"I live in Realityville. Put a cross-dresser on a UAW line building cars. I could give a shit if you THINK it's wrong that the union thugs will treat him like shit and drive him out...it SIMPLY IS."

that's nice, but this family appear to be refusing information at the present, this doesn't mean the little storm (what a frakking stupid name) will choose to with-hold her/his gender when she/he becomes aware of the social implications

they are delaying something. specifically with the impact the hope it to have on their child's identity in mind. They hope it will be a good one.

It doesn't matter what some group of hypothetical assholes might do to some transvestite. Cause this child is being raised by parents who it is likely to rebel against in her/his teens...

also, as this has only been done once or twice i have to ask, what fucking right does anyone here have to condemn these parents?

your parents raised you all in some fashion. And you turned out ok, but you don't know what will happen to this child - sure there are possible theoretical downsides, but there are also possible up-sides, until someone tries we don't know.

So you're basically blocking progress by criticizing in the manner of a conservative who is happy with everything the way things are, because it worked for your parents...

That does not mean it is an ideal, let the hippie family have things their way, and if it proves successful all the better for everyone, if not then it's not your frakking problem!

there's nothing wrong with gender if the genders are equal.

yeah we socialize our kids but you can't not. these parents are socializing their kids to feel disdain for "traditional gender roles"

both perspectives are equally ingrained and handed to us at birth.

why dont we focus on the true injustices of this world instead of freaking out about one person's parenting style

What right do we have to condemn the parents, orathic?

If the parents, instead of letting their kids form their own ideas--enlightened ideas, at 5 and udner--on gender, let them form their own ideas about race, or raisedthem as Neo-Nazis, heling and burning, would you feel the same way?

Are ALL parenting styles to be accepted?

And should the child be ignored in that style? After all, the 5 year old is already suffering as a result of his parents' decision--that doesn't give us grounds to say "You fucked up your kids, knock it off?"

also: what's with challenging norms for its own sake?

where i come from you need a good reason. what's the reason? they should be who they want to be? no one is stopping them, and as i just said, there is no such thing as not brainwashing a kid. the kid gets brainwashed by whatever it hangs around. get used to that idea because that's how human beings evolved.

orathaic: It's not just about the "hippie parents," though. The downsides are FAR from theoretical -- the article itself acknowledge anecdotes of where the kids themselves were already facing social stigmatization, even as young as they are, from their peers, for what the parents are doing. And it's pretty clear how bad bullying can get, and the effects it has on kids affected. There's legitimate, real chance of problems here.

And it's not a simple matter of progress. "Until someone tries it we don't know, so try it" is perfectly fine in laboratory experimentations with plants and bacteria. It's a whole different story when you're potentially ruining the one life these people have. Why do the parents have the right to screw their kids' social development in the name of some ideological agenda?

Besides, even if we drop all of those objections, look at the quotes here! These people are FLIPPING COINS to decide what to treat their kid as. This is literally and metaphorically the most flippant parenting I've ever heard, and I sincerely worry for the kids raised under this haphazard attempt at pseudo-philosophy.

And this is coming from someone who wants all drugs in the US legalized, someone who wants government out of marriage, religion out of government, and the social stigma on all sexual orientations gone. I am not by any means a 'conservative' in the modern sense, nor am I one of those 'family values' folks that legitimately gets in the way of progress.

But even I, a self-identified libertarian and an activist for more liberty in the private lives of American citizens, can see that children, who lack the mental faculties to utilize their freedom, cannot be expected to make good decisions when free. It is simple psychological fact that a five year old cannot be expected to make rational decisions, and no amount of ideology of 'individualism' can get in the way of the inevitable consequences of irrational beings being totally free.

I would be much less concerned for the kids' future if their parents didn't delve into such hippie bullshit as unschooling and even child picking his own beginning of institutional education. I mean, a loving parent can support the child in his or her self-expression without resorting to hippie bullshit, they do it all the time all around the world. This self-expression should of course have boundaries because the family doesn't live in a vacuum but cross-dressing is nothing serious to be worried about. Not to mention the toys. Nowadays, children are playing with whatever they want and noone really cares if girls break stuff with swords and boys cook in the dollhouse.

However, any progressive parent should be careful when he or she tries to project his or her values on the child (conservative parents are fine, they want to project their values on their children in the first place). Children are perceptive and if they are continuously pushed to question something, e.g. their gender, they will understand what the correct behaviour before the parents is - questioning their gender. Seriously, a 5 year old child that calls himself Gender Explorer, writes poems about the necessity of self-expression among children and unwilling to socialize with other children is well on tracks to become either a cult persona of his generation or a very very unhappy person. Noone should be sad and afraid after mere 5 years in this world. When Jazz looks behind in few years, will he (or she) have the same kind memories of childhood as we have? Do the parents have the right to confront their child with the burden of this world in such a young age? I don't think so.

Furthermore, I believe that few children are actively concerned about the harmony between their sex and their true gender. How difficult is it for the child with balls to accept being a boy? Probably less than trying to understand the possibility that he might actually be a girl if the society didn't constantly pushed her to play the role of a boy. I'm obviously backing the position of someone who is not LGBT himself but that's a key to the answer IMO. LGBT people are naturally more interested in the issue of gender and some might even questioned their socially created gender from childhood so they might readily accept a stance that gender sensitiveness is pervasive amongcommon population. But there's no reason to believe that such behaviour is a majority one. I dare to say that most children are happy with their gender and couldn't care less about it when there's so much fun to be had with other stuff. A parenting policy that isn't merely about letting a boy paint his fingernails but about forcing that boy to explore the issues of gender is trying to fix a problem that might not exist at all. Noone asked Jazz and his brothers if they wanted to undergo such a tremendous task that even many adults fear to tackle.

I believe that in our present society, fixing a gender problem only once it appears is strictly superior to any sort of early-age gender seeking. Until we stop being jerks to those who are different (possibly never) it simply isn't worth the hassle. Adults are making compromises in regard to their self-expression, not only gender, all the time to appease their peers and that's how our society works. Adults are able to do that because they possess the life-experience with other people and are able to analyze their options properly. Kids do not. Kids are wonderful, yet mostly underestimated, beings but they should not make such grave decisions. That's what they have parents for. And while the parents of Jazz, Kio and Storm obviously love their children, they have higher expectations than 10 tiger moms combined.

Yeah, I don't have a fucking right to condemn anyone. I'm just patronizing, using my freedom of speech to lecture others on their private matters that are nothing of my business. Noone did it before, I feel so special ;) Actually, if your life story is all over the world's mainstream media, you can expect the world mocking and ridiculing you. Don't play a white knight here, orathaic, it doesn't serve any purpose to spank us lowly gossipers from your moral high horse. Shit happened and it won't be undone.

I pulled a rather timid obi here, I was afraid it would turn out longer :O

I don't think I'd describe that post as "timid," ulytau. ;)

No, that was a full-blown obi. :)

I like how I've become an adjective...haha...

An adjective? Wait...I've heard "obi-long" before, that's a bit adjective-like, but that wasn't an adjective just then...

Oh, who cares, better stop this before I pull an obi. ;)

Is Damian still reading this thread?

pull an obi about pulling an obi

I DARE YOU

Uh yeah. I just haven't bothered to reply in a while. Figured I'd let the rest of you talk about it for a while. After all this thread isn't about me. ;)

"Are ALL parenting styles to be accepted?

And should the child be ignored in that style? After all, the 5 year old is already suffering as a result of his parents' decision--that doesn't give us grounds to say "You fucked up your kids, knock it off?"

Obi, if you want to start regulating parenting styles then fine, just lets start some with something like a basic parenting course which all parents have to pass before they are allowed bring a child home from the hospital.

IS that what people are argueing for here?

John Henry, there's timid and there's obi timid, which is not timid at all by usual terms but it is timid in regard to the rest of bulk of obi's scriptural work, which in itself stretches far beyond any standard measuring system for written texts. There's a slight confusion of terms going on here, which is only natural when we don't have some Confucius doing the lexical clean-up for us.

The most famous postmodern decontructionists tried to tackle the issue of unweaving the core thoughts of any full-blown obi but they failed utterly - they likened their experience to that of Alexander the Great and the Gordian Knot, with the sole problem being that Alexander's sword turned out to be too rusty for the job. Postmoderniism fails when confronted to such a solid product of modernism as a full-blown obi.

It will therefore take a few years for a School of Obilogy to spring up. Scores of scholars will enter its libraries with no hope of returning to the outside world, only to find out after decades of futile research that obi is not just a run-of-the-mill wall of text. Obi is an obi and will remain as such forever.

One final warning. When I chatted with Jacques Derrida on his death bed in 2004, he uttered words I didn't quite understand back then but turned out to be prophetical. He said: "Obi is long. Obi is really really really really really long. And cryptic. My God, obis are cryptic. Did I mention obis are ubiquitous? Man, you browse the webdip forum and those obis are simply everywhere. But the worst comes last. Pull an obi about pulling an obi and the least you should worry about is summoning Raptor Jesus."

Well, then you'll start seeing these "alternative" style parents doing midwives at home. There is no requirement that children be born in a hospital.

"And it's pretty clear how bad bullying can get, and the effects it has on kids affected. There's legitimate, real chance of problems here."

there is a legit real chance of bullying no matter what way you raise your kids.

Other kids are going to be mean, how the parents of those kids react is probably a bigger factor - like if my kid was being bullied for being a communist child, and the parents of the kids doing the bullying encouraged it, then you would expect it to get worse.

you can't just say 'there is a real chance of harm' without proving that this is a significantly greater chance of harm than the average. If that is not the case then you're basically not saying anything.

"perfectly fine in laboratory experimentations with plants and bacteria. It's a whole different story when you're potentially ruining the one life these people have. Why do the parents have the right to screw their kids' social development in the name of some ideological agenda?"

because children are basically treated as their parent's property. Every parent gets this right by the mere fact of being able to reproduce, it is the natural order of things.

Perhaps I'm putting words in this couple's mouth, but I think the key thing here is that the parents aren't trying to keep the kid's sex secret from himself. They're not trying to make this child unsure of what their own sex is. That would be absurd, obviously this child will see what equipment is between their legs at some point. It seems to me that their goal is to prevent their child internalizing other people's expectations based on sex. This child will probably identify as a boy or a girl, but I think the goal is to make it so that identifying as a boy doesn't necessarily carry along with it expectations of aggression, athleticism, toughness, and a preference for certain kinds of clothes or toys, for example.

Krellin. Essentially you've conceded the point and swiftly changed the subject (in fact, you changed the subject, then conceded my point, but I'm not picky). You're actually *regressing* in your argument - that discrimination based on gender roles happens...*was a premise this discussion is based on*, and that is basically all you're saying now. Well done, Krellin! You've correctly identified the behaviour the morality of which we're debating. Truly a gratuitous display of your propensity for being erudite.

(You should probably look up is=ought.)

At this point, your drivel is barely worth a reply, and I had thought you a troll and intended not to. But Obiwan apparently agrees with you, which is actually really disappointing! Obiwan, you obviously like to think, so maybe you can defend your position better, or perhaps even change it slightly, so the rest of this post is directed respectfully at you.

A few things to note, in case you missed them in my previous postings or Krellin tries to criticise yet another view I explicitly don't hold because he has trouble reading - I do in fact think the idea of raising a genderless child is dumb. What I'm talking about is whether or not insulting or even attacking people because they violate gender norms is wrong.

In Reality, things like gender-related or sexuality-related hate crimes occur. How could this *possibly* mean debating about them is pointless?! Surely it makes it the *exact opposite* - extremely important! Is this description of events accurate? What should we do about this? Questions like this lead to action; in a similar vein, gay teenagers are kicked out of their homes by fundamentalist parents. Was coming out ill-advised? Certainly! But no-one's dumb enough to debate that. What we're debating is what should be done about it, and now, what *is* being done about it, is the setup of shelters for homeless gay teens, as well as increased understanding from psychologists and other people who can help. This happened, obviously, because some people thought that a thing that is true was morally wrong, and so we can see how philosophical debate of issues can be helpful. Eventually, people will stop acting like being gay is wrong. And so, hopefully, if enough people decide that violation of gender norms is actually absolutely fine, something will be done about it (or even better, nothing!)

Addendum: Krellin's analogy doesn't work. More analogous to gay camps would be if the parents were sending their child off to a facility that tried to convince them that they were in fact the opposite gender.

OK then. Damian, you claim to be post-modern, but your argument hinges on the purely modern mind-body division. You propose that a person can be "mentally male" and"physically female" as though mental and physical identity are totally unrelated. But any good post-modern would know that you can't treat the mind as an abstraction. Some aspects of gender identity are socially determined, some are individually determined, but it's pretty obvious that gender is substantially rooted in our actual body.

Damian has stated repeatedly that he is not in fact post-modern.

Gah! Pastor. READ. I hate post-modernism. I hate modernism. They are both extremes, we need a happy medium.

And no I didn't propose that I was listing through the theories. The final one and my personal favorite was the idea that a person is physically male or female, and mentally a variety of traits that we happen to ascribe to either males or females.

Thanks Syn =), I appreciate it. Figure I'll throw a quick apology for Pastoralan as well. Sorry for snapping a little. I just kept repeating myself ad-tedium on that one point.

Damian, I'm having trouble with your analysis of the male and female, dividing it into the physical and mental. So what then is a homosexual then, physically one sex and mentally the other? I just don't see how it fits, because my suitmate is gay, but you would never know if he didn't tell you, because he plays videogames, soccer, and volleyball with the rest of us.

People shouldnt be allowed to have kids. This thread case in point.

@fiedler, yes, i think that's a given, barely worth debating.

people are more toxic to the environment than radioactivity (though radiation was released by people...)

Attraction is not actually related to the rest of the gender traits. Thus it can be completely independent. (At least that's the argument that gets used for that break down of mental and physical genders.)

A homosexual can be physically one sex and mentally the same sex, it just means he or she is attracted to the same sex. (We don't assign the trait of being attracted to the same sex as being either a male or female quality.)

Honestly this is why I prefer the third definition. Everyone is mentally gendered, you have traits they might be male, they might be female, you might be gay, you might be straight.

You are you, and trying to define you mentally with genders isn't very effective.

I read too many retarded posts before I decided to post.

I am a pansexual. A lot of people are persisting that "there are differences in gender". No shit Sherlock, that be basic biology and is sad to be in this post.

The issue with gender is not biological differences but identity. The parents don't want their child to 'identify' with gender. As someone who does not see gender as anything other than... gender I agree. The identity leads to absurd inhibitions and resentments that leads to biases.

On the issue of the parents. They are fucking retarded. They obviously want the kids to hate them when they are older, or to prevent it will keep them isolated from the real world long enough that the children can only love their parents and fear what is out there.

wtf is the point of denying your child's genitalia? Why would teaching them that they have a penis/vagina/other be a bad thing? Ideology behind concepts should be taught, practicing what you think so the children are exposed to it an learn it is a good teaching tool. **fingers in ears, shouting LALALALALA** doesn't teach anyone anything.

This form of censorship, gender censorship, is as disgusting as any. Instead of analyzing knowledge and growing from it, they feel it is best to suppress it.