Swedish Parents raise 2 year old with no gender identity

[AndreaisSlowlyLosingIt]

www.thelocal.se/20232/20090623/

Had a discussion with the manshape about this who seems to belive the parents are insane. I however think its quite a good idea. The child is allowed to dress itself however it feels and its wadrobe includes both boys and girls clothes.

I'd love to know what the rest of you think.

It is subjective. I have always felt limited by my consciousness of my gender and how it is generally perceived and expectations thereof. And have done ever since I hit puberty.

But the child isn't being denied that consciousness. At the point at which it starts to grasp the concept of gender difference (which should be pretty soon now) it will be able to explore that for itself and share with those around it. The parents have just decided that for the initial brief period of the child's life where it doesn't have a concept of gender difference as relating to itself they aren't going to let other people impose a gender identity upon the child based on its biological sex.

There's not denial of consciousness of being - there may be denial of expression of consciousness.

It's very hard to explore things without the words to do so; on the contrary, the greater the variety of expression on any subject that one has, the greater one's ability to explore it fully.

When I read MN I think some of you must have been brought up in the Dark Ages, not the 1970s and 1980s. I never, ever felt that I was going to be limited or that their were restrictions on what I could do in life based on culturally-determined visions of my gender.

Eh? There is no consciousness without words (expression).

I think good for them. Gender is different to biological sex. I'm sure everyone knows what sex Pop is.

I'm sure ghd child will realise it's sex in it's own time and all will be fine.

Bonsoir - didn't people stare at your tits in the street then and make comments about them? I don't think that's changed much.

We never worried too much about stereotypical things - ds1 has had plenty of pink clothes (which he chose), girls' toys, etc. Now that he is 3 he is behaving more and more like a boy - just the other day, he was waving his pink, fairy decorated pencil case at me and telling me it was a gun, and full of bullets!

I've no idea where he gets it from - he doesn't go to school/nursery yet, has never had toy guns, or watched things involving guns, or anything like that!

Was the child born intersex? I skimmed the article but didn't see that detail. That is the only sane explanation I can see for doing this. I'm all for pushing back the boundaries of what we consider normal and acceptable, but I'm not going to use my own child to to do it for me! push back your own boundaries fgs!!

Absolutely never! I really don't identify with all this gender stereotyping business, and the so-called pigeonholing of little girls.

My own DD is super feminine and loves clothes and sparkly shoes and princess dresses. But she plays rough and tumble with the boys and is proud to be strong and muscly. She gets the full spectrum of experiences...

Bonsoir - Where did you grow up?!!

England in the early years; a very small European country thereafter.

I have put my son in to girls socks, pants, vests, some trousers. Easier because I never picked out super girly pink stuff in the first place. My son plays with handbags and dolls. He puts his cars in a bag and pops it over his shoulder. I let them do whatever they like. My dd wants lego and is loving her uncle's Meccano right now.

But when they come home from school I think they start pigeon-holing themselves a bit. Jmo. My dd is a bit older than Bonsoir's though.

I think the parents are essentially imposing their values on this child just as much as if they clothed him/her in blue or pink and gave certain toys. What they're doing is pure vanity and attention-seeking -- there's no way it's science. Unless the child is being raised in a bubble it will notice differences and form an identity.

My recollection of the DCs when they were very young is that they grouped everything, even inanimate objects like stones from the beach, into families, the mum and dad and the baby, without any prompting from anyone as far as I can tell. The biggest stone or other item would be the dad, next biggest the mum, and the small one would be the baby. They are conscious that there are differences, even from an early age, just from being out and about with their eyes open.

The unnecessary (imo) drama of keeping it all secret would exhaust me too!

Ridiculous because he does have a gender and hormones and physical features are all part of that.It is not something which can be controlled otherwise we would not have some people seeking gender re alignment because they feel 'wrong'.

I actually love the idea of this.

I didn't read anywhere that they'd be denying the child information on it's gender, from what I read I thought that they just weren't going to make a point of it being male or female. So the case of the child brought up as a girl after having it's penis removed isn't comparable. They aren't lying to the child or withholding information from the child.

As for other people not knowing the gender, I can totally understand that. I'm sure there have been threads on here before about the different ways people react to boys and girls. The language used etc. Without having the gender to react to people are then forced to react to the child as itself. Eg. you can't automatically treat it as "pretty" or "boisterous".

Presumably Pop's mum and dad don't wander around with their pants off then

DD spotted pretty darned quickly that her bits were the same as mummy's, and once the cat's out the bag there, the experiment is stuffed, surely.

i don't think it matters - i don't think this will do any harm at all.

animals, after all, do not require gender-props to know which gender they are...nor do humans. Pop will work it out in the same way that most children do.

My money's on Pop being a girl.

I bet a million pounds Pop is a girl.

i think pops parents are tosseross

I think they need to get over themselves and their pop (forgive the pun) psychology. I would very much like to see evidence for the claim that gender is a social construct, for a start.