Raising a theybie

[HDDD]

A theybie? A theybie?
www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/jul/08/parent-raising-gender-free-child

Of course it is, this enbie advertising is funded for the purpose of normalising male sexual cross dressing. Such gullible women.

@MsPants

According to Doty's lawyer, barbara findlay (who doesn't spell her name with capital letters)

What? What does this signify? Why?

That she is all about breaking down conventions.

.. What does this signify? Why?..

Presumably Capital Letters reinforce the Patriarchy or some other BS.

Christ I'm sounding like JP!

@BaronessBrighterThanYou

We have gone from the stupidity of "don't let him play with that doll, it's a girls toy" to the new-fangled stupidity of "oh look, he's playing with a doll, he must be a girl".

Equally shit parenting.

Yes, It used to be "he must be gay".

I would love to have a conversation with this person to understand what is going on in their head. What does "woman" and "man" mean to them? I work in a very male dominated field, wear androgynous clothes and have no desire to be pregnant or have children. But I'm well aware that none of that makes me a man.

All I can conclude is the same as PPs - that this person was brought up with rigid gender roles and felt "changing gender" was the only way to escape it.

Obviously never heard of grammar and proper nouns, then.

My son wears what are generally seen as 'boys' clothing, superhero/video game character t-shirts/hoodies and jeans/tracksuit bottoms/shorts etc. He also has long, dark blonde, curly hair that he wears down, in a ponytail or occasionally with a hairband if he's doing a sport that requires a helmet. My friend's daughter has an almost identical wardrobe and also has long, dark blonde, curly hair that she wears down, in a ponytail or occasionally with a hairband if she's doing a sport that requires a helmet.

Oh the confusion of some people when they play together each with their opposite conforming and rejecting of gender norms. Looking so alike in their presentation but also being happily comfortable to accept themselves and each other as a boy and a girl. To make matters even more confusing, they both enjoy a range of toys from Batman to Barbie and activities from climbing and play fighting to gymnastics and dance.

Sounds like massively hard work and joyless sterile form of parenting.

@GCAcademic

The logic of this is ultra-Capitalist: you are what you consume.

Something just clicked there for me. We have known for a while this trend has been about buying drugs and has spread across Western society like an advertiser's dream. Be anything you like, as long as you buy a lot of stuff to back it up.

I dont mind how other people choose to parent, but the trend of mistaking a child who likes things that are not stereotyped in accordance with their sex as gender confused concerns me.

I grew up loving dinosaurs, video games, swords and climbing trees. A few adults speculated I might grow up to be a lesbian. Now they would definitely have said I was trans.

If my son likes pink and ponies, are people going to ask him constantly if he is a girl?

This pink = girl, blue = boy, other = nonbinary stuff is reductive. It's just a new type of stereotyping.

You can't hide from gender. Stereotypes and expectations are everywhere - in books, on films and tv programmes, on adverts, in clothes, in shops, when you interact with anyone who isn't in your 'bubble' (to borrow a phrase).

It bugs me because it's so similar how I feel as a GC feminist - critical of gender, gender being the roles, associations and expectations of us based solely on our sex.

What strikes me about these situations is the amount of attention people require. I wonder if anyone actually goes through these changes and just quietly gets on with life?
It seems, that a decision is made and then the media courted for attention. Look at meeee! Look at us!

Manufacturers (capitalists) will make more money if they colour code toys. So, in our culture, a boy won't be allowed (or will decide himself that he doesn't want) to ride on his sister's pink hand-me-down bike. So his stupid fucking, gender loving parents have to buy a new one. In blue.

They fuck you up your mum and dad, I've heard it said.

When I was born, a guess was made [about my gender] because nobody knew better than to do that. And that guess was incorrect

Do doctors take one look at a newborn baby and guess their gender?
I thought they announced the sex of the child.

The more trans people try to prove they don’t conform with gender stereotyping the more I see a group of people who have rigid gender stereotypes and are falling over themselves to prove they are a certain gender.

Northern, yes, exhausting just reading about it. So desperate to be different, so desperate for attention. The kind of people who suck you dry with their need for validation.

@Oliversmumsarmy Yes! Its so bloody regressive. And (to go back to the article), what better way to ensure a child is obsessed with and fanatical about gender stereotypes than to make it front and centre whenever they're introduced to anyone from, the moment they're born. That definitely says "my child shouldn't be defined by their gender identity"

It's a shame this couple are so flaky- there's something to be said for raising a theybe.

Experiments show that people treat babies and toddlers very differently depending on their sex. If we can ungender babies, we may undo some unhelpful social programming.

I don't think we can, though, there's so much unconscious bias.

(I say "to go back to the article" because my brain has gone off on a full ranty tangent now, i realise you hadn't digressed)

• Do doctors take one look at a newborn baby and guess their gender? I thought they announced the sex of the child.

Yes, and as this person has now given birth to a child, they clearly got it right. As they always have done, in the vast majority of cases, and nowadays few mistakes are made with the small number of babies with DSDs.

This conflation of sex and gender, followed by the denial of the fundamental importance of sex and the reification and slavish devotion to 'gender' is regressive, dangerous and completely unnecessary.

Wow...I played with Lego, marbles and cars back in the seventies and eighties. My mum did the DIY and dad taught me to cook.

Clearly we were way ahead of our time!

Let's face it, if you weren't the eldest child, you wore and played with whatever your older sibling(s) had finished with.

Not even past the second paragraph reading some of the biggest bollocks in my life....doctor "assigning" a gender at birth, and they didn't know so they "guessed"

And this deserves a newspaper article does it? It's all me me me look at meeeee, I'm so special, we're so special 😐 Kid plays with whatever toys they like shocker.

Growing up, I liked sci fi, and video games, and skateboarding, and wrestling, and climbing trees. I was called a tomboy. I also liked dresses, make up and sparkly nail varnish. And shock horror, no one gave a crap, no article in The Guardian for me!

DD has fairy wings, and a lightsaber, dinosaurs and a pink dolly. No article in the Guardian for her either, because I'm not a massive attention seeker.

Five minutes of fame I suppose

This will blow their minds... my son and daughter share a bedroom! And it’s decorated how they both like!! I guess they’re both gender neutral. hmm

My two sons share a room. We just moved house, and the room they picked was the previous owner's little girls. It's decorated in pink and pale green with spots, with a pink and purple light fitting. Neither boy has even mentioned it, except to say the spots made their eyes go funny with a huge, cross-eyed grin! Anyone would think that these things just don't matter unless you make them matter.

Fail to see what's so "liberated" about raising a child who must always conceal their genitals from public view by their own child and adult friends and family. Hide, hide, hide so that nobody names their anatomy.

No stripping off in a friends paddling pool; no skinny dipping on picnics at the river or beach; no soaking each other with a hosepipe or water guns. No running to the toilet together with your pals or having a pee in the woods while out playing. No sleepovers. No communal changing rooms in shops or swimming pools.

If the little child has friends identified as boy or girl, will they too have to be hide their bodies from view so that the child never matches their genitals and realises they are a girl, or a boy?