Raising a genderless baby: The Case of Storm Stocker Essay

Raising a family of triple children is no easy feat to begin with, and the Stocker family of Toronto, Ontario has made one decisiveness regarding their new baby that will hardly make it any easier. Mrs. Stocker gave accept to her third child on new years day of 2011, and resultant the proud new p bents e-mail to friends and families announcing the babys birth, was a quite a controversial state custodyt Weve decided non to sh ar r adenines sex for now a tribute to freedom and choice in place of limitation, a stand up to what the world could become in Storms lifetime (a more progressive place? ). (CTV 1) Mr. & deoxyadenosine monophosphate Mrs. Stocker had decided to raise their new baby boy or girl, with erupt the well-disposedly constructed pre-text of masculine or feminine gender traits, regardless of what the somatogenic sex of the baby was. It is important to point this baby is neither a hermaphrodite nor born as a transsexual, but is completely anatomically healthy or n ormal so to speak. The parents are simply memory the sex of the baby secrete as to deprive party, and in the futurity its peers, teachers, coaches etc. of influencing its formation of gender and self.This super controversial end is however, fulfilling Freuds nonion of re piteous gender from the realm of biology, thus overcoming biological essentialism, and moving it into society, which he believed was the dominant force influencing how gender develops. In the modern era, however, the ending to keep baby Storms sex a secrete was met with significant careen from American media, ABC news stating While child development experts hail the familys efforts to raise their child free of the constraints of gender stereotypes, they say the parents study embarked on a psychological try out that could be potentially disastrous. (ABC 1) date in Canada and internationally, especially in European countries such as Sweden and Finland where this is not unheard of, its been more readily acc epted.Finnish people often admit specific diction to speak about themselves and others in a very neutral way which includes gender neutrality This rhetoric is based on a kind of moral code it is highly valued to be seen and treated without sort outicularities, without bodies, as a person in your own right, without gender, without class, without ethnicity, without region (Lahelma 8) and in Sweden the government has actually updated the national Encyclopedia to account for the arise wind of parents raising their children genderless, adding the genderless pronoun hen to accompany the masculine han and feminine hon. And the trend isnt just limited to linguistics. Recently the World Economic gathering declared Sweden the most gender-neutral country in the world, and gender neutrality is changing Swedish culture in profound shipway. A childrens division store has dissolved its girls and boys sections (Tietal 36). Freud would, however, have to agree with ABC news resolving t hat the results could be potentially disastrous as he watched gender intringently conjugate to self-identity as well as sexual preference. It is safe to assume Dr. Freud would view this decision to shelter the child as a psychological experiment destined to end in failure, resulting in a man or women not properly assimilated into society and bound for a miserable existence.However, as Sandra Harding said What you see, what you find important, and how you understand the world depends on your standpoint and as more recent feminist research has uncovered Freuds beliefs in a binary set of man or woman is not necessarily true. libber Epistemology of society and science exposes how the commonly accept binary couple of male/female or masculine/feminine influences our initiation of familiarity and how we come to conclusions, and even in American media it is quite marked the male/female roles have began to blend or at least(prenominal)(prenominal) have come to have changed since Fr euds time The stereotypes of boys were that they were self-sufficient, non-empathic, tough and thoroughly at war, and Girls were trained to be empathic and caring and more nurturing, are all falling apart. You even see tough football players bellow nowadays (ABC 1). It would not necessarily be harmful for the baby to originate up in-between or with-out the masculine/feminine binary because it is socially constructed anyway and growing up with-out it, or perhaps better put, on the outside of it, simply creates a new paradigm for baby Storm.Because men have held such a dominant role influencing research and nurture it has skewed history and research to mans own advantage, resulting in a unidimensional view of gender and indicator almost ever at the womens expense (Luecke 138). As Kimmel said in our textbooks, the phenomenon of biasing knowledge is alship canal more pronounced when one group homogeneously controls semipolitical and ideological systems, which have up until ve ry recent times been controlled rigorously by males, giving them the conceptual power over gender, sexual orientation and almost every other field of research known to man. though in recent decades much progress has been made on this issue, there is still much bias on part of male reign research resisting the inclusion of minorities and feminist epistemology which needs to change in pose for better research methods and more accurate out comes, especially from a constructionists approach to gender.As Sharlene Hesse-Biber put it If present science is distorted by the predominance of male perspectives, would not science become more intention by the deliberate inclusion of views from women, minorities etc. The Social Constructionist Approach diverges from Freuds belief in masculine/feminine binaries in that it acknowledges the contextual greatness of gender and sexuality. The time, place, power and culture all play a part in defining what is considered masculine and what is feminine , concluding that gender and sexuality are not constants, but variables in a perpetual flux, resulting from the ebb and fuse of societal norms and what social groups are in power influencing those norms.Storms identity as he grows up will certainty be influenced by his interactions with media, society and his parents but that influence will be minimized because of his immunity to the power of gender and sex stereotypes, living in, presumably, blissful ambiguity. And in many ways this gives him a certain power over us, or at least a power to change or blur the gender norms as he grows up It is impossible to explain gender without adequately intellect power not because power is the consequence of gender difference. But rather because power is what produces those gender differences in the first place (Kimmel 116).The slip of paper of Storm Stocker, while highly controversial, cannot be declined the notion of fascinating and perhaps highly influential on this centuries gender and se xual norms thus society itself. This case as analyzed through intersectionality is perfect to highlight the many ways in which race, class, gender and sexuality all come to act as social forces on us as we develop in our condition environment (Kennedy & Hellen 36). As we watch Storm mature into any(prenominal) Storm aspires to be, Storm will be simultaneously turning derriere millennia of stereotypes, biases, roles and assumptions that have been entrenched in our global society. The potential for real social change stems from the point where other individuals who have been raised and socialized alike to storm, organize and create social movements to further awareness and arrangement of neo-gendered individuals (Madison & Shaw 435).In this way Storm and their contemporaries will show us how the binary concepts of man/women have been one of the most pervasive forces fix us within a certain realm of action and understanding dictated strictly by the reproductive organs we were born with. Who we beloved, how we love are all subject to change as Our identities are a fluid assemblage of the meanings and behaviors that we construct from values, images and prescriptions we find in the world slightly us (Kimmel 112).Works CitedBaby raised without gender sets off cut into CTV countersign . CTV News Top Stories Breaking News Top News Headlines. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Oct. 2012. .Baby Storm Raised Genderless, or Without a Gender, a Dangerous Experiment, Say Child Development Experts ABC News. ABCNews.com Breaking News, latest News & Top Video News ABC News. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Oct. 2012. .Biber, Sharlene Nagy. Handbook of feminist research theory and praxis. curtilage Oaks, Calif. SAGE Publications, 2007. Print.Harding, Sandra. Feminist Standpoints. Handbook of feminist research theory and praxis. Thousand Oaks, Calif. SAGE Publications, 2007. 46-64. Print.Kennedy, Natacha, and accentuate Hellen. Transgender children more than a theoretical challeng e. Graduate Journal of Social intuition 7 (2010) 25-42. Print.Kimmel, Michael S.. The gendered society. New York Oxford University Press,2000. Print.Lahelma, Elina. Female Paths To Adulthood In A kingdom Of Genderless Gender. Gender & Education 24.1 (2012) 1-13. Academic Search Complete. Web.Luecke, Julie. operative with Transgender Children and Their Classmates in Pre-Adolescence Just Be Supportive.Journal of LGBT Youth 8.2 (2011) 116-156. Print.Maddison, Sarah, and Frances Shaw. Feminist Perspectives on Social Movement Research. Handbook of feminist research theory and praxis. Thousand Oaks, Calif. SAGE Publications, 2007. 434-454. Print.Teitel, Emma. Neither He Nor She. Macleans 125.16 (2012) 36. Academic Search Complete. Web.