’70s album-cover designers Hipgnosis, and the genre writer Storm Constantine. (One of each sex, no less, IIRC.) So “Storm” has a history, at least.