"I didn't assign a gender to my kid. It's up to them to decide" - Time article

[PinkJellycat]

Apologies if this has already been discussed - I couldn't find a thread.

I'm a long time lurker on the Feminism board and reading all of your posts have really educated me. I read this essay this morning and was appalled at how this could be in the mainstream press. That poor child. Myers refers to her damaging childhood in the Mormon church - how can she not realise the damage she is inflicting on her own child?

The second to last paragraph really stood out to me:

"Around their fourth birthday, Zoomer started declaring a gender identity and claiming some gendered pronouns. Brent and I are honoring Zoomer’s identity and expression and answering all their questions in an age-appropriate and inclusive way. (I’m using they here because Zoomer is still exploring gender and I want them to have some autonomy over how they share their identity with the world.)^"
^
I would bet that the child is using his/her biological pronouns and the author is having a tantrum about it.

Link:

apple.news/AfdfgmBWHRHWqwwBgLCSZQg

The fact they’ve named their kid Zoomer tells me all I need to know

Zoomer definitely sounds familiar. It is not a name you forget.

I knew someone once with a cat called Bomber. This was because he used to "bomb around"*.

(Rather than drop bombs- may be a northern thing).

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3694581-Jeremy-Vine-non-binary-baby

There you go.

Fucks sake.

I didn’t assign a gender to my kid either. I let them choose what they wanted to play with, choose how they dressed, how they wore their hair. I taught them that society stereotypes and people may tell them that girls can’t do x, and boys always do y, but they are wrong and anyone can do anything they want to.

However they always knew what sex they were. They never felt they had to choose a gender, and align their play and appearance with that gender.

No one needs to choose gender. Just do what you want, and fuck off with the “for girls” and “for boys” bullshit.

Zoomer....

Smdh

"Claiming some gendered pronouns". How exactly do you do that, at age 4? I guess maybe telling a story about yourself?

I guess this is a fun piece of experimentation with child psychology. If your parents are insane so you never hear them using pronouns for you, but everyone else speaking English is using normal third-person pronouns for other people, how long does the child take to figure out which one they would use when telling a story about themselves, and can they figure out the pattern well enough to spot the she/he distinction?

And I imagine in this game, whichever the child happens to use first is immediately agreed with by the parents? I don't fancy the child's odds of figuring out the sex distinction at that age if all they had were their parents - their best chance of landing on a sex-based selection would be from overhearing normal people talking about them. Hopefully that has happened.

Otherwise it seems quite likely the child might happen to choose something based on sex stereotypes - if they like "girly" things, they might end up using "she" because they hear "she" used in "girly" media. But then, what's the significance of that? You have a child who has been fooled into thinking "she"="girly", "he"="boyish". And this is good how, exactly?

Then somehow you'd get from this nonsense to "time to start the drugs and chopping bits off". Sigh.

Why do these people think that the best way to combat gender stereotyping is to pretend that sex doesn't exist? They need to learn the difference between sex and gender.

Hell, why did they even give the child a name? Shouldn't they have waited for it to make up a name for itself? Couldn't imagine it being worse...

Dammit, why are they even teaching it English? Shouldn't they wait for it to make up its own language?

I've not read the whole piece yet, but apart from the name (which maybe isn't so outré in the US) it doesn't all sound too bad. The mother isn't claiming biological sex doesn't exist, she clearly knows that since before the birth. Some of it is obviously her overdoing it because she's a 'gender studies' expert. But I do have sympathy with this - especially in the light of being raised a Mormon and living in Salt Lake City I double-dog dare someone to prove that hypergendered childhood is a roaring success. The approach most of us would probably take (as well expressed by bluebluezoo) is obviously much more sensible (and more about the kid's needs than the parents') but of the two extremes better this than the alternative.

The link in the OP didn't work for me, but I found this article about this family.

time.com/5885697/gender-creative-parenting/

A common critique of gender-creative parenting is that “the kid will be confused,” but Zoomer doesn’t seem confused at all. In fact, they have a more nuanced understanding of sex and gender than a lot of adults. We teach them to use gender-neutral words until a person tells us about themself. We call kids friends. We have taught Zoomer about their own body without using boy-girl labels. Zoomer understands that some girls have penises and some boys have vulvas, and some intersex kids have vulvas and testes. Zoomer knows some daddies get pregnant and some nonbinary parents are called Zazas.

I think Zoomer is going to grow up very confused about sex.

.

That mother sounds fucking exhausting

@NecessaryScene1

Hell, why did they even give the child a name? Shouldn't they have waited for it to make up a name for itself? Couldn't imagine it being worse...

In fairness that would have been much better than calling the child Zoomer.

I think Zoomer is going to grow up very confused about sex.

Actually, I think there's a pretty good chance Zoomer will grow up to have a perfectly normal understanding of sex, and learn to eyroll 'yes mom' like any other teen in due course.

but of the two extremes better this than the alternative.

Hopefully. Presumably it's not going to get "punished" for choosing the wrong gender directly, at least, and there won't be any wrong behaviour. The problems start when this "gender-neutral" weirdness collides with reality - the collision between "he/she = gender-identity = likes/feelings" and "he/she = sex".

This sounds like a recipe for inducing gender dysphoria, if they don't "align". Could the child successfully unwind when older and realise, "oh, I'm actually 'she' because I'm female, but I still like cars+computers", or do they end up going down the "I'm a boy so I don't want to grow breasts because boys don't have breasts" path.

I'm fairly confident I could go down the former path, because I'm intensely logical and have never bought any of this gender identity faith-based stuff for a second - no real "peak trans" for me. But my faith in the reasoning skills of adults is now quite limited after seeing so much nonsense, and it's going to be even less easy for a gaslit child approaching puberty to unpack this.

Hopefully they might just end up as an annoying enby type with confusing-to-normal-people pronouns without the medical intervention...

Mind you, they should eventually reach the "rebel against the parents" age, at which point I almost envy their opportunity to really piss off some particularly annoying gits by turning out seriously non-woke.

The kid may well reject 'zoomer' though, if this usage is adopted...

www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/words-were-watching-zoomer-gen-z

No gender but saddle the poor kid with a name like Zoomer?

What if it turns out to be more of a slow-moving child?

We have taught Zoomer about their own body without using boy-girl labels. Zoomer understands that some girls have penises and some boys have vulvas, and some intersex kids have vulvas and testes. Zoomer knows some daddies get pregnant and some nonbinary parents are called Zazas

This is deranged. Utterly bat shit crazy.

We have taught Zoomer about their own body without using boy-girl labels

Penis havers, vagina owners, prostate people, cervix havers, ejaculators, menstruators .... we are all now disembodied parts and I identify as a part of the Monaco Royal Family. I'll let you know how my first trip to the palace goes.

I have a gender-studies degree and a Ph.D. in sociology. In the decade before Zoomer was born, it was literally my job to study and educate others about gender

This says it all. As does preventing Zoomer from participating in a race because it was sex segregated.

Three years later, I left that track meet in tears after I found out that despite assurances to the contrary, the 2- and 3-year-old girls would run in different heats than the boys. “I not running?” Zoomer asked as we drove away. I felt terrible for leaving. Zoomer just wanted to run. But I also would have felt terrible if I had stayed. It is these moments that plant the seeds that boys and girls are dramatically different, and in the case of track and field, that boys are better. I refused to have our family participate

@TerribleCustomerCervix

That mother sounds fucking exhausting

This is an understatement

Hang on... The kid is actually called Zoomer?

Zoomer?

Why?!

So is Zoomer a biological boy or biological girl or a Labrador?

I would hate my parents for naming me after a business meeting software program.

Are there confused kids called Skyper and Wasapper? Do they know if they are human or software?