Raising a theybie

[HDDD]

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

Joyless sums it all up

Just let kids play with what they want dress how they want

Wait till they have a pack of them. No time to be special parents then showing off their specialness

How can you be “non binary trans”?

Trans by definition is binary- to be trans you identify as the opposite sex.

Do they not realise what their own definitions mean?

Wow...I played with Lego, marbles and cars back in the seventies and eighties

Well obviously like me you are a trans man and your parents didn’t stop you playing with obvious boy toys so must have been really ahead of their time

I drive a van and have an impressive amount of power tools and don’t own a handbag, a dress or make up. According to the trans lobby I am definitely pigeonholed into being a trans man.

I just thought I was me.

The commentators on twitter are unimpressed

twitter.com/guardian/status/1280844111319314432

Is the name 'Searyl' pronounced like 'Cyril' or 'cereal'? Or maybe 'surreal'?

After reading that nonsense I am tempted to spell my name and indeed a few other choice words in ALL CAPITALS.

People just need to stop projecting their own need to be especially special on their kids. Full stop.

Different setting / content of projection but basically the same thing: a dear friend of mine has a father who's deeply into New Age spirituality, mediums and that whole shebang. Friend herself is one of the most practically minded people I know and refers to herself as a " radical materialist" (also one of the few openly GC friends I have for the same reason).

Cue friend's reaction at her father - married to a woman around her own age but firmly on his line in terms of thinking - to her father saying "we've been made aware that there is an ancient sould from the Pleiades looking to incarnate with us". I'll be forever disappointed at not actually having been present for that one, but, according to my friend, she responded "so, you're saying you and [wife] are trying for a baby and also baby will need some serious therapy later on due to you guys framing it in a way that would make any Cinemax projector proud ...?"

Other friend, an extremely professionally successful man in his 40s, still struggles personally with having "disappointed" his father by finding success in business rather than academia. It's utterly ridiculous objectively speaking but genuinely painful for my poor friend.

Long story short: alien wisdom carrier, theybe, saviour of the world ... it doesn't even matter what it is. Parents need to stop this. It's neither healthy nor in any way fair for us as adults to make our kids responsible for tending to our fragile egos.

I actually get quite upset about this sort of stuff. It's just so damaging!

If we can ungender babies, we may undo some unhelpful social programming.

I completely agree but as you say it's impossible to do this in such a gendered society. I actually think rather than "degendering" a baby, we need to actively push back against the societal conditioning that they will experience. I know some parents who have made a lot of effort to be quite "rough and tumble" with their little girl and to buy her very "boyish" toys in an effort to cancel out the social conditioning she experiences from friends/family.

In regards to barbara findlay (for those who are as curious as I was) spoiler: there's no reason.

My name is spelled without capital letters. People make many assumptions about why that is. Here is the story. I have always signed my name without capital letters. When I was taking a Master of Laws degree in 1990, I had letterhead designed and my name was in lower case. I liked it, so I continued it when I returned to private practice in 1992. What an uproar! Lawyers called me up to say that they had a vote in their firm about why I chose that spelling; a court rejected an Order because my name was not properly spelled; and the local queer newspaper refused for years to spell my name without capital letters.

I realized that I had a perfect illustration of how we react when someone moves even a tiny bit away from a norm of behaviour, even with respect to something that has no impact on anyone else. So I have kept that spelling, and I tell this story in unlearning oppression workshops.

If we can ungender babies, we may undo some unhelpful social programming.

I do actually - previous rant aside - agree with this, in principle, too.

But also: we don't do this by denying physical reality or by pushing metaphysical ideas about identity but by working systematically towards the notion that stereotypes are harmful.

These gender identity fanatics are so regressive. Their ideology is that people can cover themselves in male sexist stereotypes, female sexist stereotypes or be non-binary and just pick and chose from the lists of stereotypes and call it gender identity? Why can’t we throw off the stereotypes altogether? This is what women have been doing for generations and it’s liberating, this forcing of everyone into the opposite stereotype if you don’t conform to what is typically associated to your sex is soooo oppressive! It’s reinforcing that everyone should align with a stereotype, if the one for your sex or the opposite and labelling women who have rejected sexist crap as children as ‘cis’ is offensive.

God, I grew up in the 70s/80s you could dress how you liked and have whatever hairstyle you wanted, follow whatever career path, we didn’t need all this gender crap. Just be who you want to be and ditch the labels for everyone thanks. It makes my head want to explode, and they consider themselves progressive when they’re advocating a more rigidly enforced system than the Victorians had. Well I for one won’t conform to this crap and I won’t teach my kids that this is necessary or normal, they can all fuck off.

Sea received a Canadian health card with a “U” (presumably for “unknown”) instead of an “M” or “F” to indicate their gender

It is to indicate sex not gender.

For someone who thinks themselves so switched on with regard LBGTQ roles they don’t seem to understand the difference between sex and gender

That child is going to be so unbelievably fucked up in terms of their body and their identity.

Years of therapy await. What a selfish parent.

@Iamanaubergine

But what is wrong with Soros? Hasn't he invested millions in education programmes/universities?

Someone at my workplace is like the mom in this story. Clearly female, but they/them and even the no capital letters in name thing.

I really want to ask them what they think male, female, woman, and man mean but I don’t want to get fired. BTW other than the gender stuff this person is quite personable and intelligent. It’s just weird sitting next to them and the two of us basically being equally gender nonconforming but somehow they are “they” and have escaped gender, while I guess I must be comfortable with stereotypes Because I dont mind if Other people use sex based pronouns to refer to me (no, actually).

I think that there's an extra layer of exhausting going on there!

Amen.

I was raise a brown girl to a lone white teenage mum. If she hadn't instilled in me to belief that I am enough as I am and a girl is capable of doing anything I would have been totally fucked. This woman is setting her child up to fail.

I used to like making mud pies, climbing trees, climbing anything! Making forts, roller skating. I used to pretend I was Batman, the Incredible Hulk (obviously) Fozzy Bear and I loved it!

I just can't get over how the 2010's are more regressive that the 1970's and 80s.

In the words of Posie Parker, this is complete nonsense! She's making a ridiculous point and using her baby as a weapon in her desire to be treated differently from any other Canadian citizen. Poor, poor child.

barbara findlay (who doesn't spell her name with capital letters)

Is that her full name?

@DrDavidBanner

Fozzy Bear!! I loved Fozzy Bear.

So is /did the theybie have the six month check for descended testicles?
How do they know whether it's a cause of concern if nothing descends?

**Since about 2018, the concept of “theybies” – a portmanteau of the neutral pronoun “they” and the word “baby”, referring to young children raised as neither boys nor girls – has gained currency, if not exactly broken through to the mainstream. This is especially true among progressive parents, some of whom feel “gender-autonomous parenting” grants their kids more leeway for self-determination, and freedom from the gender biases which might otherwise plague them from infancy.

Progressive parents?? Not the description that comes to mind

Doesn't spell name with capitals: in my case typing on the computer and never relearned to use the shift key on the new keyboard after I broke on the old one. One of my "theybies" sat on it.

Currently I am on my phone so capitals are added we get more accurate spelling but the occasional random autocorrect.

70s were better for more primary colour toys though there was some consternation about me choosing a boys toy from Santa's grotto. I was thrilled with the man dangling from a plastic parachute. Maybe I used to be a boy, or more probably autistic girl.

I've read some codswallop in my time but this takes the biscuit.
Mental illness is strong with Kori Doty.

@picklemewalnuts

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.

The way to address this is to tackle gender stereotypes, not to pretend you can opt out of them.