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Reading Hanna's and Dana's
posts about a Swedish couple's attempts to raise a gender-free child,
I’m struck by how pointless it is for parents to try to program their
children.
Of course, I think it's awesome and essential that parents make a
conscious effort to raise open-minded kids (by discussing the sort of
issues that Emily Bazelon and John Dickerson addressed in their piece
about childrens' responses to Obama becoming president, for example),
but there are some things you just can't control—like how other people
respond to your child.
I'm sure my parents were less than thrilled that strangers referred to me as ... (Read more at DoubleX.com.)
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Hanna’s post about the Swedish couple who are attempting to raise their child “gender-free” (not
telling anyone its birth sex or permitting the genitals to be seen by
anyone but a select few intimates) has had me thinking all day about
the chicken-and-egg problem of gender identification. Do I think the
category of gender is more constructed than the dominant culture gives
it credit for? Definitely. Does the parenting of this couple horrify
me? Completely.
Hanna, your analogy (to a “militant feminist friend” who tried
unsuccessfully to make her daughter play with trucks) doesn’t quite
hold up; in terms of the violence visited on the kid’s sense of self,
the Swedish family’s choice to conceal the fact of gender altogether seems infinitely worse. Being told by your parents that you should ... (Read more at DoubleX.com.)
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