Those Baby Blues
Why I call my son ‘he’, against my better judgement.
Yes, it’s a parenting column in the pages of the Independent, care of “non-binary” parent and pronoun contester, Dorian Stripe:
It’s a question I’m asked occasionally: “why do you use gendered pronouns for your son?” It’s no surprise, as I move entirely in queer circles, and am a non-binary person who uses “they” pronouns for myself instead of “he” or “she.” So naturally people wonder why I’m not allowing my son that neutrality.
I’m not sure that wilfully disregarding your son’s biological sex, and actively challenging it with a hint of self-congratulation, is actually neutrality.
My son was born with a penis and testes. They were identified five months before he was born. Everyone around me had started to ask the fatal question, “boy or girl?” every time they saw my bump. My brain screamed “neither” – it’s nothing! It’s a bundle of cells that doesn’t even have fingers yet!
Here’s a typical foetus at four months, a nascent human being. Or as Dorian puts it, “nothing… a bundle of cells.” Note the fingers.
My employer bought me a weird, cutesy towel-tree in a pastel blue, with little cars and aeroplanes on it. I shudder to think what the girl towel-tree looked like.
Isn’t it just terrible when people buy you gendered baby gifts? The unenlightened fuckers.
I have a large, supportive biological family, who are (as the vast majority of people are) uneducated on trans issues and the nature of pronouns. While the majority of them support my right to parent how I wish, very few of them would respect “non-standard” pronouns – they would revert to using whichever pronoun they think matches his genitalia whenever I’m not in the room, and even when present, they would need constant correction.
Pronoun correction, it’s what brings a family together. Though when relatives do this kind of thing during pregnancy, I suspect they’re not cooing about foetal genitals as such, so much as the psychology, the maleness or femaleness, that they generally signify and prefigure. Those cooing relatives may be affectionately anticipating what kind of person that little “nothing” may become.
This gets to the heart of why I made this decision: using non-binary pronouns is exhausting.
Well, quite. And at this stage of the game, it does look like an affectation that’s more about the parent than the child. After all, gendered pronouns are only apt almost all of the time.
There is only a one in one hundred chance my son will be transgender. There is no need to force him through the neutrality at this young age… He is most likely to simply decide he wants to be a little boy, and that’s fine.
And yet,
I’ve put effort into buying dresses and tights, clothing with butterflies and unicorns as well as diggers and dinosaurs.
And,
undoing the gendered language used by other people he interacts with.
Because,
I want to upset people. I want to shake up their worldview.
How very selfless of you. Using your child as a political project.
If seeing a child in pink upsets you because you don’t think they should be, you’re going to be upset. And to be honest, I don’t care. Our non-binary existence upsetting someone is the least important part of my day.
“Our non-binary existence.” Isn’t that rather jumping the gun? What happened to that “one in one hundred” business?
Oh, and in case you were wondering,
My son is now old enough to choose his own toys and express strong preferences… These days his favourites are cars, trains and dinosaurs.
There we go.
Pronouns.
Another evil mountain to conquer for the ever-busy Equaloids.
it does look like an affectation that’s more about the parent than the child
That.
“Our non-binary existence.” Isn’t that rather jumping the gun? What happened to that “one in one hundred” business?
That too.
Is it just me, or does it always seem like gender identification only becomes an issue when it’s boys identifying as boys? I denounce myself.
as I move entirely in queer circles,
As a big old lezzer myself, I can’t think of anything worse.
As a big old lezzer myself, I can’t think of anything worse.
Amen, sister.
“I move entirely in queer circles”
Translation: My experience of human society is severely limited.
“There is only a one in one hundred chance my son will be transgender …”
Is it that high? Even now, with all the publicity given to Bruce / Caitlin, all the awards, magazine covers, etc, it seems very very uncommon.
“There is only a one in one hundred chance my son will be transgender …”
Is it that high?
Yes. The best estimate of those claiming this particular delusion is about .02%, however, given that the “researchers” into this are pushing Teh Narrative™, this is probably high seeing as how the percentage of frank diagnosed psychotics is only 1%.
“using non-binary pronouns is exhausting”
It’s even more exhausting to listen to such a person.
Best to cut them short with “when did you stop taking your meds?”
I have a large, supportive biological family, who are (as the vast majority of people are) uneducated on trans issues and the nature of pronouns. (Emphasis supplied)
Um, no, dear. We’re quite well-educated on the nuances of pronouns, thank you. We just choose to not participate in your delusion that biology is “socially constructed.”
“as I move entirely in queer circles”
And the circles keep getting smaller, until Dorian eventually flies up his own butt.
Most people are “uneducated on trans issues and the nature of pronouns” because we’re not insane and obsessed. Thanks.
PS: Instead of moving in “exclusively in queer circles”, maybe you should try moving in a straight line once. What could it hurt? And you might actually get someplace.
I don’t feel sorry for the baby boy, I feel absolute horror. Like hearing about a child born in Auschwitz. That baby boy’s childhood will be an ongoing hell of psychological abuse — and, inevitably, sexual abuse at the hands (and other bits) of his father’s “queer circle” friends. By the time he reaches adulthood he will either be a broken, emasculated ghost, full of fear and shame and self-loathing; or he will be a pressure-cooker of rage.
I hope he escapes, but it’s hard to imagine how.
“My son is now old enough to choose his own toys and express strong preferences… These days his favourites are cars, trains and dinosaurs.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjbPi00k_ME
Meanwhile, in the Guardian.
Do I smell?
That would depend entirely on whether your nose works properly or not (am I being abelist? best denounce myself just to be safe!).
I suspect she *stinks*, but since when have words ever had standard definitions?
It’s even more exhausting to listen to such a person.
To clarify, it isn’t Dorian’s transgender status that’s of interest to me, at least not directly. It’s the dogmatic ‘blank slate’ assumptions, the belief that “neutral pronouns aren’t a denial of identity” for what will most likely prove to be a non-transgender boy, along with the urge to “upset” those deemed unenlightened, and the willingness to use one’s own child as a political project.
Though I suppose there is also the inelegance of having to tip-toe around gendered pronouns just to write the post, and this comment. And while writing about someone who’s given birth to a child.
Meanwhile, in the Guardian.
https://twitter.com/biscuitahoy/status/659417977633263616
@ mojo
“moving in a straight line”
I see what you did there. 🙂
It must take so much…energy just to manage that kind of worldview on a daily basis. All the carefully fostered outreach, the winging, and the self-inflicted emotional turmoil must just really be…draining.
I got tired just reading that.
Isn’t it just terrible when people buy you gendered baby gifts? The unenlightened fuckers.
In this case4 it’s the parent ready to psycholically abuse their child are the unenlightened fuckers
“It’s no surprise, as I move entirely in queer circles, ”
Does he walk round and round in ellipses?
Is it just me, or does it always seem like gender identification only becomes an issue when it’s boys identifying as boys?
“It’s time to do away with the concept of manhood altogether,” says the Guardian’s Zach Stafford.
Because “men are pretty terrible people.”
Unlike emasculated Guardian contributors.
After all, gendered pronouns are only apt almost all of the time.
Snork!
“It’s time to do away with the concept of manhood altogether. . .”
I was going to count the number of unsubstantiated assertions, logical fallacies, patent absurdities and misapplication of statistics necessary to arrive at the above conclusion.
I lost count and I’ve get better things to do than read that column twice.
I was going to count the number of unsubstantiated assertions, logical fallacies…
It scarcely warrants logical parsing. It isn’t about reality. It’s a display for the benefit of equally pretentious, unrealistic idiots.
‘I move entirely in queer circles’.
I thought that ‘queer’ was as taboo as the ‘n’ word. More fool me.
My own teenage spawn has already started to express an interest in loose cars and fast women.
I guess he’ll waste the rest of hi…..my money on nutrition.
“Spawn” is suitably neutral isn’t it?
Everyone around me had started to ask the fatal question, “boy or girl?” every time they saw my bump. My brain screamed “neither” – it’s nothing! It’s a bundle of cells that doesn’t even have fingers yet!
I’m sure when he’s old enough to read this’ll give him a warm, loving glow inside.
Centuries of war, pillaging and violence show that manhood is never in crisis, as alarmists like to claim, but it is often at the heart of these phenomena
Or as I like to put it:”Centuries of Cultural, Scientific, Economic and Medical progress show that manhood is never in crisis, as alarmists like to claim, but it is often at the heart of these phenomena
I thought that ‘queer’ was as taboo as the ‘n’ word. More fool me.
It is.
Only certain people can wield it.
A “Queer Studies” department at a university is perfectly OK.
“Get out of my face, you pinko queer!” is not.
Though I’ve noticed “Nigga Studies” has not emerged on any campus anywhere. I guess that would be cultural appropriation of the street culture and gentrifying it into ivy*-covered White Patriarchy.
Or something.
*Boston Ivy is not an ivy (Hedera) but a misnamed grape.
So, he (or she) wants to “upset” people and “shake up their worldview.”
If someone does the same to her (or him), watch the screaming start.
That’s Leftism for you right there. “I have the duty to upset you, but don’t you dare upset me.”
I’m trying to imagine how David says the word fuckers.
If someone does the same to her (or him), watch the screaming start.
Looks like they’re not allowing comments at the Independent. “They” is being spared from any feedback on “their” parenting.
It’s a display for the benefit of equally pretentious, unrealistic idiots . . .
True, but it’s also a pretty good way to f-up the poor kid, especially when this pretentious social signaling turns into a supposed medical problem to be addressed through hormones and irreversible gender reassignment surgery.
By the way, this just in:
http://www.ibtimes.com/shiloh-jolie-pitt-transgender-rumors-2015-spike-after-angelina-brads-daughter-gets-2160688
“I have a large, supportive biological family….and even when present, they would need constant correction.”
“Oh god, it’s Dorian’s car”
“Shit! Quick! Behind the sofa! We’re not in!”
“She’ll have seen the TV through the curtains”
“We have to try.”
I thought that ‘queer’ was as taboo as the ‘n’ word. More fool me.
Actually, as luck would have it, I was just walking down the large corridor of my employer, a major defense contractor, and there was a table with literature from a group called “Out&Equal”. A four-pager with all sorts of info, and specifically addresses the Q-word, to wit:
Several terms on this flyer I was not hip to, and neither is my spell checker, like ‘demisexual’, ‘pomosexual’, SGL, ‘LAMBDA’, and ‘Day of Silence’.
Also learned that the words ‘transgenders’ and ‘transgendered’ are problematic. You should say ‘transgender people’ and ‘transgender’ instead. The latter because
Very helpful and thoughtful of my employer to assist in our understanding of these matters, dontcha think?
My guess is ‘Dorian’ didn’t grow up in a tough northern mining family.
“I’m trying to imagine how David says the word ‘fuckers’.”
As the head of the organisation that employ Spectre as a comedy distraction for the authorities, I suspect David employs an Irishman to say it for him, not just as a pointless indulgence but because they say it so much better.
Heh. Rumbled.
Arguably, topical:
https://twitter.com/politicalmath/status/659834130545381376
But why do you people hate the linguistic arts?!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkRog16ODY4
Portlandia’s contribution to national coming out day.
If this catches on, it won’t just be women who are in need of masculine men, gay men will struggle to find non-feminized partners too. Believe it or not, there are gay men who are stereotypically masculine, who like cars, trains, and aren’t too fond of wearing pink boots covered with butterflies. And there are gay men who find that attractive.
There’s something fundamentally wrong with her little essay. If she’s trying to remain neutral as to her child’s gender, why does she always call the child “son”? Why not just “child”?
I was tempted to post this question over at her site, but I decided her Weltanschauung wasn’t stable enough to be confronted with this inconsistency. It would probably send her into total hysteria.
Everyone around me had started to ask the fatal question, “boy or girl?”, every time they saw my bump
Ok, so Dorian is a uterus person, therefore a gendered mother.
I’d like to think that his choices have been made as free of social implication as possible, thanks to our insistence on providing him with toys associated with both boys and girls. From birth, we’ve tried to present him with as much variety as possible
Hmmm… “we” … so I’m thinking there’s a partner here?
I know the reason he likes cars is because we travel a lot; trains because his mother is an avid steam train aficionado; dinosaurs because palaeontology makes me scream with delight.
Wait … Dorian is “mother”, so the son has “two mommies”? No father around?
He is going to have a lot more issues than a pronoun phobic gestational parent.
Am I the only one with the impression that these sorts of queer people are always trying to neuter sons, never daughters? Every time I hear about someone ‘degendering’ their child and offering them the ‘option’ to grow up as whatever they want, usually as a form of vicarious activism, said child inevitably turns out to be what the world outside the bubble would call a boy.
Am I the only one with the impression that these sorts of queer people are always trying to neuter sons, never daughters?
The misandry, goddess finery, and other affectations of feminine specialty are fairly common. So no, you are not.
This particular narcissism is as self-evident as it is grindingly unoriginal, predictable, and boring.
Ok, so Dorian is a uterus person, therefore a gendered mother.
That is a very narrow minded cis-view, if xe identifies as a man xer could very well be a father.
On gender and paradox:
Ergo:
So yes, gender is a one-way filter, despite the bald-faced contradiction. Contradiction only makes it more special.
I recently enjoyed my annual ‘Equality and Diversity’ training, only the best pseudo-lobotomy for our staff.
The decaying flesh of archaic verbiage cast onto the fire this year included ‘Lesbian’ (Surprised? But what if they prefer ‘Gay’ bigot!), ‘Oh God’, ‘Lady’, ‘Deaf and Dumb’ (to be replaced with the lightening accurate ‘Hearing and Speech Difficulty’) and the truly vile ‘Old Person’.
However the rose of the collection must be ‘Wheelchair bound’ because as they explained it was deeply unfair to imply that people who had no use of their legs and were dependent on wheelchairs . . were dependant on wheelchairs. As you might imagine this produced much compulsive coughing and testing of chair straps in the audience.
Munchausen by proxy syndrome. Case closed.
I know the reason he likes cars is because we travel a lot; trains because his mother is an avid steam train aficionado; dinosaurs because palaeontology makes me scream with delight.
Hmmm, so even something as ephemeral and slight as a child’s choice of toys is genetically determined. I thought these were the people who were constantly telling us that everything, even sexuality, is socially constructed. Am I alone in thinking that they haven’t thought their position through very carefully?
‘Only certain people can wield it.
A “Queer Studies” department at a university is perfectly OK
“Get out of my face, you pinko queer!” is not’.
That’s grand.
On that note (and with reference to my own origins), I would like to suggest that the very same individuals involved in this ‘discipline’ consider a sideline in area studies for Wales, and they call themselves the exponents of the ‘Sheepshagger School’.
And they then introduce themselves to the locals at a pub in Tonypandy.
I’ll buy myself some popcorn.
I’ve put effort into buying dresses and tights… undoing the gendered language used by other people he interacts with.
Er, won’t this deliberate misgendering of a boy cause the same kind of problems that transgender people complain about?
Expanding on what I said earlier . . .
What’s missing from this account? Why isn’t this person (I thought it was a self-emasculated father but it appears to be a dyke mother) saying things like “I love my little boy and want him to be happy”?
There’s none of that. The baby boy isn’t a person at all. He’s an accessory, to be customized at will to suit the egotistical whims of his hateful abusive “mother” and her hateful abusive friends.
If child welfare agencies really gave a damn about protecting children, they’d be trying to rescue this baby boy from a lifetime of hell.
Er, won’t this deliberate misgendering of a boy cause the same kind of problems that transgender people complain about?
Well, I don’t think I’d have been thrilled to grow up being continually referred to as androgynous or being dressed in girl’s clothes. Or hearing continual reminders that being thought male was a bad thing. But the boy’s mother describes them both as being “non-binary,” which is beyond presumptuous and dogmatic, and veers into psychodrama. Again, it seems the little boy is regarded by his mother as a political project, an experiment, and maybe an attempt to validate Dorian’s own anomalous gender status.
Or hearing continual reminders that being thought male was a bad thing.
That. Times a hundred.
“My son is now old enough to choose his own toys and express strong preferences… These days his favourites are cars, trains and dinosaurs.”
And on the black day he figured that out there were many tears cried into a pillow, let me tell you.
Wait until the kid discovers Airfix.
When you care more for your child which is a gift from God than you care for your friends PC allowances for your child then you may still have a chance to become a Man
move along nothing to see here just a bunch of people thinking with and about their dicks