This is interesting

[conuly]

Here's an article about a family in Sweden that's keeping the sex of their kid secret. Which reminds me of this story except of course it's in real life. (Don't read the comments, btw.)

Well, maybe read the comments. Some of them make reference to David Reimer, and - as I've actually read his book - I'm not so sure of the relevance. His problems seem to me to be much deeper than simply being raised as a girl when he wasn't - a lot of his "therapy" described in the book seemed to me to be very dubious or abusive even. *shrugs* (Which isn't to argue the matter of innate gender or whatnot, just that I think that in that specific case which is the one people always bring up when talking about gender anything (have you noticed?), there's a lot more stuff going on.)

Comments

[fjorab-teke.livejournal.com]

You know, aside from a few dresses, I don't remember being EXPECTED to fit a gender role. And I don't think my sister was, either.

I've been raised by very open-minded, tolerant parents. I was very obviously a tomboy by age 6. I had my girly tendencies, sure, but I was just as likely to play with my Hot Wheels or play sports. I'm still the same way. After age 2 or 3, almost all of my pictures were in jeans and some kind of rugged shirt. Heck, the better to ride horses in, my dear. In icon, see "Buttercup" for my analogy.

My sister, on the other hand, is totally girly, though she has a select few "boyish" interests (mostly when it comes to movies and in-home entertainment). She's very "proper" and trendy. In icon, analogy with Blossom.

We were encouraged to be ourselves, though Dad is very traditionalist in some ways and gets excited with camera opportunities whenever I dress "like a woman." :-p

I wish more parents were open like that. But I don't know how far parents should go to "hide" the physical gender.

[leora.livejournal.com]

Boys get better toys. My mother didn't believe in buying "boy's toys" for girls or vice versa. This would have been totally unbearable except that computers, legos, and books were seen as gender neutral. But I never got to have transformers or hot wheels (although I played with the ones my next door neighbor had when I was 5. I really hate the artificial toy divides.

[fjorab-teke.livejournal.com]

Ugh. :-( My parents were glad to get me any reasonable "wholesome" toy that I happened to like. It was usually Breyer model horses, My Little Ponies, Hot Wheels, marbles, or something visually stimulating. To be honest? I still love all of those.

Ah well, at least you got Legos. Those are awesome. I got my 1 1/2-year-old niece Mega Blocks for Christmas. I had no idea she would immediately know what to do with them.

[leora.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, I loved legos and building blocks of all sorts. Plus, I had some of the legos with the wheels attached, so I made little vehicles out of lego. It wasn't so bad because I had computer games from a pretty young age. But my brothers generally had cooler toys than I did. And I was either discouraged from them because I was female or told that I could play with theirs, which was blatantly false as my mother would just say this to me as if clearly it was possible whereas there was no house rule that required them to let me play with their toys and in practice I very much could not play with most of their toys. Although sometimes I could get to use the lincoln logs, which I think I mostly liked from novelty. I wish the capsella had been in better shape. Capsella was very cool, but I was the youngest and by the time I was old enough to explore it most of the parts were gone and what was left was often grimy in disturbing ways.

Although when I got older and Rubik's magic came out I spent a while very happily working out all sorts of things with it. But I dislike the notion that some toys are for boys and some are for girls.