Okay, not the whole country, but the Swedes continue to kick the rest of the world’s ass in terms of making gender equality a central issue. On the extreme edge of a wholly worthwhile effort comes news of a young Swedish couple who have raised their child, “Pop”, gender-free, refusing to reveal the sex of the two-and-a-half-year-old. Pop is allowed to wear dresses or pants, play with whatever toys Pop chooses, and is not referred to by either masculine or feminine pronouns. As AOL reports:
Back in March, the parents gave an interview to the
Svenska Dagbladet newspaper, saying they decided not to reveal their child’s sex because they believe gender is a social construction.
“We want Pop to grow up more freely and avoid being forced into a specific gender mold from the outset,” said the child’s mother, “Nora.” (The paper used fake names for the entire family to protect their privacy.)
“It’s cruel to bring a child into the world with a blue or pink stamp on their forehead,” the mother said.
Predictably, a lot of people think this is a terrible idea and potentially long-term damaging to the child. I’m not so sure. First off, Pop’s well-meaning parents say that Pop’s sex will be revealed when Pop decides that it is time, and seem to accept that this will likely be at school-age when social pressures dictate. They’re not enforcing a gender-free lifestyle on a kid going through puberty.
Secondly, they are not forcing their child to select “gender-inappropriate” clothing or toys, but apparently offering their child a range of options. In my mind, this is not really comparable to the situation of
David Reimer, the boy whose botched circumcision led doctors to fully amputate his penis and instruct his parents to raise him as a girl, with devastating consequences (David’s tragic, fascinating story was documented in the book,
As Nature Made Him). In fact, I think Pop’s parents’ approach seems logical in genderless toddlerhood, and only sounds extreme in the face of overriding social mores that enforce gender-based play and dress from infancy.
From a very early age, even children of parents with the best of intentions are subjected to socially-accepted gender programming, encouraged to identify with male or female characters and the attendent norms prescribed to identifiable sex. Commenters on the
original article were mixed, saying:
“The kid is too young to decide anything on its own. Someone please rescue the kid from its crazy parents,” wrote one poster on The Local’s comment boards.
But others thought the parents were doing the right thing.
“They’re actually thinking about how they’re raising their child rather than just going along with what society expects, which, in my opinion, is much better than the majority of people who raise their kids to fit their own vision of what they think their kids should be,” another poster wrote.
Personally, I applaud these parents and their own resistance to societal pressure. I think they’ve made a brave choice, given the shock and criticism they could exect to encounter. Although we don’t have a great deal of information as to how they manage the day-to-day burdens of explaining their decision to others, they seem pragmatic in their approach and I don’t see their “ideological point” doing any harm to Pop, who is free to be Pop, however Pop defines it.
June 30, 2009 at 3:38 pm
I’m sure that little Pop will be just fine. What’s infinitely worse is when parents willfully pull the wool over their own eyes because they don’t accept their children as they are. These folks are just willfully doing away with wool of all sorts in order to let the kid just be.
June 30, 2009 at 5:19 pm
It’s Pat!!
June 30, 2009 at 6:11 pm
My only issue is that the child’s name is POP. Hopefully that too is a made-up name for news story purposes, though it must be tough to come up with a truly gender-neutral name.
July 2, 2009 at 1:59 am
Pop was just the name used in the article – no his/her real name.
June 30, 2009 at 7:45 pm
It’s Pat!! Bwahahahaha!
If they’re like my kids, Flop or whatever his/her name is will begin soon doing the following:
If male, he will become obsessed with any loud roaring vehicle with big wheels, and will chew sandwiches into weapon-like shapes and commence sword fights or other weird fighting/conquering type behavior.
If female, she will begin tucking in the cat at night and trying to put one of her little brother’s diapers on it. She will also come home from a friend’s house with a Barbie doll and make it clear she intends to make Barbie the centre of her universe.
I am just saying.
I had no trucks, nothing gun like — not even water pistols — and no dollies, but they gravitated to that stuff all on their own.
July 2, 2009 at 9:50 pm
I love that you got my Pat reference. Sometimes I feel OLD.
July 3, 2009 at 7:07 am
If you look at the tags, I had: “Pat Lives, Called Pop.” Unfortunately I wasn’t thinking when I posted it and it got separated.
Pat wasn’t that long ago, was it???
June 30, 2009 at 7:51 pm
As a student of personality development, I’m fascinated to see how this turns out. But as a Mom of both a boy and a girl, there were definite and distinct differences even as babies that I think a parent has to acknowledge and embrace in order for the child to accept and embrace their own person. Why would you want to squelch or diminish a child’s sexuality? I think it’s kind of sad to use a child as a social experiment.
June 30, 2009 at 9:51 pm
I think their plan will be fine until the child has to engage with “gender defined kids” at the time of starting school. What happens when life moves beyone this insular bubble and the rest of the world comes at the child from a gendered perspective?? I think that’s a hell of a lot to ask of a very young child!
I have to agree w/FHO, children should not be treated as sociology experiments.
July 1, 2009 at 12:26 am
I don’t know. It seems unwise from the outside, perhaps, but the parents don’t see it as a sociological experiment, and are obviously doing what they feel is best for “Pop.” I think they’re out there, but I think that there are many, many worse ways to fuck a kid up.
I think kids are more resilient than we always realize, too. Maybe Pop will take it in stride, especially if the parents use the next few years to make sure they come up with a good plan for the inevitable transition.
I don’t know. I guess I don’t see how being raised without gender boundaries will be so damaging. Gender roles certainly can be — maybe we’ll learn something from Pop ‘n’ Posse.
July 1, 2009 at 3:11 am
Why only sex? How about looks? Cover the childs face, so people won’t tell the kid how pretty he/she is. Aren’t animals equal to humans? “Is it a dog or a child?” “We won’t say. It has to decide for itself. Sometimes it eats at the table, and sometimes it eats from the dog bowl.”
July 1, 2009 at 8:01 am
I don’t think the animal comparison is apt, or makes much sense, unless you think that the subtraction of masculine or feminine pronouns is dehumanizing? I think you could make that point without bringing in the dog bowl, which seems a little hysterical and undermines what could be an interesting point for discussion.
July 1, 2009 at 8:46 am
“Hysterical” is a sexist derogatory term :-). You should find some other neutral word, like frantic or raving. But I’m neither. I’m sarcastic though.
I marvel at people who come from an academic world, and seem to be totally detached from reality. The idea that humans are equal to animals is no different to them than the idea that there is no difference between a man and a woman.
From many important issues in life, the parents chose to let their kid make it’s own decision on one of them.
I just wanted to point to others, which could be equally important. But the funny thing is, that the parents did make a decision. They decided to make their own child into a social experiment. They decided to let their kid grow up in a warped reality created by people like them. In the end, the kid will probably grow up to be a normal human being, and this experiment will have proven nothing.
July 1, 2009 at 2:16 pm
Perhaps, but if the kid ends up fine, then what’s the fuss? And how is raising their child in their “warped,” genderless reality more damaging than the social mores imposed on children based on their sex?
I think that if this was to continue through Pop’s school years, it would potentially be troubling, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. I feel like they’re just letting Pop be a kid – not a boy-child or a girl-child or a tomboy or a girly boy, but just a kid.
July 1, 2009 at 3:21 pm
“…people who come from an academic world, and seem to be totally detached from reality. The idea that humans are equal to animals is no different to them than the idea that there is no difference between a man and a woman.”
Ladies and gentlemen, meet a broad, sweeping, unfounded generalization. Michele, I’m not sure why you’re SO bothered by this, but you’re undermining your own argument by painting with absurdly broad strokes.
July 2, 2009 at 1:48 am
Unfounded? You’re funny.
July 2, 2009 at 2:26 am
Yes, unfounded. That’s what I said. Your declaration that academics are detached from reality and that humans = animals is the same relationship as men = women is unfounded. Where’s your proof that academics, in general, think this way? You’re just making shit up, which means that the argument you based on said shit is worthless. And dismissing someone because they’re “funny” is little different from the “hysterical” you bristled at upthread. It’s not misogynistic, but the intent is the same. Get off your high horse.
July 1, 2009 at 3:24 am
Why “Pop”? If parents are so afraid of making decisions for their children, why name the child altogether? Let the child pick a name!
July 1, 2009 at 11:45 pm
Maybe they let the child choose – you know, Hop on Pop. The father is probs Dr Suess – hence the “experiment.”
July 2, 2009 at 3:01 pm
Pop is actually informal for father, but maybe that’s no the real name.
July 3, 2009 at 2:08 am
Careful! Your stupid is showing.
July 3, 2009 at 6:05 am
They’re SWEDISH. Why would they care about the meaning of a name in ENGLISH.
It’s not gendered in Swedish, for fuck’s sake!
July 1, 2009 at 3:45 am
We are age-neutral. Our childr… eh.. descendants will choose for themselves what age they feel like. We don’t think it’s good they are spoken to in a childish voice, just because they have been forced to travel only two orbits round the sun. We don’t celebrate birthdays. They are a social construction.
July 1, 2009 at 5:13 am
And while we got started, what about skin color? What are we going to do about that? The only solution to solve gender-, age-, animal-human-, looks- and race-neutrality is simply to put the descendant in a box. Then it will be really free from labels. Except maybe the label nutcase.
July 1, 2009 at 8:54 pm
Oh, for crying out loud. Melodramatic much? This is starting to feel suspiciously like the argument that goes: “if we let the gays get married, the next thing you know, people will be wanting to marry dogs, snails, and park benches. OH NOES, THE END OF TEH WORLD!”
July 2, 2009 at 1:52 am
Are you trying to refute my argument, by showing how silly another argument is? You’re also funny.
July 2, 2009 at 2:28 am
Christ. All right, am no longer feeding the troll.
July 1, 2009 at 10:16 am
This just kind of strikes me as unnecessary. I have a 14 yr old and 3 yr old. Both girls. If they wanted to play with trucks or dolls or whatever, they did. The 3year old has a love affair with cranes (as in building/shipping cranes). I don’t know that one needs to completely de-gender a child in order to encourage that child to not limit themselves to specific gender roles only. Oh and yeah, they both wear dresses and pants. Sometimes at the same time.
July 1, 2009 at 11:46 am
I think it is possible raise a child without any preconceived gender-role notions, but if a baby is born with a penis and XY chromosomes then that baby is of the male gender and if the baby has a vagina and XX chromosomes, the baby is of female gender. That doesn’t mean that he has to “act male or female” in any traditional sense but to say the baby could be genderless is ridiculous. It is not the gender we should be worried about it is the preconceived ROLES that have been ingrained into society.
July 1, 2009 at 2:11 pm
Actually, SEX refers to the biological or physiological characteristics, and GENDER refers to the socially constructed roles we ascribe to sex (http://www.who.int/gender/whatisgender/en/index.html)
“Nora” and “Jonas” are simply avoiding gender-prescribed behavior, likely until the child enters school, they’re not trying to change or modify the child’s sex.
If we knew the child’s sex, we would be immediately imposing gender norms on him/her.
July 1, 2009 at 1:21 pm
This is all fine and dandy until “Pop” starts school and interacting with other children. It’s usually other people’s children who will undermine your parenting.
July 1, 2009 at 3:57 pm
thanks for posting this, feather.
i think it’s a really interesting idea and shows thoughtful parenting. not calling “pop” by he or she, and letting pop decide what clothes to wear and what toys to play with HARDLY seems problematic. all of the fuss up thread seems to be over abolishing the gender pronoun, which really isn’t that much different than just abstaining from calling your kid “daddy’s little man” or “mommy’s princess.” Pop will be free to decide which to go by, if either, when pop feels ready, which, as the parents seem to know, will likely happen once pop goes to school.
i don’t see this situation as a social experiment by the parents at all. it’s just a conscientious parenting decision made by two people who want the best for their child, and are trying to find a way to avoid any kind of trauma regarding gender identity. i suspect it will all come out in the wash, and, likely, pop will identify with the gender that match’s pop’s sex – no harm no foul. if it goes the other way, though, think of how much pain and trauma this kid will have avoided because the parents declined to force gender roles or stereoypes of any kind on their child?
July 1, 2009 at 8:58 pm
Exactly. It’s certainly an unusual approach, but why are we jumping to label it as bad and crazy and harmful? Isn’t this a similar reaction, for example, that those who were in their 30s and 40s during the 1950s had to their kids who grew out their hair, smoked dope, and got all “free love” at Woodstock? Just because it’s “out there” doesn’t mean it’s child abuse or going to be to the kid’s detriment.
July 2, 2009 at 11:14 am
How do they know this will avoid any kind of trauma? They don’t, but – in your own words – “they are trying…”. In other words, they are experimenting.
July 2, 2009 at 11:53 am
No one knows anything for certain, especially when it comes to raising kids. It’s always an experiment of some sort.
July 2, 2009 at 2:03 pm
With the small difference of thousands of years of experience.
July 2, 2009 at 2:20 pm
For some techniques, sure. But I can’t believe that’s true for everything, especially with changing technology.
July 2, 2009 at 2:30 pm
techniques?
July 2, 2009 at 2:54 pm
remember when ancient aztecs were pressured to buy clothes at the baby gap and throw their babies birthday parties at American Girl? yeah, neither do the aztecs.
July 1, 2009 at 7:00 pm
wow, i have so many questions about this. were both parents 100% into this idea? are they a het couple? do they have tv in their house? i applaud them but i’m with amoureuse, in that it’ll all go out the window once the kid merges into the matrix. they’ll have to tick a little M or F box on that kid’s school admission form and from that moment on, it’s all over. nothing learns ya faster than being different. pop will be getting two educations at once, like we all do, only i think pop’s learning curve’s gonna be a little steeper. i hope the media leaves this kid alone. have fun in gym class, little trooper!
July 1, 2009 at 7:54 pm
http://www.gendercentre.org.au/22article4.htm
Am I the only one who had to read this story several times in school?
July 2, 2009 at 9:44 am
Never read that, but it’s kind of cool. Though calling the second child Y seems odd to me – I automatically thought of it as male, since males have Y chromosomes.
July 1, 2009 at 8:47 pm
My parents tried to dress me in all yellow and green, “non-gendered” colors when I was born, but were bombarded with pink by well-meaning family and acquaintances. Perhaps that’s why the parents don’t want to reveal Pop’s sex. My family moved when I was a little under two, and my parents caved to my desire (at one and some change, from influence outside of my parents!) to have an all pink, extremely flowery room (which I regretted during my goth-y high school years). I played with my brother’s toys when he came along, and went through a HUGE tomboy phase from around second to fourth grade, but never quite developed his level of obsession with explosions. He was like, the kiddie Michael Bay or something while playing. We both turned out fine, and I’m sure little Pop will too. I dearly hope, though, that “Pop” is not the kid’s real name, or is just a cutesy nickname to refer to the kid until Pop decides to reveal his or her sex.
July 2, 2009 at 9:46 am
I think that’s a big part of it – by not sharing Pop’s gender with others, the parents are limiting the influence others can have when it comes to instilling gender roles with gifts and expectations.
July 2, 2009 at 2:50 am
I wonder about a certain technicality of this.
If they can’t use “he” or “she”, do they refer to Pop as “it”? Yeah, that’s healthy…
Or, instead, do they just use the pronoun “Pop”?
Well, then do Nora and Jonas use pronouns when talking to Pop about one another? OK, that can be confusing either way…
And then it gets to school, and everybody’s either “he” or “she”, except it, who is “Pop”, but only to itself, obviously–the other kids use “he” or “she” for it anyway, and Nora & Jonas have no say in that…
I think this is just another case of people deciding for their children that they will be social experiments, under the guise of not deciding for their children.
July 2, 2009 at 9:43 am
Perhaps there is a Swedish equivalent of the gender-neutral pronoun “ze”. Or maybe they don’t use pronouns at all.
July 2, 2009 at 6:24 pm
There is a gender-neutral pronoun in Swedish, det, but it is used only for inanimate objects. One does not refer to a person as “det” in Sweden, anymore than one refers to a person as “it” in English-speaking countries.
Maybe they in fact avoid pronouns altogether. I did recognize that possibility… “Where’s Pop?” “Up in Pop’s room” “What’s he…uh, she…um, it… I mean, Pop — doing?” “Playing with Pop’s toys”…
Even if this doesn’t drive the whole family bananas, as soon as Pop gets to school, Pop will be either “he” or “she” to the other kids, as well as the teachers.
Other than befuddling Pop’s sexual identity, as well as its linguistic skills, what will they have achieved?
July 2, 2009 at 11:04 am
My grandmother called me “it” my entire childhood, and would also talk about me in the third-person, e.g. “What does it want for dinner?”
I have no idea why, but it never bothered me at the time and it was only when I was older that I thought, “hunh, odd.” No harm done.
July 2, 2009 at 11:08 am
To Shana the funny one:
I never said all academics think like this, but if you do think like this, you probably are an academic. Do you really think that anybody observing the real world, would come up with such nonsense? And just to be clear, I’m not angry or upset, I just think it’s funny.
July 2, 2009 at 1:08 pm
if i had a baby, boy or girl, i would only dress it in tuxedos.
because tuxedos are fucking fancy, and i’d want a fancy baby!
July 2, 2009 at 2:37 pm
also bowties on special occasions.
July 2, 2009 at 2:59 pm
I’ll only let my kids play with Monopoly, cause I want them to be rich. They will play dressed in a tuxedo.
July 2, 2009 at 9:57 pm
http://www.tuxedotots.com/…/03/31/images/baby1.jpg
July 2, 2009 at 2:54 pm
i love the smell of transphobia in the morning.
michele: newsflash. does the fact that you have a vagina mean that you naturally make a fantastic mother, are a whizz in the kitchen, cry at romantic comedies and want nothing more than to land a man and have his babies? probably not. welcome to the feminist rhetoric that’s been around FOR DECADES, apparently you missed the memo. chances are pretty good that you resent generalizations and stereotypes that are ascribed to you based on your biology (or your age, or your race, etc). while some might ring true, you probably roll your eyes at many of them. chances are also pretty good that the men in your life don’t really fit neatly into every single stereotype that is assigned to masculinity. so why, then, is it so awful that pop’s parents would want to allow their child to grow up in a loving, nurturing environment that doesn’t attempt to ascribe onto him/her those socially-prescribed behaviours, by buying dolls OR GI Joes, or painting the room pink or blue? home schooling your child is a choice. raising your child with exposure to several religions or no religion is a choice. parents make their own autonomous choices when raising their children and that’s exactly what pop’s parents seem to be doing. they’re not planning on launching pop out into the world completely unprepared (obviously they understand EXACTLY what pop is going to encounter), they’re just trying to let the kid grow up and come into him/herself on his/her own, without anyone TELLING pop what’s “normal” behaviour based on pop’s body.
you wanna know something traumatizing? when you grow up with society telling you a thousand times a day how “girls” and “boys” are supposed to act, and you don’t fit that bill. i know a lot of kids who grew up thinking they were freaks because they didn’t look act or think like the other “normal” boys and girls. based on what you’ve written i think it’s a pretty safe bet you’ve never so much as considered the power and privilege that come with fitting into the molds. go read kate bornstein or something. yeesh.
July 2, 2009 at 2:57 pm
you sound like an academic. but then, what kind of person thinks being an ‘academic’ is in insult?
July 2, 2009 at 3:18 pm
oh no i’m way too poor for ten-dollar words. i can only afford them when they’re on sale.
July 3, 2009 at 6:09 am
Sarah Palin.
July 2, 2009 at 3:30 pm
Big genderless kisses to you, Inchworm, Shana, M, Skinny, and Cate (hell, others too).
July 2, 2009 at 4:29 pm
It’s so funny how upset people get, just because you don’t agree with every nonsensical idea. As I already said, I really don’t care. I’m just laughing at the whole thing. Just like many other people do who’ve heard about this story.
If the gender issue it’s such a trauma for a child, then then why stop there. We are constantly met with generalizations that affects us. But instead of putting our heads in the sand, we teach our kids what’s good and bad, give them our love and support, and try to make them strong individuals. By trying to ignore a basic part of Pop’s identity – for a short but important time in Pop’s life – they are weakening one part that makes a person whole. They haven’t thought this through. This is a feelings-based decision based on feminist ideas they came in contact with during school.
July 2, 2009 at 6:11 pm
You have GOT to be kidding me. Who’s the one stringing together serial posts complaining about what these people are doing? We’re not upset, we’re having a discussion. Or trying to, when not dealing with your assumptions and other ridiculous B.S.
What it comes down to is this: how the hell do YOU know that these parents haven’t thought this through? Who the HELL doesn’t think through the way they raise their children? You’ve evidently concluded that they haven’t thought it through because you don’t agree with the decision they reached. Same thing happens when conservatives declare that women who have abortions do so because they haven’t really thought it through. Just because people disagree with you doesn’t mean they’re wrong, or thoughtless, or making decisions only based on emotion, or what they learned in school, or whatever other reason you’re making up to justify painting these parents as irresponsible academic freaks.
I swore I wasn’t going to respond to you anymore, but it’s difficult to leave such baseless DENSENESS just floating out there unrefuted.
(In short, THIS is why I will never date a Republican. :)
July 3, 2009 at 1:14 am
You’re not upset? Your language indicates otherwise.
And what has politics to with this? I’m not even from USA, but I’m being put in the same category as republicans. In other words, if you don’t agree with Pop’s parents you are a dense conservative republican. Isn’t this trick of “calling somebody you don’t agree with names so you don’t have to answer the issue” getting old?
How come people from the left (as I guess you are) always seem to be so angry?
July 2, 2009 at 10:36 pm
it’s nice that you have the luxury of laughing at something that so clearly doesn’t affect your life in a meaningful way, or at least doesn’t inspire you to critically examine the ways that it does. maybe later i’ll go hang out with some black people and laugh about how they think “racism” is some kind of big screaming deal. i’ll just chuckle and try and explain to those silly dunderheads that some things are just the way they are. LOL!
your statements about “feelings-based decisions” and “feminist ideas” are just flat-out silly and incredibly disrespectful. but regarding the last bit, i can see where you’re coming from.
you refer to pop’s gender as “a basic part of pop’s identity.” while i absolutely agree that gender is a huge part of a person’s identity, you’re taking for granted what “gender” means, and the ways in which that gender comes to be; it seems to me you’re saying that your sex is your gender is your identity. While i get that that’s the way 99% of the world thinks, i don’t see it entirely that way (who ever said pop wouldn’t have an identity without an assigned gender?). i guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree, and everyone can share the toys.
July 3, 2009 at 12:59 am
Do you read what you write? When I don’t think Pop’s parent’s decision is a good idea, you compare it with racism towards black people!? Do you honestly think that’s the same thing? And when I don’t agree with you it’s silly, but your diagreement with 99% of the world is of course not.
And yes, I do laugh at this utter nonsense. At I laugh even more, when I read your response. I know you and Pop’s parents all mean well. I just don’t think it’s the right way to deal with an important issue. That’s all.
July 3, 2009 at 8:01 am
sigh. no, i don’t think that it’s the same thing. my point was that you seem to think that something like sex = gender is something that is innate and irrefutable, because that’s just how it is, and you speak from a place of obvious privilege and ignorance (not general ignorance; ignorance of this topic). that was the parallel. you’re not making any compelling or logical arguments. i think there’s a really fascinating discussion to be had here, on both sides, and we’re not having it because you’re more interested in laughing at the “hippies.”
i’m done with this thread now.
July 3, 2009 at 8:20 am
I don’t think is fascinating at all. I think it’s laughable and moronic.
July 5, 2009 at 2:26 pm
BAN! HAM! SALAMI! ENABLE!
August 1, 2010 at 10:22 am
What an amazing idea! I’m really looking forward to seeing how Pop turns out =)