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I'm that guy, who, when my daughter was born, answered the inevitable spate of "What is it?!" with "Alive and healthy!" And then they'd brush that off as unimportant, and say, "But what is it?" And I'd say, "Blond," And they'd say "Is it a boy or a girl?!" And I'd say, "It's a baby, and I'm happy for it either way."
So, yeah, there is a suffocatingly huge amount of societal pressure, from birth, to conform to a binary. I'm trying to see what things she likes without pressuring her too much, but so far her main interests involve terrorizing the cats and being read to, so I'm not sure yet whether any real preference is manifesting itself.
Oh, heck, I know I crushed on girls when I was four, too. The interest wasn't sexual until puberty, but they were very real crushes.
I also knew I had a whole host of other proclivities that, come puberty, proved to be sexual in nature, back when I was four, as well. I've always had my sexuality, and no, those other proclivities... they most definitely were not taught to me by family or media choices.
I am quite convinced that these sort of things are most definitely nature.
(ETA: I was a good kid in my teen years, so an interest in girls at four isn't necessarily asking for trouble in your teens, Tacticslion.)
Heh: thank you! Always nice for encouragement!
Actually, Inwas very much like yourself, thinking back on it. Very interesting... hmmm...
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All for not pushing gender roles, actually we GenX folks are pretty good at that as parents (results may vary, but we seem to try.) Likely this is an offshoot of a more conscious and aware generation of parents now doing the parent thing. I actually think this gives hope for the future of gender "politics" (don't like that term per say) and changing how gender identity is handled. Interested to see how one of my best friends deals with those issues as his son Alric grows up (he is only like 4 months now, so we have a while).
Don't worry Tac, just instill respect along with a strong love of the ladies in your son and he will do just fine. And just wait till its Grandpa Tacticslion!
"Well, in my day we still had binary gender, non-flying cars, and Donald Trump. You whipper snappers have it easy now, what with your four (maybe more?) genders, magnetic hover cars, and ethical robot politicians!"
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All for not pushing gender roles, actually we GenX folks are pretty good at that as parents (results may vary, but we seem to try.)
By Baby-boomer standards I'm sure. But then again they were better at it compared to their previous generation by virtue of encouraging you to play sports rather than disowning you if you didn't for example :). so I'm sure your children will consider you politically incorrect cavemen for using gendered pronouns or segregated bathrooms or whatever else the next generation decides to do away with...
On the other hand we're much worse at it than some of the blank slate ideas in the 60s and 70s. So these ideas seem to cycle in and out a little bit, or get adopted by some people and ignored by the rest of society and boys used to wear dresses up until a certain point...
Maybe in the future stem cell research will hit the point where they can regrow spines, so football will ditch the pads, ramp up the contact, an maybe add chainsaws...
I actually think this gives hope for the future of gender "politics" (don't like that term per say) and changing how gender identity is handled.
I think you'd be far better off trying to explain to kids that a particular individual was really a boy or really a girl despite the plumbing rather than trying to convince them that there's no such thing as boys and girls. Kids aren't stupid. They're going to notice the link between the plumbing and the behavior on their own.
Don't worry Tac, just instill respect along with a strong love of the ladies in your son and he will do just fine. And just wait till its Grandpa Tacticslion!
See, that's the sort of tactic you can't take without buying into the gender role thing in the first place.
"Just respect Donna the same way you do dillian
"ok dad...
*comes home with a note*
"...so you push Dillian into the mud often do you?
"Well, in my day we still had binary gender, non-flying cars, and Donald Trump. You whipper snappers have it easy now, what with your four (maybe more?) genders, magnetic hover cars, and ethical robot politicians!"
Don't blame me I voted for 1010101010111001010101
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"Well, in my day we still had binary gender, non-flying cars, and Donald Trump. You whipper snappers have it easy now, what with your four (maybe more?) genders, magnetic hover cars, and ethical robot politicians!"Don't blame me I voted for 1010101010111001010101
Do you want Skynet? Because this is how we get Skynet!
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I for one welcome our a-moral computer overlords...
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Always wanted pit traps on the field in football, would be very interest then. (I do still love football, but adventurer football, even better!)
Ok,that is a fair point bout being respectful BNW, though there has to be a way that works in an overarching manner, just not sure what or how to phrase that. And no lil' Timmy pushing both Donna and Dillan into the mud is equally bad. (also why I am not, and likely will never be, a parent) Indeed kids are not dumb, I remember how I was as a kid (being a pretty intelligent person, as a kid I was an insufferable know it all), ack, no!
1010101010111001010101 has a very progressive economics program! Or is it that it is an economic program, I always forget which it is.
A civil and hilarious thread?! ::looks around all paranoid like::
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All for not pushing gender roles, actually we GenX folks are pretty good at that as parents (results may vary, but we seem to try.)By Baby-boomer standards I'm sure. But then again they were better at it compared to their previous generation by virtue of encouraging you to play sports rather than disowning you if you didn't for example :). so I'm sure your children will consider you politically incorrect cavemen for using gendered pronouns or segregated bathrooms or whatever else the next generation decides to do away with...
On the other hand we're much worse at it than some of the blank slate ideas in the 60s and 70s. So these ideas seem to cycle in and out a little bit, or get adopted by some people and ignored by the rest of society and boys used to wear dresses up until a certain point...
Maybe in the future stem cell research will hit the point where they can regrow spines, so football will ditch the pads, ramp up the contact, an maybe add chainsaws...
I actually think this gives hope for the future of gender "politics" (don't like that term per say) and changing how gender identity is handled.I think you'd be far better off trying to explain to kids that a particular individual was really a boy or really a girl despite the plumbing rather than trying to convince them that there's no such thing as boys and girls. Kids aren't stupid. They're going to notice the link between the plumbing and the behavior on their own.
Don't worry Tac, just instill respect along with a strong love of the ladies in your son and he will do just fine. And just wait till its Grandpa Tacticslion!See, that's the sort of tactic you can't take without buying into the gender role thing in the first place.
"Just respect Donna the same way you do dillian
"ok dad...
*comes home with a note*
"...so you push Dillian into the mud often do you?...
i wont be happy until ufc is to the death, and there are no pads/protection in football.
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Always wanted pit traps on the field in football, would be very interest then. (I do still love football, but adventurer football, even better!)
Ok,that is a fair point bout being respectful BNW, though there has to be a way that works in an overarching manner, just not sure what or how to phrase that. And no lil' Timmy pushing both Donna and Dillan into the mud is equally bad.
I don't think its a matter of phrasing it. I think its a matter of trying to have three things together when more than two is pretty much a contradiction.
If you have to treat everyone the same regardless of gender AND you have to respect girls then what you're functionally saying is treat everyone like a girl. Don't rough, don't tumble, don't hit, don't tackle, don't scream, don't compete.
In short, don't be a boy.
Everyone has a right to be who they are .. unless you want to be a boy. Not that the more lord of the flies esque tendencies don't need reigning in or a constructive outlet, but seeing what boys are as the product of socialization and something that can and should be fixed through socialization in the name of equality is too self contradictory for people not to notice.
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I'm that guy, who, when my daughter was born, answered the inevitable spate of "What is it?!" with "Alive and healthy!" And then they'd brush that off as unimportant, and say, "But what is it?" And I'd say, "Blond," And they'd say "Is it a boy or a girl?!" And I'd say, "It's a baby, and I'm happy for it either way."
So, yeah, there is a suffocatingly huge amount of societal pressure, from birth, to conform to a binary. I'm trying to see what things she likes without pressuring her too much, but so far her main interests involve terrorizing the cats and being read to, so I'm not sure yet whether any real preference is manifesting itself.
Curiosity about the sex of a baby is really natural and has little to do with a societal pressure to conform to a binary gender. Males and females have distinctly different body types, for starters, and that's true from the first moment. Sexuallity, gender and their associated identity types don't come into play until much much later.
If I had a baby I would be really curious. Like it or not, babies come in two types, and I'd want to know which of them mine is. That doesn't mean I would rise the child a certain way or would in anyway pressurise him/her into any type of behavior... but pretending to not care if the newborn is male or female seems pointless to me.
I know that, since when I grew up my parents were poor, I inherited all my baby cloths and toys from my female cousin. My parents didn't care, I didn't (clearly) and still don't. I certainly don't think wearing pink pijamas had any effect in my gender or sexual identity. Such things can be overstated.
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Come headless body of Spiro Agnu!
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pretending to not care if the newborn is male or female seems pointless to me.
I wasn't pretending. I would have been totally fine with it either way.
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Of course, if you're a boy, you've got no right not to be hit, not to be tackled, etc.
As it stand now boys have no inherent right to those, but they can be earned. (ironically usually by hitting someone else well enough). You can only roughhouse with your friends works much better than no roughhousing.
What if Donna has no problem with a little rough and tumble and is as likely to push Timmy into the mud as vice versa
Honorary boy seems more likely to stick than doing away with the roles entirely. No closed fist no matter what no weapons and you still have to let them push you in the mud puddle first.
while Dillan would rather read than fight, but just gets told to toughen up and fight back?
Not that I'm remembering my childhood or anything. :)
Its the most practical piece of advice someones going to get because its the only thing remotely in an individuals control. I wish my folks had told me to go ahead and do it, just do the detention you won't get punished at home, WAY sooner. Or just pointed me to read enders game...
I'll grant that there are gender tendencies, even strong ones, but they're far from 100%. There's definitely overlap.
There definitely are. I think you can push people to accept the exceptions and work with them, I don't think you can push people not to notice the obvious.
pretending to not care if the newborn is male or female seems pointless to me.I wasn't pretending. I would have been totally fine with it either way.
Well sure, but unless you're deliberately trying to alienate those friends, then jerking them around when they ask a common question seems pretty pointless. Even the preening virtue signaling is being wasted on people who clearly don't share those virtues.
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Well sure, but unless you're deliberately trying to alienate those friends, then jerking them around when they ask a common question seems pretty pointless. Even the preening virtue signaling is being wasted on people who clearly don't share those virtues.
Friends? My friends already knew anyway. These were sanctimonious acquaintances and near-strangers, for whom the baby's health was of absolutely no concern compared to its gender. I found that slightly annoying. I probably should not have?
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"What is it?!"It's it.
That looks surprisingly good. I don't even like ice cream and I want one!
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"What Is, Is."
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Well sure, but unless you're deliberately trying to alienate those friends, then jerking them around when they ask a common question seems pretty pointless. Even the preening virtue signaling is being wasted on people who clearly don't share those virtues.These were sanctimonious acquaintances and near-strangers, for whom the baby's health was of absolutely no concern compared to its gender. I found that slightly annoying. I probably should not have?
What makes you think they didn't care about the baby's health? Maybe they just thought it would be intrusive to ask if it had any diseases or deformities that weren't plainly obvious.
Stanger: "So, is your baby healthy?"
You: "Yeah, quite healthy, thank you."
Stranger: "No diseases or infections to speak of?"
You: "N-n-no... Why do you ask?"
Stranger: "Any genetic abnormalities?"
You: "What are you getting at? Who are you?"
Stranger: *toothy vampire smile*
If there's any karma in the world, the next time you inquire about a baby's health instead of its sex, you'll be accused of ableism for suggesting that the most important thing to know about a person is how healthy they are.
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Please recall: just because your experiences suggest different reasons from others for the purpose of asking about <aspect of child> (and its importance), there are other things that will come off as off-putting or needlessly aggressive (passive or otherwise).
Kirth's replies may well have irritated me to no end, and come off as sanctimonious, had I been one of those strangers - among many parents, it can be important to have a clearly defined gender, and they expect others to realize it, so when you can't, you need to screw up the courage to ask (and presence of mind to do so nicely), and a reply like that can seem taunting... but then again, it might have been perfectly reasonable in-context or even self-explanatory. It heavily depends on the culture you find yourself in what is a good or appropriate question and/or response. Because different people place different importance on different concepts and words.
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Well sure, but unless you're deliberately trying to alienate those friends, then jerking them around when they ask a common question seems pretty pointless. Even the preening virtue signaling is being wasted on people who clearly don't share those virtues.These were sanctimonious acquaintances and near-strangers, for whom the baby's health was of absolutely no concern compared to its gender. I found that slightly annoying. I probably should not have?What makes you think they didn't care about the baby's health? Maybe they just thought it would be intrusive to ask if it had any diseases or deformities that weren't plainly obvious.
Stanger: "So, is your baby healthy?"
You: "Yeah, quite healthy, thank you."
Stranger: "No diseases or infections to speak of?"
You: "N-n-no... Why do you ask?"
Stranger: "Any genetic abnormalities?"
You: "What are you getting at? Who are you?"
Stranger: *toothy vampire smile*
rotfllllllll
To clarify the above: I don't really think Kirth would be aggressively rude. But from a lack of experience at the time, others generally only have thrne
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Babies would be like a Capri-Sun for a vampire?
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But from a lack of experience at the time, others generally only have thrne
Can someone check on Tacticslion? He seems to have collapsed on his keyboard mid-post.
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But from a lack of experience at the time, others generally only have thrneCan someone check on Tacticslion? He seems to have collapsed on his keyboard mid-post.
Blarg! Not a fan of being tired, hungry, grumpy, ADD, and on the phone. Sorry.
(An alarm went off and I had to go drive to the Doctorow office. Must have accidentally hit "submit". Shot version: Kirth is a pretty cool dude, but depending on social cues and any given person's expectations of them, either in real life or online, things can come across as much more sanctimonious or inert than intended; even innocent or honest things can do so. For the record, I, like Kirth, had no particularly "aimed" desire toward a child's gender. It was annoying to some, as they felt like I was taunting or being dismissive instead of genuinely being generically happy about <child> - and in no small part that is just cultural steepage/personalEdit: you know what? I'm just... gonna go get something to eat and take a nap.
E2: Autocorrect!
Babies would be like a Capri-Sun for a vampire?
So, wait: does that mean it causes them to burst into flames, or to sparkle?
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Neither; these are pre-Hollywood vampires.
Oh, wait, so they're all ethereal and rotted and come to mindlessly drain your life energy away at night, moaning angrily at you? Cool. Wait, what works on those one again? Stupid variant vamps: never having a single comprehensible set of weaknesses...
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Bram Stoker was pre-hollywood, right?
And, I'm not napping yet; this counts 'cause I'm eating.
... But not like a vampire. No, really!
... Dang it, I stopped at Wendy's! Stop staaaarrrriiiinnnng...
I gotta say, though, the raw, unbridled power of sugars, carbs, and caffeine (and, uh, other stuff, I guess) flowing into my body is pretty invigorating. It's a nice rush. I could see how vampires might get addicted to this feeling. I've never felt so alliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiivvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvveeeeee~!
... okay, I'll go lay down, now.
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Bram Stoker was pre-hollywood, right?
Stoker was pre-hollywood, but his vampires neither sparkled nor burst into flame when exposed to sunlight--Dracula just wasn't as strong and lost the ability to shapeshift while in sunlight (but got his powers back at night).
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It's-It?"What is it?!"It's it.
This "it" is marvelous. I must have it.
Originally I was quoting "Epic" by Faith No More, which I once used as a riddle in a campaign when I had run out of ideas.
"It's it. What is it?"