" You're not normal. Deal with it, and stop bothering the rest of us."

This is coming from Mapleleaf.

"Uhhhhh, because gender is obviously dichotomous."

When did you become a parrot of the religious right.

Mapleleaf's politics is a weird blend of fascist and liberal. I don't get it. How does his voting leftwing in Canada correlate to his reactionary views on most every social issue you can think of. You'd think he was a Reform conservative. Maybe the only reason he isn't is because they tend to be pro-American, whereas Mapleleaf loves Osama bin Laden.

"You WISH that gender was a social construct. That way, you, your banana gobbling buddies, your chimpanzee loving buddies, your high heel shoe fetish buddies, your psychedelic-drugs-in-the-turkey-baster-shoved-up-the-ass-buddies etc., would ALL be normal"

That's right. Mapleleaf is the Pat Robertson of webdip.

If gender's not a social construct then why are you bitching so much? The child will simply operate according to his or her biological instincts.

@ damian - Spare me, Daisy.

Your extensive "explanation" was merely LGBT propaganda.

You're inventing truths which are, in reality, wishful thinking.

Keep dreaming.

Hmm, I actually dig the Daisy nickname. I might keep that one. ;)

Actually you're desperately clinging to an old definition. Mental gender does exist, for the same reason that transexuals exist, gender identity disorder is a real medical condition. (Based on the out dated idea of male and female mental genders but w/e)

You're welcome to continue to hold your opinions.
However know that the medical community disagrees with you.

The medical community changes its mind so often that we must be cautious about nailing our colours to whatever flagpole it's deciding to use at a given time. They can be wrong, and indeed often are. To be fair to mapleleaf, he is using the definition of gender that is understood and used by the vast majority of the people.

No maple is insisting that there is no such thing as mental gender. Despite acknowledging it as a point of view. At a certain point we can't stock it up to ignorance and using a somewhat common definition, and instead as an outright refusal to accept the reality of the world around him.

"That's right. Mapleleaf is the Pat Robertson of webdip.

If gender's not a social construct then why are you bitching so much? The child will simply operate according to his or her biological instincts. "

Ding Ding Ding

the problem as I see it is their little experiment is going to fail and i hope the child isnt impacted too harshly. No matter how gender neutral the child is raised he is living in a society that is based on a gendered understanding of sex. Its not going to take long for the child to understand which biological sex it belongs to, and when it does every time s/he watches TV/goes shopping/attends school/reads a book he will be bombarded with the societal understanding of gender difference. The child will even be alone in its family with a sister brother mother father and ______ The kid will need a hell of alot of good parenting to avoid feeling completely alienated

just read on, seems like home schooled, and i doubt these kids will watch TV, and can pick what they will wear, who knows it might work

then again, moving on, you have a 5 year old kid writing under the pseudonym "Gender Explorer" and we are supposed to believe they are choosing for themselves?

My two cents: the kids are going to struggle to fit in no matter what the parents do - all kids do. And no parents are perfect. And, while I don't abide by strict definitions of gender roles, and most parents I see are too severe with their kids - trying to inhibit them every time they do something "inappropriate" for their gender... on the other hand, putting the kids in a position where they are at the front lines of some sort of political statement is also not fair. But hey, nothing is fair... at least not from the perspective of a kid. And I think it says more about us than it does about that family that this made such huge news.

At age five kids are little ducklings following as much as they can of the parents. It is no different than any other kid - it simply sticks out more in an unusual case like this. Is this effectively any different than any very small subculture growing up surrounded by a dominant culture that doesn't (for the most part) understand it? At the least, the kid will grow up knowing exactly who his/her friends are. ...which is more than some can say.

Yeah. I'm beginning to suspect mapleleaf gets some weird kick out of trying to alienate and marginalize people. It's almost impossible to tell what he actually believes and what he's just saying to get his weird, majority privilege kicks. For the record, claiming that gender is not a social construct is just so beyond the pale in terms of real discussions of gender issues that there is simply no point in continuing this debate. It's like debating the gene centric vs. organism centric view of evolution with a young earth creationist. Every time you try to make a point actually salient to the point, you just get dragged back to an increasingly basic point, so that any real debate in the actually interesting or controversial parts of the issue becomes impossible.

Now to make a very serious point, I think there are obviously problems with this idea of a gender neutral upbringing, but then there are also problems with a non gender neutral one, and I'm not sure which is worse. But yeah, I think it could be interesting. Maybe this kid will grow up to want to do something really manly, like be a lumberjack. But then he'll also have other interests.
He'll be a lumberjack and he'll be ok.
He'll cut down trees, he'll eat his lunch
He'll like to press wildflowers.
He'll put on women's clothing...and hang around in bars?

Maple just hates them because they are young

proof, just see how maple treats these kids at the 1:53 mark, I know ive posted it before, but its the only way to truly understand Maple

http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/104261/follow-the-only-road-in-canada

Great. You post a video called "Follow the Only Road In Canada" and I can't watch the video in Canada. = P.

I'm a mac dweeb, not a PC dweeb.

It is also blocked in the UK

I applaud the parents for having the right intentions (and I'm only talking about the gender issue here), though society will make it difficult. I think some people think by not bringing up Storm in a certain traditional gender role, they are forcing him/her to be the 'wrong' gender or be a non-gender. I don't think that's the case; they specifically said they won't push Storm to be anything before he/she has matured enough to understand and express his/her gender identity (and I don't think it's a choice, it's just a matter of understanding and coming to terms with it). I, personally, had a pretty good sense of my gender identity at a very young age (well before puberty), and I suspect many others do as well. The brain (mental gender) is sexed in the womb, more recent studies are showing, due perhaps to hormone levels, and may match or not match the physical sex which is determined grossly by sex chromosomes. No matter what I was taught, I'm sure I would still have the same gender identity as I do now (altho I may have a harder time with uncompromising parents).

Some have suggested that transsexualism may be the result of a mismapping of body regions in the brain, due to the brain being sexed differently. Some transsexual people therefore naturally have a map of the sex opposite of their physical sex, and that is why they feel a disconnect with their physical body. (It's not about not accepting what you were born with..) “Ramachandran (2008) found that while nearly two thirds of non-transsexual males who have a penis surgically removed experience the sensation of a phantom penis, only one third of MTF [male-to-female] transsexuals do so after sex reassignment surgery. Perhaps more remarkably, two-thirds of FTM [female to male] transsexuals reported the sensation of a phantom penis from childhood onwards, replete with phantom erections and other phenomena.”

Unfortunately, it seems maple has not had the opportunity to be transgender or experience 'gender dysphoria', or he/she might be more sympathetic. I did not choose to be who I am. And despite being seen by society and raised by my parents as male, I have always identified as female. If I had had parents more like Storm's, I perhaps could have felt much comfortable coming to terms with it and would not have wasted so much time living in the wrong gender (not to say my parents weren't good. I'd say they're much better than many of those horror stories you read about). And because my body did not match my gender (or my gender didn't match my body), I was teased as well in school, and became rather unwilling to be close to people because of what I thought they'd do to me if they knew about something that didn't even affect them. I'm only now trying to undo the damage all those years have done. However, all my life experiences so far have taught me that people are complex, and diverse, and that I shouldn't judge people when I don't know enough about them (like many are doing with the parents in the article).

lol.. strangely, the video is NOT blocked in Taiwan.

thats because taiwan isnt a country

:P

(i'm jk please dont send me anthrax)

and whoever said gender and sex are the same needs to stop ignoring dictionaries.

stop ignoring history, where perceptions of Gender traits are incredibly fluid

dictionaries are like little boxes which some guy put together to contain words.

but while we're relying on authorities, i guess we can ignore maple in favour of some real science.. that said, i think a lot of this science is very hard to do. I would probably criticise some of the results where they are based on self-reporting of 'phanthom limbs' i've seen some things about releiving pain in amputee's phanthom limbs by mirror therapy, that means the brain is plastic and can change to accommodate varying circumstances.

I think you need a good fMRI scanner on hundreds of people to get reliable data, and society at large isn't going to fund this kind of study.

On the other hand, while criticising the results I do see this as a societal problem rather than a scientific one. Zephyris, how you self-report feeling is something which a progressive society would find perfectly acceptable - i personally don't care which gender you choose to identify with.

Perhaps we need some really good science to back up the claim, but there are close-minded people who will not listen to even the best science, so on another scale i don't think doing science on the issue will resolve much. Instead may i suggest an education programme of some kind, can we force people like maple to undergo some kind of personality transforming educational brainwashing scheme? i think society as a whole will benefit.

We could just lobotomize him for his own safety and that of society art large.