What a birth announcement, eh?
“We’ve decided not to share Storm’s sex for now–a tribute to freedom and choice in place of limitation, a stand up to what the world could become in Storm’s lifetime (a more progressive place? …),”
So argues Storm’s mother, Kathy Witterick. What a gal. She belives she’s providing her two sons and one, um, it, an opportunity.
There’s nothing ambiguous about the baby’s genitals. But as Stocker puts it: “If you really want to get to know someone, you don’t ask what’s between their legs.” So only the parents, their two other children (both boys), a close friend, and the two midwives who helped deliver the now 4-month-old baby know its gender. Even the grandparents have been left in the dark.
Fortunately, I can tell if a person is male or female sans asking “what’s between the legs,” but people don’t have that luxury with Wittrick’s two older boys, aged 5 and 2:
The couple’s other two children, Jazz and Kio, haven’t escaped their parents’ unconventional approach to parenting. Though they’re only 5 and 2, they’re allowed to pick out their own clothes in the boys and girls sections of stores and decide whether to cut their hair or let it grow.
[…]
Because Jazz and Kio wear pink and have long hair, they’re frequently assumed to be girls, according to Stocker. He said he and Witterick don’t correct people–they leave it to the kids to do it if they want to.
But Stocker and Witterick’s choices haven’t always made life easy for their kids. Though Jazz likes dressing as a girl, he doesn’t seem to want to be mistaken for one. He recently asked his mother to let the leaders of a nature center know that he’s a boy. And he chose not to attend a conventional school because of the questions about his gender. Asked whether that upsets him, Jazz nodded.
No, the boys haven’t escaped the parents’ damaging attitudes. And the boys–not the parents–will be the ones to suffer. In the eyes of the lefty parents, the suffering the boys have endured isn’t their fault–even though they could put a stop to it–but of society at large. But apparently the gender-less experiments suffering of the older two weren’t enough:
Stocker and Witterick say the decision gives Storm the freedom to choose who he or she wants to be. “What we noticed is that parents make so many choices for their children. It’s obnoxious,” adds Stocker, a teacher at an alternative school.
They say that kids receive messages from society that encourage them to fit into existing boxes, including with regard to gender. “We thought that if we delayed sharing that information, in this case hopefully, we might knock off a couple million of those messages by the time that Storm decides Storm would like to share,” says Witterick.
“In fact, in not telling the gender of my precious baby, I am saying to the world, ‘Please can you just let Storm discover for him/herself what s (he) wants to be?!.” she wrote in an email.
This poor kid. Gender is not a construct, despite what millions of über-liberals would have us believe. The parents aren’t allowing their kids choices, they’re imposing their notions of gender(lessness) on their children. And that isn’t a choice. From Salon:
The couple’s 5-year-old son, Jazz, “keeps his hair long, preferring to wear it in three braids,” his favorite color is pink and “he loves to paint his fingernails and wears a sparkly pink stud in one ear.” What’s more, the reporter describes a booklet Jazz wrote titled, “Gender Explorer.” Inside, it reads: “Help girls do boy things. Help boys do girl things. Let your kid be whoever they are!”
Besides the bad grammar, “gender explorer” isn’t innate behavior. It’s taught. And what kind of lesson is that?
UPDATE: Jazz Shaw at Hot Air takes exception with the name Jazz being used so freely. Visit to read the comment thread.
UPDATE: linked as a “Recommended Read” by Pundette. Thanks!
Filed under: Common sense, Culture, Liberal angst, Parenting | 12 Comments »
