"You are your own expert" also applies to my kid, consistency not required

[ishai_wallace]

It was Sunday morning at Blue Skies, my all-time favorite music festival. The tents were pitched close together, there was accordion and fiddle music, and a gaggle of kids played together in the firelane. One of them, who looked to be about five, stopped and asked me if Stanley was a boy or a girl. I looked at Stanley, and called out "Stanley, are

Comments

[bitterlawngnome]

To be perfectly pedantic about it, it's derived from the Latin word for "boy". So yeah.

puerile, a. (n.)

(ˈpjuːəraɪl)

[ad. L. puerīl-is boyish, childish, f. puer a boy, child: see -ile. Cf. F. puéril, -ile (15th c. in Hatz.-Darm.), perh. the immediate source.]

(OED)

[w1ldc47]

My first reflex upon reading this post was also to comment that puer means child (masculine) in Latin. Pedants unite!

[pantryslut]

Oh, that first conversation. I've been having that sort of conversation a lot the past few weeks.

[anonymous]

j I absolutely love this. I see you often find the people who need you. That, or they find you.

And bonus points on the TRANS-Canda highway pun. I talked about taking a trans-Canada tour one day (as in, a trip across the country) and my friends thought I was talking about travelling Canada in search of trans*people. And they seemed equally unsurprised when I corrected them. Perhaps the right people are finding me too.

Twoey

[ishai_wallace]

I really enjoy this, and can very much understand how you might go either way on the Trans Canada front. May the right people always be able to find you, and may you always be able to find the people who are right for you.

[anonymous]

Love this. These type of parenting moments are utterly priceless. Way to go on getting it right :)

[anonymous]

Hmm I agree with the idea of letting children choose what to wear and how to behave and I especially admire your parenting in that you let Stanley identify herself, rather than answering for her. Kudos for independence :)

That said, I actually have a lot of misgivings about gender neutrality:

First off, if someone especially a child, asks you to not identify them as either a guy or a girl, how exactly are you supposed to refer to them? Wiki talks about gender-neutral language, but I'm sorry but that seems to me to be kind of over-the-top. I mean English does not even have gender neutral pronouns, right

[ishai_wallace]

I think you are asking two questions:

1) How do you identify someone who does not want either male or female pronouns?, and
2) When does someone have to identify?

I'll get to both of those, but I'm going to add a little bit about my language choices. Mostly, that I don't use "gender neutral". Even when it comes to labeling bathrooms, I prefer "all gender" or "gender inclusive" to "gender neutral. I'm not neutral about gender, I am very aware that we ascribe different benefits to different gender identities and that gender is not neutral. I'm also not interested in getting rid of gender - I think gender can be a great deal of fun, and many people find a great deal of meaning and belonging in expressing a particular gender identity. I'm interested in not assigning a gender based on sex, in not limiting people to only two gender options, not saying you have to pick a gender and stick with it, and in not valuing genders differently.

1) How do you identify someone who does not want either male or female pronouns? The same as you

[w1ldc47]

Mostly, that I don't use "gender neutral". Even when it comes to labeling bathrooms, I prefer "all gender" or "gender inclusive" to "gender neutral. I'm not neutral about gender, I am very aware that we ascribe different benefits to different gender identities and that gender is not neutral.

I really disagree with this. I think when 'neutral' is used as a modifier, as in 'gender-neutral', 'height-neutral', or whatever 'X-neutral', it explicitly means 'regardless of the status of X' rather than 'X is not real' or 'X doesn't matter.' It's like the distinction between immoral and amoral.

I'm not a fan of 'all-gender' or 'gender-inclusive' because I still feel like it excludes (to pluck an example out of the air) people like me, who have no gender identity, hate the whole idea of gender, and find it an at-best-empty-but-usually-harmful construct in our lives. 'Gender-neutral' includes all the people included by your terms, plus people like me.

[ishai_wallace]

And perhaps this is where we end up just calling it "washroom" or "toilet" and leaving it at that.

I don't feel included in "gender neutral". I find it offensive. Too often it means "too freaky to pee in the regular places" (and not in a good way), or "toilets for the people we don't value".