that might be solved or delayed if we could accept "it" as acceptable for baby until a gender pattern is more obvious.

in my dad's time, all kids wore the same things as babies until graduating to short pants or girly dress stage at what, age 3 or so.

I completely disagree. I think you are mistakenly locating the problem of problematic gender inequalities on the biological fact that we have two sexes, one male, one female. So you want to be completely blind to the latter thinking it's the root of the former problem.

I think it's great to put pink and yellow for girls, and blue for boys. It's wonderful that we have two sexes and that we are a heterosexual species--not hermaphrodite, not monosexual. I believe that masculinity and femininity, with their very wide possibilities for configuration, are a natural outcome of each of the two sexes, and trying to erase two genders and jam them into one only is misguided and harmful.

It's a completely different issue if girls are taught or conditioned that they can't do math, that's harmful gender inequality. However, I believe it has nothing to do with acknowledging that there are boys AND girls, and the two sexes and genders are different. And how wonderful is that? It's great. It's just fine to show it with dress, colors, haircuts, whatever. Beautiful mother nature. Put the blue on the boy and pink on the girl and teach them both to excel in math.

Sometime when I have the stomach for it, I hope to read that infamous case of the boy who was treated/brought up erroneously as a girl and ended up committing suicide.

I dress my baby in gender ambiguous clothing often and it amuses me how many people are perturbed that that can't tell upon looking that she is a girl, or they will apologize as if they are irritated if they call her a boy and later find out she's a girl. Of course, many people assume when she's dressed in gender neutral clothing that she's a boy by default.

The problem/discomfort people have with interacting with babies whose sex they can't distinguish is that all of our interactions are gendered, and there is no non-gendered way to interact with another human - even a baby.

I used to wonder what would happen if a set of parents were (experimentally, with their consent) not allowed to bathe their baby or change its diaper, so they wouldn't know the sex. How would they treat it? Would not knowing drive them so crazy they'd have to give up on the experiment? Would they end up assigning the baby a sex based on imagined characteristics? Or would they just get used to not knowing, and parent in a non-gendered way? Is that even possible?

I once expressed to a boyfriend in college that I would be willing to do this if the opportunity arose. He was horrified, and argued that the gendering we impose on children is necessary for their psychological development - that a child would intuit that something was "wrong" with them if they were treated in a non-gendered way while everyone else was being treated in a gendered way. Could be, I guess...

No, really, look up “intersex”. You’ve probably heard the term “hermaphrodite”, which is considered to be offensive. Many people are born somewhere on the spectrum between male and female. Almost 2% of births in the US are intersex – that means that 1 in every 50 births is an intersex person. How many people do you know? You almost certainly know more than one person who is intersex.

The actual proportion depends on the definition you use. Wikipedia told me so. Note that the highest prevalence cited is 1.7%, which only rounds up to 2%. Note also that the lowest prevalence cited is less than 0.02% - a hundredfold difference, nearly. Just like there's a continuum between male and female, there's a continuum between "maybe 'intersex,' if you really stretch the definition" and "intersex any way you look at it."

Just a small point. Just because sexual identity can be placed on a continuum does not imply that "there aren't two sexes."

The vast majority of people are biologically either male or female, then there's a swath of grey between. There are two sexes and a middle ground between the two which is largely undefined in terms of the words 'male' and 'female.' But this does not imply that the words 'male' and 'female' are useless or empty.

It's like saying "there aren't two kingdoms" if those two kingdoms have a disputed border. Clearly there is land in which one cannot be sure where one is, but there is clearly land where one knows exactly where one is.

Or maybe I'm missing the point?

I think the flaw in Ketchup's comparison of cleft-palate children versus those without, is that there's a developmental arrest that causes cleft palate to occur, and this sort of arrest is sometimes but certainly not always responsible for intersex conditions. A great many intersex conditions are not caused by the simple failure of the genitals to differentiate, and the causes range from genetic mutations to something as simple as drugs the mother may have taken during pregnancy. Or if you want to discuss in terms of chromosomal gender rather than physical, and resort to claiming that all XXs must be women and XYs must be men (regardless of any variation in their sex organs), you have to classify the XXYs and the YYs and single-Xs and all the variations that occur here.

Or if you're prepared to accept that there are some people out there who are simply neither male nor female -- but would like to exclude them from what's "normal" and think that celebrating this as "diversity" (or even a legitimate categorization) is absurd -- consider just the sheer variation in size among human beings. Which height is normal? Are some of these people underdeveloped and some overdeveloped? Is there a spectrum? How narrow is it? I believe there may be a tendency to classify people who are disadvantaged by their physical situation as "deformed": for instance, my friend is 4'11" and very close to being defined (by some criteria) as a dwarf; but you could go overseas to several different countries and discover significant portions of their populations are shorter than this.

Or perhaps you're simply defining people as normal/deformed by sheer virtue of their ability to produce live offspring. How 18th-century.

(P.S. I am somewhat intersexed myself.)

And defending *cultural* gendering practices as “beautiful mother nature” is mere rhetorical strategy.
===============================
No, it's not. Since humans produce culture, they will always produce culture about significant biological elements/events in the human species (mother nature). This can be concerning the fact that there are two sexes, male and female, and consequently two respective genders, or concerning births, puberty, deaths, etc. Anyways, how wonderful it is that we have two genders.

I think the flaw in Ketchup’s comparison of cleft-palate children versus those without, is that there’s a developmental arrest that causes cleft palate to occur, and this sort of arrest is sometimes but certainly not always responsible for intersex conditions.
================
My question is: why should the developmental arrest cases be called a (wonderful) continuum? Better yet, why should they be *defined* as continuum, if as you just said, there's a developmental arrest cause? It's no different than defining the cleft palate result as some "continuum."

Or perhaps you’re simply defining people as normal/deformed by sheer virtue of their ability to produce live offspring. How 18th-century.
=================
Well, without that little virtue, there's no human race. How unimportant a fact, that proper biological development entails a functioning sexual reproduction system for humans. And without this little virtue, life extinguishes in one generation.

My point is that these people may qualify as “inadequately developed” by some criteria, but by the standards of a significant number of people, there is nothing the matter with them.
==================
I don't disagree that discussions about criteria are fundamental.

What I am trying to point out, with my insufficient biology knowledge to articulate things clearly, is that, if someone's body did not proceed along their sexual differential development, to the point of becoming arrested and sterile, that is a relevant criteria. There is something the matter, just like the cleft lip. It has nothing to do with diminishing their worth as a person, but there is a biological problem. And, therefore, it would be totally incorrect to think that this person's biology is merely lying on some point of a healthy development continuum. And why should there be a concept of continuum in the first place?

mj's post makes much more sense to me:
The vast majority of people are biologically either male or female, then there’s a swath of grey between. There are two sexes and a middle ground between the two which is largely undefined in terms of the words ‘male’ and ‘female.’ But this does not imply that the words ‘male’ and ‘female’ are useless or empty.
------
I don't think the two kingdoms metaphor is correct, however, but I can't think of any other better pictorial concepts right now.

Even though the box says it's a mystery, the dolls' faces say different. The one on the picture left is the boy, and the one on the right is a girl. The boy face is rounder. The girl face is more "cheeky" and the eyes are lower on the face. Subtle. After all, the company wants to show a difference between the dolls if they don't have their diapers on.

You can see the distinction on the Cabbage Patch Kid company page/shop, the detail photo, a sample graphic, showing a picture between a boy and a girl, next to the African American model. The girls have hair and the boys are bald.

By the way, those dolls are "hispanic"? I thought they were Polynesian. Bring on the haters!

Personally I have no problem with treating at least babies as non-gendered entities. I figure that they are babies, there is no reason why they have to be pigeonholed into binary socially constructed genders just because people are too insecure of working without them. I never understood why its such a big deal for young children to be locked into such positions. They just seem limiting more than beautiful or wonderful or boundless like ketchup seems to emphasis.

I can only imagine it would be difficult for people I interact with when I'm older and have a child and choose not to reveal the childs gender to them. They can make any assumptions they want. I figure some will think the child is a boy and some will think the child is a girl and some will advoid the issue entirely. I figure my child will get the best of both worlds. Some people will come up and say "what a handsome, bouncy boy" or "what a sweet little girl" and I will be uninterested in "correcting" them.

Leslie 8:14 pm on February 10, 2010 | # | Reply

Your comment brings us up to “having two sexes is not awful,”
=====================
No, my comment brings us to:

It makes me really sad to think that, because of the two sexes and the physical differences between them, equality for all humans will never be the norm. FALSE

Men will always be able to physically overpower women, (AN ACCEPTABLE GENERALIZATION in this context)

and from this patriarchy and male-dominated society will always spring. FALSE

It makes me sad to think of all the sexual crimes committed against women; made possible, again, because men are bigger and have penises. FALSE

It makes me sad to think about the sex dichotomy in terms of child-raising, which means that because they can bear children and breast-feed, many women the world over will be expected to devote their lives to raising their children and will never have the same chance to reach their full human potential that their male counterparts will have. FALSE

[although I hadn't replied to this before, and the issue of controlling contraception/pregnancies/parenthood is crucial for men, women, and society, being a parent IS part of reaching one's full human potential. People who hate children or who are totally unfit to care for children have not and will never reach any full human potential of anything]

It makes me sad that people are pigeonholed into emphasizing whatever of their personality traits are most suitable for their gender and hiding the rest. PARTIALLY CORRECT, PARTIALLY INCORRECT

People are pigeonholed in every which way in society. It's part of experiencing life in society. There's no difference in the pigeonholing regarding class or national culture or gender or professions.

We are all part of one human race, aren't we? Why are we segregated into socially constructed nationalities. There is no such thing as far as biology is concerned. Allow everyone who wants to go to the US to live there and vice-versa (as long as they are not criminals). Otherwise, you are just pigeonholing people into a global apartheid system. Would completely opening the borders bother you by any chance?

@Leslie
Your comment brings us up to “having two sexes is not awful,” but I don’t understand how it gets us to “wonderful.” Really, what’s so wonderful about it?
==================

Because of the richness of having two different sexes and the richness that the necessary complementarity of the two sexes entails. What a grotesque and mediocre world it would be if we only had one sex, compared with having two.

There is also the fact that this sexual differentiation obviously implies that each individual is not complete by themselves, that humans are meant to come together; two joined to form one. This implies interdependence and communion, and an anti-clone psychological behavior towards the other sex, which are all very wonderful. Then both masculinity and femininity have its wonderful things.

@Kat - Why do you need to know the sex of a baby?

================
Because it has one. And there is nothing wrong with having one or with other people knowing about it, so there is no good reason to lie about it or to hide it.

@Leslie

When studying gender statistically it has been found that the within group differences are actually more significant than the between group differences. What this means is that sex does not determine our personalities.

Ketchup :
This is also flawed. Of course, one would need to examine the design of this study, etc etc to elaborate a full critical rebuttal of the claim.

copepod 7:22 am on February 11, 2010 | #

This isn’t a study. It’s something found in nearly every study on gender differences. There is always overlap between men and women (studies tend to stick to two genders) and there is always a greater variation within genders than between them, no matter what you’re testing. When discussing gender differences, you are always talking about averages, and in most cases we don’t know whether they are caused by nature or nurture because it is impossible to control for that in a study.

==============
Sorry, I wasn't clear. I wasn't questioning the "greater variation within genders than between them," I can't opine on this because I've never seen any of these studies or what their objective is.

My immediate problem was with:
"When studying gender statistically it has been found that the within group differences are actually more significant than the between group differences.

THEREFORE

What this means is that sex does not determine our personalities."

We can't know exactly (or even fuzzily?) what has been predetermined in our personalities. We can't know what determines a million personality aspects, so how can we say that sexual differentiation has no impact on human personality development and psychological configuration?

The fact that you can find more personality differences between genders, if we are to assume the claim by these studies, does not prove that sexual differential has no impact on any aspect of personality development.

Secondly, I would disagree that gender is not part of our personalities, and it is blatantly clear that the overwhelming majority of males develops a masculine gender personality, and the same for women with a feminine gender.

MSC 9:55 am on February 11, 2010 | #

If you haven’t read any of the studies, statistical or case, then why are you commenting on them?
=================
Because you are posting flawed logical statements and conclusions based on whatever you claim these studies to show. One doesn't need to read the study to perceive the flawed conclusion in your post.

MSC 9:55 am on February 11, 2010 | #

If you haven’t read any of the studies, statistical or case, then why are you commenting on them?
=================

Ketchup:
Sorry, I wasn’t clear. I wasn’t questioning the “greater variation within genders than between them,” I can’t opine on this because I’ve never seen any of these studies or what their objective is.

@MSC
I do not understand how you can discount studies when you haven’t looked at them yourself.
=======================
Here's a hint: it's because I don't believe everything I hear. I'm neither counting nor discounting.

@MSC:
I argue that there is not a binary because to few people fit onto the extremes (only masculine traits or only female traits) of the binary. The definition of binary is "of or consisting of two components" therefore if something is a continuum it is not really a binary. You yourself just said that people don't have to be at the extremes (which would be the two components) therefore gender cannot be a binary.
==================
"few people fit onto the extremes (only masculine traits or only female traits) of the binary. "

That's not a binary, that's a continuum. A binary doesn't have extremes, it has two categories or "components," although I would say "components" here is a bad choice to be used in the definition of gender binary. Categories is better.

A binary has two categories, such as the gender binary with male or female, so there is no extreme.

I also don't define gender as solely a collection of certain "traits." And even defining gender based on "traits" may be quite incorrect to begin with.

It is impossible to say that masculinity/femininity are innate, because there is no way of testing this (as everyone is seeped in culture).
===============
So, by the same token, it is impossible to say that there isn't an innate root as well. But I'm not so sure that's the only way to validate or not the claim.

Wouldn't the fact that gender is a universal characteristic of humans warrant that there is an innate root somewhere? If gender was just learned or conditioned, one would think that there would be one or plenty of examples of societies without gender. Correct me if I am wrong, but there isn't such a society.

Isn't this kind of like asking if aggressiveness is innate or learned? I think it's both. You have an innate component that can then be profoundly shaped by the environment and personal experiences.

And we are back to cases like Reimer as well.

And concerning what gender is, I also see it as not the type of thing that could be passed on from generation to generation simply by some kind of teaching or conditioning. It's more complex than that, and more binary and sex-specific.

Wow, this really reminds me of a stuffed toy I had as a child: Hasbro's Kitty Surprise toy line in which you got bought a stuffed animal - it could be a cat, dog, horse, bear, etc. - and then inside its stomach was a "surprise" of babies. The gender of the babies was determined by the color of the ribbon tied around their necks.

Here's what I'm talking about - with pictures and a commercial included.

(I've copied the post here, because otherwise it starts to be formatted in such a narrow column)

Author: Simone
Comment:
So expecting everyone of a given gender to conform to a particular set of constructed expectations is bound to create tension and misery for a fair number of people.

================
I agree with that, especially for negative expectations.

The issue is more complicated though. As I wrote in my first post, people are locating the root of the problem in the wrong place. The problem is neither that humans have two sexes, male and female, nor that there are two respective genders, masculine and feminine. So trying to lie about this or to ignore it does not serve any good purpose in my view, on the contrary, it's harmful. It's in the constructed set of expectations that I would argue is the problem.

As I said, put blue on the boy, exactly because that signifies he is a boy, and pink on the girl, for the same reason, and teach them both to excel in math. Instead of lying to the girl that she is nothing or not a girl, and then "waiting to see if she will be good in math." To me it's like you tell your kid, 'oh we picked you up in outer space, you're a Martian,-- now we'll just wait to see what they will "prefer."' It's ludicrous. Why shouldn't the work focus on changing the incorrect math expectation for girls in the first place?

Secondly, although I welcome any questioning and dismantling of negative gender stereotyping, I find it really problematic to see how many people just focus on gender, while repeating the same stereotyping or worse with a variety of other categories. As I asked elsewhere in the thread, would all the people that are complaining about gender as a horrible social construct be in favor of abolishing, say, horrible nationality concepts, to open the borders to all other nationalities because we are all part of one human race? Look at all the misery that creates.

Just yesterday I saw news on how the police on the US Coast was mistreating this huge boatload of Haitians that tried to come to the US. They mistreated them and just turned them back to abject living conditions in their country. Did these people choose to be born in Haiti? What is their preference for life? Why can't they choose where and how to live? Isn't it all arbitrary and causing not only misery, but even death?

You cannot coherently argue to undo gender stereotyping while endorsing a host of other equally harmful stereotypes, concepts, and constructions.

Color preference is very relevant, since it’s directly related to the product discussed in the original post. In our culture, have a need to color-code infants because we need to *create* difference between the genders, even when it isn’t naturally apparent.
=====================
I would argue not. The object is not to create an artificial difference, it is first and foremost to display the difference that is already inherent in nature (sex). So if you don't put pink or blue (or a variety of other cultural artifacts to signify sex/gender), you are lying or hiding an important aspect about the baby. A baby is either a boy or a girl, it's not an indefinite blob.

Secondly, concerning gender, not at a baby stage, but at a later age, there are two, masculine and feminine, and they are not equal. There is nothing wrong with that, just like men and women are not equal, we are a heterosexual species, not hermaphrodite clones. The problem, as I see it, is not with the fact that there is a binary sexual difference, (and which as I said will produce corresponding genders) but that for millions of reasons, there are all these problems about oppression etc related to gender or relations between the sexes. It's this that one needs to fix.

Simone:
Plus, gendering kids’ appearance prompts others to have gendered expectations about that kid–and that can be anything but benign.
=============
But the negative gendered expectations are in people's heads, not in the clothing. It's what is inside their heads that you need to change. Consider the following, if people had no negative stereotypes for girls, according to you, wherein would lie the problem with knowing their sex and gender?

Secondly, as I briefly mentioned, the issue of "preferences" and "letting a kid choose" is really complicated. I just hope some of these kids that are serving as gender lab rats to their parents won't end up seriously damaged.

"When you put a little kids in overtly gendered clothes, that’s more likely to happen."
How long do you realistically think that you can lie about or hide the sex of your child?

"I don’t want everyone telling my son he’s smart, and my daughter she’s pretty. "
I've always hated that too.

And then I was also thinking about the stupid logic employed in this reply:

Ketchup: “Wouldn’t the fact that gender is a universal characteristic of humans warrant that there is an innate root somewhere?”

Kat 1:53 pm on February 11, 2010:

Nope, cause gender roles differ strongly.

============
The initial assertion was not that there were certain gender roles that were universal, but that gender itself was universal. Saying that gender roles differ does not address the fact that gender itself is universal, and, in fact, confirms it indirectly (there is always gender, whether it's one role or another).

If one applied this same stupid logic for other phenomena in humans, this is what we would get: an assertion that producing music does not have an innate root in humans. Since all human cultures produce music, but the music they produce varies enormously, applying similar framing would yield that there is nothing innate in humans to produce music. Language is no different. Paternal and maternal components of our personalities. Sexual attraction as well.

To assert that just because there is variation, there is no universality is hilariously faulty.

A related question is whether masculinity and femininity are themselves universal. That seems to be true as well. In the same manner that there is no culture without gender, there is no culture with only one gender, and there is no culture without a masculine and feminine gender. Given that gender is a product of our sexual binary configuration, that wouldn't make any sense, neither from a psychological dynamics, nor from a biological dynamics.

The two examples that were linked (berdache and hijra, if we are to take what's written at wiki as correct) were cultures that had more than two genders, but both cultures, like all the others we know of, had a masculine and a feminine gender, and then they developed something that is being called a third gender.

And since gender (or masculinity and femininity) refers only in part to social roles, to say that there is a variation in roles as disproving gender universality is also, in this respect, very stupid logic.

-------------
And then there was this gem here:

@Kat -BTW: Not all cultures agree on the notion of two sexes (although you are very blurry in your use of “gender” and “sex” anyways).
-----------
Given that no one was discussing how many cultures have a notion of two sexes, it was just another inane and "have nothing to do with the question at hand" observation.

My responses written below:

Rose N. 2:06 pm on February 14

Ketchup, while I grant it isn’t my job to police other commenters, you’ve made approximately 40 posts, often long, discursive posts,

--You mean I just didn't post inane sound-bytes, or short knee-jerk responses, but developed a thought, with arguments, etc?

ten times more posts than your nearest competitor, Kat, has made.

-- I didn't know anyone here was competing for total number of posts. If that's the reason you post, I would advise you that there are better ones.

Certainly the comments section is designed for discussion (although I’m not sure “discussion” is the word that most applies here), and it’s generally not the point to take relevant discussion off thread, but don’t you think you’ve gone a little overboard here?

--If you don't think this thread was about sex and gender, I think you have just missed the main point.

I mean, don’t you see how I and other posters could find the total length of your posts a little obstructionist, obscuring smaller posts by others in different threads?

--I can see, because if you have issues reading anything more than a sound-byte, this thread must have been very anxiety-raising for you. On the other hand, I would suggest to you that thinking about the world in sound-byte terms is not very useful. And as the old logic goes, if you think there's anyone who is writing comments you don't like, you can just skip them.

While you have engaged with people here, it seems, especially as the commenting went on, that this entry has served as a springboard for you to develop and discurse upon your opinions in great depth–

--I would say that "great depth" we find in books or long articles.

perhaps you should consider creating your blog post to discuss your opinions in further depth next time you get on such a roll. (If you don’t already have a blog, creating one doesn’t have to be a big hullabaloo–you could make a simple dreamwidth account, for instance, to use.) Thanks for reading my opinion.

-- May I suggest the same to you? Then you can invite all your friends who like to post little comments and you can all be happy and never again have to read more than two lines in a comment. Imagine how happy you will be? No reflection, no interrogation, just that mindless, but *concise* echo over and over again. And god forbid anyone should decide to debate a topic with argument development. You'd be free of that too.

Great thread. I had never thought about the fact that various things about gender were universal, and that humans could not exist without it, but so it is.

J_Kat: That being said, Ketchup's reply to Rose is pointless, snide and completely off topic, so lets get back on topic eh? :P
============
What a trollish remark! As if Rose's commentary was anything but pointless, snide and ridiculous. This doesn't bode well for your jumping into the discussion.

Perhaps you should stick to the topic only, before exclusively criticizing people you disagree with for pointless, snide comments.

J_Kat: I think you're wrong to use the term 'gender' synonymously with feminine and masculine. Gender in the strictly scientific sense, is indeed typically binary for human beings, and this is supported by its universality across cultures and the extent of our biological understanding of it. But gender as a social concept is not. This complication of language seems to be repeatedly misunderstood and is made worse still by taking feminine and masculine to be synonymous with gender in its strictly biological sense. Masculine and feminine are far trickier concepts, hugely determined by social and personal preconceptions, it is very difficult (and possibly pointless/detrimental) to assert they have any innate or clearly distinguishable attributes. Girl and boy are for the most part biologically distinguishable yes, but attributing masculine or feminine to
either is dependent entirely on psycho-social constructs.
==============
One thing I didn't understand in your comment is that you say you think I am wrong to use masculine and feminine in the definition of gender, but then you don't offer the gender definition you think is right. Secondly, if you don't think masculine and feminine fit into the definition of gender, in what concept do they fit in?

I also didn't understand what you meant by "gender in the strictly scientific sense,"
---
"but attributing masculine or feminine to
either is dependent entirely on psycho-social constructs."

This has already been addressed by the question of how innate gender is or in what ways could it be innate. Although you just repeated the above assertion without showing any basis for it, I would have to say that we are not just boys and girls, but also men and women. And we are also back to cases like Reimer.

J_Kat: but it is now generally recognised the great contributions people with dyslexia or autism have made to humanity, typically a virtue of the fact they don’t see the world ‘normally’.

I don't think I am familiar with them. Could you list five or ten of these great contributions that people with dyslexia have made to humanity because they have all kinds of learning disabilities?

I wrote this above, but I figure better to put it nearer the bottom. Shrug.

Ketchup wrote:

I would argue not. The object is not to create an artificial difference, it is first and foremost to display the difference that is already inherent in nature (sex). So if you don’t put pink or blue (or a variety of other cultural artifacts to signify sex/gender), you are lying or hiding an important aspect about the baby. A baby is either a boy or a girl, it’s not an indefinite blob.

Me:

I say first, that -not- accentuating is different from lying or hiding. I would then like to go on to ask, why? Why accentuate this particular aspect of a human being? Why is this such an important aspect about -a baby-? Why? Why, at any point in time before puberty, indeed before sexual maturity, is there any need to specifically point out, accentuate, highlight the difference? Why?

The answer is rather simple, in a cultural context. So people will know how to treat them. So the child will know what cultural idea to identify with. What characters, characteristics, and roles to aspire towards. So the child will know their role, because in our culture, in most cultures, gender is the single most important determining factor in how people will treat you, and what they will expect from you.

You say that the idea should be to ’simply’ change the culture, to remove the ‘negative’ stereotypes associated with gender. First, if changing the culture were simple, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. Anyway, I say all stereotypes can be negative, and none are ever positive. Period. Supposedly positive traits include: boys are tough, girls are nurturing. This marginalizes and damages those boys who aren’t tough, and those girls who aren’t nurturing. And does no real benefit for those who are, aside from giving them a distinct advantage over those who aren’t.

The only reasons a child needs to be specifically marked out as one gender or another is so that stereotyping can occur, and so that a child can learn what stereotypical role awaits them as adults. There is no other reason I can think of, and I challenge you to name one.

So my point is: people are going to have stereotypes. It's part of what people do, and it becomes very prominent in any context where people meet and interact with more then 100 people in their lifetimes(google 'monkey sphere'). So why do we feel the need to emphasize this particular aspect about a child, that truly won't have a real affect on them until they are older(sexually mature), and thereby subject our children to the sort of mass generalization and pressure to conform that strictly identifying them by their gender, specifically above all other traits, produces?

@Gwenyth:
" because in our culture, in most cultures, gender is the single most important determining factor in how people will treat you, and what they will expect from you"

I'll address the other things in your comment, but this stood out right away to me. No way.

No way that gender is the single most important factor in how people will treat you. I will bet anything that you have never lived in a completely different culture/country than your own (specially one with strong xenophobic attitudes), or within a completely different strongly religious group, or in a very racially segregated community. Then there is also age, there's class, disabilities, a bunch of things. I would say that the degree of perceived difference between the individual and the group and the significance of this difference to the group is what is enormously determining of how the people in the group will treat the individual.

And even on an individual to individual basis, it's more a question of salience. It's how important any of these particular characteristics (including gender) are important to the person who is treating the other. The context too. In some contexts gender may be much more significant that in others, even when we are analyzing the interactions of the same two people.

@Gwenyth: The only reasons a child needs to be specifically marked out as one gender or another is so that stereotyping can occur, and so that a child can learn what stereotypical role awaits them as adults. There is no other reason I can think of, and I challenge you to name one.
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But how can you argue that and ignore stereotyping for adult men and women?
If, in order to solve stereotyping, we must do away with sex differences and gender, we can't have the human race, because we can't have adult men and women either! Think of all the stereotypes that exist for men and women. And that is why I argue that you are locating the problem in the wrong place. I understand the wish to resolve the negative stereotypes quickly. I wish it could be done very quickly too. But what I am very much arguing against is doing away with the two genders themselves, in the name of resolving negative gender stereotyping.

An analogy has just occurred to me regarding racism. If racism uses visible physical differences to categorize people, the solution to racism would not be working with what's inside people's minds about the other race, but trying to make, for example, all blacks look like whites. And, it's true, that in a variety of ways, we can find various attempts to do this, but it's not addressing the root of the problem.

And then there is another thing I've just thought of in which a lot of people here are totally wrong in.

For many years I played a certain sport which requires aggressive play (not only, but it is certainly essential to the sport). It's a team sport and the way men and women dress for it in the co-ed version (at least for non-professional athletes), there is no gender difference in the clothing.

I have played in teams where the men were wonderful and the most supportive guys ever, encouraging the women to be as aggressive as can be and happy when we were. And I have played in teams where there were clear antagonist, repressive, hostile attitudes and behaviors from the men to curtail aggressive plays from women.

The clothing did not ever change in any way, in fact, it was the same for the men and for the women.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2101678/

excerpt from:
Gender GapWhat were the real reasons behind David Reimer's suicide?
By John Colapinto
Posted Thursday, June 3, 2004, at 3:58 PM ET

David Reimer was one of the most famous patients in the annals of medicine. Born in 1965 in Winnipeg, he was 8 months old when a doctor used an electrocautery needle, instead of a scalpel, to excise his foreskin during a routine circumcision, burning off his entire penis as a result. David's parents (farm kids barely out of their teens) were referred to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, home of the world's leading expert in gender identity, psychologist Dr. John Money, who recommended a surgical sex change, from male to female. David's parents eventually agreed to the radical procedure, believing Dr. Money's claims that this was their sole hope for raising a child who could have heterosexual intercourse—albeit as a sterile woman with a synthetic vagina and a body feminized with estrogen supplements.

For Dr. Money, David was the ultimate experiment to prove that nurture, not nature, determines gender identity and sexual orientation—an experiment all the more irresistible because David was an identical twin. His brother, Brian, would provide the perfect matched control, a genetic clone raised as a boy.

David's infant "sex reassignment" was the first ever conducted on a developmentally normal child. (Money had helped to pioneer the procedure in hermaphrodites.) And according to Money's published reports through the 1970s, the experiment was a success. The twins were happy in their assigned roles: Brian a rough and tumble boy, his sister Brenda a happy little girl. Money was featured in Time magazine and included a chapter on the twins in his famous textbook Man & Woman, Boy & Girl.

The reality was far more complicated. At age 2, Brenda angrily tore off her dresses. She refused to play with dolls and would beat up her brother and seize his toy cars and guns. In school, she was relentlessly teased for her masculine gait, tastes, and behaviors. She complained to her parents and teachers that she felt like a boy; the adults—on Dr. Money's strict orders of secrecy—insisted that she was only going through a phase. Meanwhile, Brenda's guilt-ridden mother attempted suicide; her father lapsed into mute alcoholism; the neglected Brian eventually descended into drug use, pretty crime, and clinical depression.

When Brenda was 14, a local psychiatrist convinced her parents that their daughter must be told the truth. David later said about the revelation: "Suddenly it all made sense why I felt the way I did. I wasn't some sort of weirdo. I wasn't crazy."

David soon embarked on the painful process of converting back to his biological sex. A double mastectomy removed the breasts that had grown as a result of estrogen therapy; multiple operations, involving grafts and plastic prosthesis, created an artificial penis and testicles. Regular testosterone injections masculinized his musculature. Yet David was depressed over what he believed was the impossibility of his ever marrying. He twice attempted suicide in his early 20s.
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I think it's too bad that David didn't put a bullet in Money's forehead.

Why? Why at such a tender age start telling children so loudly who they have to be? In every TV show, they are reminded. In every toy. In every social interaction with every adult. Children are programmed to identify with one particular subset of human traits and activities and people. With half the human experience. And it’s obviously harmful.

So why do it?
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Because that's what living in human society is about. You get told everything, who you are, who other people are, what is right, what is wrong, what is good, what is bad, how to behave, what to eat, etc etc

Everyone is conditioned, gender is just one part of all the conditioning humans go through. The only way to stop social conditioning is to take the child and put it in solitary confinement. Then it dies. This was already mentioned at the top of the thread.

Then there is the ridiculous argument that was echoed in your comment first mentioned by Simone that:
" as kids start to get old enough to have strong personalities of their own. (Say, by the age of about 5.) "

Before five, she tells them what to wear, after five they "decide." LOL
As if between five and 100, humans aren't going to be socially conditioned about gender over and over again, not to mention everything else.

Then there is your suggestion that it is impossible to change negative stereotypes about gender, therefore we should just change every sign of gender in culture for children. As if the latter would be any different a task in magnitude than the former.

Lastly, since apparently there's just repetitions of what's been discussed before, I'm not going to address any questions that refer to trans-gender or homosexuality. This blog has a kindergarten policy about such topics. Views or lines of questioning that do not conform to the ones the blog owners like get deleted. That's how they feel they have continued to prove they are correct. Happened in one or more threads not too long ago. People who don't have solid arguments and reasoning cannot tolerate debate.

Excellent posts Gwenyth, I don't think you could have articulated it better. So if ketchup still doesn't see what you're trying to say then it probably is time to call it a day!

Author: KellyK
Comment:
Um...people have full lives without heterosexual romantic relationships.

Deep friendships and close relationships with their families...meaningful jobs or volunteer work...fun and fulfilling hobbies...religion...all kinds of things that give life meaning without being paired off.
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I disagree. I don't think that's a full life. I think equating a fun hobby to "a marriage based on solid, long-term, intimate, enormously rich exchanges" is ridiculous. It's exactly what I put in my example, playing computer games is for many exactly a fun hobby. In no way that equates to a wonderful marriage. Neither does having 10 fun hobbies. And even if you add up all those things you mentioned, it's not a full life to me.

'But this is yet another straw man argument. You don’t seriously think that the two states are “solitary life of beer and computer games” and “happy heterosexual marriage.”'

Then it's your straw man argument, because no one was arguing that humans can only live in either of these two states. The two examples were given for contrast. Exactly what do you miss when you do not have "a marriage based on solid, long-term, intimate, enormously rich exchanges?" One of life's most important and enriching experiences. It cannot be substituted for a nice hobby or an engrossing job. That's my point.

"But if, God forbid, my spouse got hit by a bus tomorrow and I was alone, my life wouldn’t suddenly lose all meaning, to pick it up again only if I remarried."

I find your straw man comment above so ridiculous, I hope it wasn't intentional. Who is arguing that your life would lose ALL meaning? No one. Is it possible to argue something without using extremist distortions?

In case someone lost their spouse, they would certainly lose out on one of life's most important experiences. No one is arguing that there aren't other things in life which also have meaning. I am arguing, however, that you cannot equate most of the things you listed to the experience of a marriage such as I described. I would say there is one other type of personal relationship that does equal it in importance: parent-child. As for a life-time best friend, not sure, a bit less, but enormously important nevertheless.

"I think the idea of marriage as the end-all, be-all helps create a lot of really unhappy marriages. People think they *must* be paired off, so they jump into marriage or marry someone who isn’t right for them, because they feel like their life is empty and meaningless without that. And then when marriage doesn’t magically make them fulfilled, things go downhill in a hurry."

I have to agree with you in part. Unrealistic ideas about long-term relationships can be seriously harmful. Where we disagree is that this problem does not diminish the enormous value and richness of a wonderful marriage.

"People think they *must* be paired off"

I don't know how much this is happening today. I would certainly agree two generations ago, already less one generation ago, but young people today? The few stats I've seen all show that the average wedding age has aged enormously and the trend continues. As you know, as divorce became "normal," the rates exploded. I'm not so sure there are that many people who are still getting married for no better reason than thinking they must be paired off by a certain age. I wouldn't know to be able to generalize, but I think most people who get married have at least a few valid reasons, if not self-serving ones. The latter are still different than thinking they simply must be paired off for no other reason.

"And then when marriage doesn’t magically make them fulfilled, things go downhill in a hurry."

I agree. I'm not trying to suggest that we should put the expectation that simply signing a piece of paper will automatically bring about the most magically fulfilling relationship.

At the same time, I am completely critical of people who say that a marriage such as I described is no better than having a fun, engrossing hobby along with a nice job. It's the stupidity in how such a marriage is devalued of qualities that a fun hobby does not have, and could never have that I am totally against.

In conclusion, I disagree. The most beautiful marriages I have known in my life really do impress me, by the depth of the beauty and richness they attain. And please note that I'm not saying any marriage. Without a shadow of a doubt, at least half of the marriages I know of, I would throw in the trash can before finishing writing this sentence.