Sometimes I Feel Like a Genderless Child

Only in San Francisco Eugene Park Slope Toronto:

“So it’s a boy, right?” a neighbour calls out as Kathy Witterick walks by, her four month old baby, Storm, strapped to her chest in a carrier…

The neighbours know Witterick and her husband, David Stocker, are raising a genderless baby. But they don’t pretend to understand it.

While there’s nothing ambiguous about Storm’s genitalia, they aren’t telling anyone whether their third child is a boy or a girl.

The only people who know are Storm’s brothers, Jazz, 5, and Kio, 2, a close family friend and the two midwives who helped deliver the baby in a birthing pool at their Toronto home on New Year’s Day.

Also in the dark: Storm’s grandparents.

Golly, where to begin?

Well, besides Storm. And Jazz. And Kio. And “birthing pool”. And “unschooling”. And “Storm was named after whipped winds and dark rain clouds, because they are beautiful and transformative.” And “If (people) want to peek, that’s their journey.”

And, for that matter, the inspiration:

It began as a offhand remark. “Hey, what if we just didn’t tell?” And then Stocker found a book in his school library called X: A Fabulous Child’s Story by Lois Gould. The book, published in 1978, is about raising not a boy or a girl, but X. There’s a happy ending here. Little X — who loved to play football and weave baskets — faces the taunting head on, proving that X is the most well-adjusted child ever examined by “an impartial team of Xperts.”

“It became so compelling it was almost like, How could we not?” says Witterick.

As you might guess, X is a work of utopian fantasy, a genre not known for its fidelity to human nature.

We don’t have any issues with the underlying sentiments. We’re happy that Kathy & David are sparing Drizzle Cloudburst Downpour Monsoon Squall Tempest Storm from the Pink & Blue Tyranny.

But we just pray that Storm survives the self-aggrandizing experiment his or her parents are playing with his or her life.

Parents keep child’s gender secret [parentcentral.ca, via Yahoo]
8 Comments

Facepalm.

Toronto is home to some half brain dead dipshits as any “sort of” world class city, but I guess it’s my turn to look away in dismay.

Eventually it is going to figure whether or not it likes boys or girls or guns or dolls or sport or dance. Those are instincts hardwired into our brains.

Poor Kio. He’s the only one without a sweet American Gladiators name.

Why does this make me think of strippers?

@ManchuCandidate: I still get a kick out of “Action Figures”. It’s all in the marketing.

@nojo:
Knowing is half the battle… or so I’ve been told.

I have friends who are doing this, friends who have each hit from both sides of the plate at times. My view is that this isn’t a decision that the parents should make. The kid will know soon enough what he/she likes.

@nojo: I can’t attest to the veracity of this story, but supposedly rock icon Lemmy was shown the action figure prototype of himself, soon to be in production. He complained that it was equipped with no genitalia of any sort whatsoever. The maker replied that this was the normal procedure.

Lemmy said, “Well it’s not much of an action figure, then is it?”

Add a Comment
Please log in to post a comment