Well, my first response is "a baby." But, I realize that's not what people are asking. They want to know if it's a girl or a boy. If it will play football, or be a cheerleader. If it will wear blue or pink. If it will be distant and manly in 15 years, or if it will be overly emotional and slutty.
I guess my main problem with this question is that I have no idea what my child will be like. And I don't think knowing the gender helps determine any of those things, or really anything at all. My child will wear any color they want. My child will participate in whatever extra curricular activities they want(resource permitting . My child will read whatever books they want, and when they do, I hope they'll think critically about the gender roles being implied.
The whole blue-and-pink phenomenon may have a few different roots. Some places cite it as a reaction to queer men being more open in the late 19th or early 20th century. We were scared, and we didn't want our children to grow up wrong, so we taught boys to be masculine and girls to be feminine. Other sources say colors were mainly undecided until WW2, when boys started dressing like their fathers and girls dressed like their mothers. Either way, at least until 1884 when our future president was pictured wearing this, social convention was that children wore gender-neutral clothes (frilly white dresses) until they were 6 or 7. And I don't see anything wrong with that. Why do we feel the need to place expectations on our children about behavior that is so far removed from their current place in life?
Another reason for gender-specific clothing that Jason mentioned to me was so people know. So when a stranger approaches you to tell you haw adorable your child is, they can feel comfortable picking a pronoun. When they see a pink bow on your head, they can say, "She's so adorable" and when they see the little blue overalls, they can say, "He's so handsome." And they can feel comfortable in not offending the parents. But I'm not offended, and it's never been my job to make you comfortable. In fact, I kind of like it better if I don't. I don't think there's anything wrong with being a boy or a girl. I don't think there's a reason to be offended if one is mistaken for the other, particularly at an age when the only difference is the shape of their genitals. I don't think my child's genitals need to rule their life. Certainly not when they don't do anything. Am I so wrong in thinking this?
So these are the thoughts that have been going through my head for the last month as I've slowly, and then all at once, announce the pregnancy. Because it's the first thing people ask (mostly). Even when we told the girls, Sarra's first question was, "Do you know if it's a boy or a girl?" which was then followed with, "I think it should be a boy, cause there are already too many girls in this family. We need another boy." How did these ideas get in their heads so early? How have we so failed to shield them from it, or give them the tools to think past it. In time, I suppose we will. And it starts, I hope with this:
We're not going to find out the gender of our baby (intentionally). We don't need to have an all-blue, masculine career-oriented wardrobe if it's a boy, and an all-pink, feminine, princess and fashion-oriented wardrobe if it's a girl. We also don't need an all-yellow wardrobe so as to be "gender-neutral" (seriously, most yellow is at worst ugly and at best lame). My favorite color is blue, and Jason's is purple. People wear clothes for lots of reasons. And this is what our child will do. So we're not going to ask about the gender, because to us, it doesn't matter.
We're having a geek, and that's all we need to know!
(Questions, comments, and discussion highly encouraged. This is not "the way it is," just my thoughts, and how they led me to a decision.)
(For those of you who are now dirtraught about what clothes to buy--geek-oriented baby clothes also highly encouraged. Star Trek and TARDIS onesies are *totally* gender-neutral)
So these are the thoughts that have been going through my head for the last month as I've slowly, and then all at once, announce the pregnancy. Because it's the first thing people ask (mostly). Even when we told the girls, Sarra's first question was, "Do you know if it's a boy or a girl?" which was then followed with, "I think it should be a boy, cause there are already too many girls in this family. We need another boy." How did these ideas get in their heads so early? How have we so failed to shield them from it, or give them the tools to think past it. In time, I suppose we will. And it starts, I hope with this:
We're not going to find out the gender of our baby (intentionally). We don't need to have an all-blue, masculine career-oriented wardrobe if it's a boy, and an all-pink, feminine, princess and fashion-oriented wardrobe if it's a girl. We also don't need an all-yellow wardrobe so as to be "gender-neutral" (seriously, most yellow is at worst ugly and at best lame). My favorite color is blue, and Jason's is purple. People wear clothes for lots of reasons. And this is what our child will do. So we're not going to ask about the gender, because to us, it doesn't matter.
We're having a geek, and that's all we need to know!
(Questions, comments, and discussion highly encouraged. This is not "the way it is," just my thoughts, and how they led me to a decision.)
(For those of you who are now dirtraught about what clothes to buy--geek-oriented baby clothes also highly encouraged. Star Trek and TARDIS onesies are *totally* gender-neutral)
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