to think this mum is a bit bonkers!!

[Dartfordmummy]

Don't know if there is already a thread on this but am a bit about this story!!

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2089474/Its-boy-Couple-brought-child-gender-neutral-reveal-sex-The-Infant--keeping-secret-FIVE-YEARS.html

Poor Sasha

I'm despairing in pink pyjamas :)

'Self-confessed radical feminist'

Since when was that a crime for confession?

I did make the point earlier that this is nothing new or exciting - boys and girls wore dresses for years up until the age of seven or so.

But there was no hiding or secrecy involved, which is what leaves a bad taste in my mouth in this case.

Does this woman not realise that this article will be on the Internet forever.

At 5 this little person might nt remember the barkingness of his infant years, but as a teenager he's going to get totally caned by the other kids.

Using your child to make a half arsed, ill thought out point is at best wrong and at worst abuse.

Poor Sasha

poor sasha indeed, the "genderneutral so long as it's n or girly" boy I went to school with was not a happy child, I suspect a lot of his "choices" were really to make his radical parents happy.

He was a loner, it was ALL ABOUT his gender or lack of or choice of girly things, no other aspect of his personality got a look in (not sure if that makes sense?)

Psammead it's not a crime or confession but drilling the maleness out of a boy whilst proclaiming her political stance isn't exactly normal (Whatever that is).

It does look like she didn't want a boy.

And she even dislikes the way mothers dress girls in pink.

If her politics weren't an issue it's a bit late now she's let the cat out of the bag.

I've got no bone of contention with feminists aren't we all feminists to some degree?

But please???

It all reminds me of the character in 'About a boy' whose hippy mother makes him wear stupid clothes when all he wants is to not be bullied and to fit in.

I mean I don't know anything else about him! all I remember is him standing alone or chanting about how he could be a girl if he wanted to..

and.. well it wasn't so much that us other kids isolated him, we were inquisative and approached him (lower primary) but he pushed us away in that there was no getting past the front of "I can be a girl", you couldn't get him to go deeper/past that to the important buisness of running around and playing, he didn't want to be one of the "boys or girls" :-(

he was always alone.

Sorry fog, that wasn't aimed at you, but at the Cambridge News. Bit of a loathesome phrase, I found.

Well, I don't know the woman and I don't know how 'truly' gender neutral she is bringing him up to be. I don't like all her methods, but I do sympathise with her idea.

I didn't take offence psammead no problem.

I wish I'd done this with DD. Then perhaps the family friends wouldn't have dumped huge boxes of pink plastic on us at Christmas.

Perhaps. Maybe her motives were better thought out than the way she's coming across.

But why put it in the papers? Why court publicity? Why not just conduct your experiment without exposing your child to national comment?

I tried to dress DS2 in a GN way - you'd be amazed at the things people think are girly (purple? Tops with birds on? STARS? Basically anything without a skull/ monster/ football on it.) Didn't go for pink and sparkles, although he did wear fairy wings for a while. He has a GN name too.

For his third birthday, he asked for trains and a garage. Although he also asked for stuff for his kitchen, which is clearly a girly toy. And a sparkly whatchamacallit thingy, you spin them and throw them, like a stick with ends on? One of them, anyway.

I find it fascinating. Would people have been this worked up about it if Sasha had been a girl?

My DS1 has HFA, he is always checking with me if things are OK for him to play with, if they are "for boys." Makes me sad, he's only 6, why should he not like Gogo pets, or a skipping rope, or Glee or whatever. Why should he not enjoy dressing up in anything at all (I'm thinking of his rather wonderful feather boa/ flowery cowboy hat/ bowtie and gun ensemble of the summer. No kids took the mick. Adults, however...).

I believe as a society we are way more hung up about gender than we were when I was a child in the late 70s/ 80s. I had dresses for posh, the rest of the time I was in sensible, practical clothes. And a sensible haircut, too - girls with bum length hair were a rarity then, now they're the norm at the kids' school.

Good grief. That poor child. He will be bullied mercillessly.

His parents would argue that labelling him a he is gender stereotyping probably.

Crunchy if Sasha had been a girl, I would still worry about the concept of keeping her sex secret. This is the only problem I have with this. One's sex is part of one's self, to actively hide it (or rather, have it hidden) does not seem healthy.

I understand what the parents want to achieve, but I think they have gone about it in a negative rather than positive way.

It's a reaction to the over the top consumerism aimed at girls using the colour pink really isn't it?
Big business deciding gender through products and society forming decisions on what girls and boys should do.
But refusing to admit that a little boy is a little boy isn't the way to do it.

So is she hoping that dressing Sasha in pink will change anything? Yes, if it made just one person think "No, I won't put that frilly dress on her because it looks a bit silly" then that would be really brilliant
Am I being completely thick to seriously not get the logic of this?
It's an extremely ill thought out experiment, likely for attention seeking purposes only. What the fuck does she actually care about how other people raise their children, especially to the point of making her son a walking object lesson on the evils of gender expectations?

I am just kind of baffled as to why anyone would deliberately do something that sets their child apart to such an extent. Agree with the poster who said that he may not fit into the 'boy' stereotype, but he now fits into the 'boy/girl with the crazy mum' stereotype.

This mother started this 'experiment' with, it seems, no thought as to how it could affect her little one - it has the potential to be catastrophic with the boy having all sorts of issues as to why his mum wanted to hide who he really was. But she seems to have been willing to take the risk for her 'radical feminist' principles. Also, when was she originally planning to tell the world - I just dont really get it?

I have no issue with letting boys play with dolls and vice versa etc. but why take it to such extremes?

I'm not sure it is, fog. I think the OTT consumerism is just another symptom of the problem the parents are trying to address - as you say that of girls and boys being 'forced' to think and act along expected lines from babyhood through fashion and toys, and ending up as adults who think along those lines too. I think business has just given this a very visual reference.

I don't really know if such a division is inate or learned, but either way I think making a secret out of his gender is not good.

As an aside, what is with this mumsnet trend of using the word 'frothing' when a group of people quite strongly disagree with you?

I wouldn't know what frothing is unless it's in a cafe and you want a frapperchinnospressomochachocca :)

Psammead I see your point but don't see the solution.

I think the mum kind of gave it away with the kids haircut, blatant boy !

I suppose the solution is not to buy impractical clothes, not to restrict fashion choices for either sex, and ditto for toys, and to change the way we think about gender.

It's that simple

I think DC are too important to mess with and for you to act out your own insecurities and hang ups. Maybe this women had a bad relationship with her dad or something.

why try and make your child weird and different seems to be what she is doing IMO.

If I'm reading correctly, she isn't actively keeping him "gender neutral" but instead encourages blouses and bans combat trousers. So, encouraging him to dress in girls clothes instead. That's not gender neutral!