NYT on "Gender-Creative" Children
By Nancy French
August 14, 2012 2:26 P.M.
http://www.nationalreview.com/home-front/313951/nyt-attempts-make-gender-creative-children-go-mainstream/nancy-frenchOne afternoon in Ithaca, N.Y., my kids were playing on the swing sets in the park when a little tike wearing a football jersey ran into my daughter's path. I lunged for the swing — I jerked the chain so abruptly that I feared whiplash — and shared a "wow, that was close" exchange with the kid's mom.
"How old is he?" I asked. The lady looked at me as she placed her kid on the swing and said with no trace of irony, "His name is Jill, and she's three."
As I tried to match the pronouns and antecedents, she explained that she belonged to a group of parents who rebelled against gender stereotypes, allowing their children to decide their genders after they'd been exposed to both options. I'd learned of this in a philosophy class at NYU. My professor argued that children are born with "sex" but taught "gender." The claim is that children unwittingly learn certain gender signifiers that dictate their behavior. Little boys don't naturally want to play with trucks, and little girls aren't naturally drawn to dolls, if unsullied by eager parents who try to indoctrinate their children with heterosexist ideas about "gender." According to my professor, gender roles cause people to live according to the very limited ideas of others. The ultimate goal, of course, is androgyny, where no differences between males and females exist.
