Genderless children and princesses

There was an odd little story about a couple who are raising a genderless child this past week that got all sorts of attention. Which isn't surprising because getting a lot of attention is precisely what the child's parents set out to do.

One of them says by way of justification, "“If you really want to get to know someone, you don’t ask what’s between their legs". That's true. But do you normally do this? When you meet Frank for the first time do you think, "I wonder what his penis looks like?" Do you assume he has one and therefore you know who he is? Does the fact that I discover Crystal has a vagina change the way I think about her or is it perhaps more important that I know Crystal chose to wear jeans so tight that it removed all doubt.

Here is someone else making the same mistake: a blogger named Amanda Marcotte criticizing a trite song about girl power by Beyonce:

Still, the lyrics to this song are classic faux empowerment, as she's literally suggesting women run the world by being very persuasive with our vaginas.

But that is nonsense and you can confirm it yourself by going to YouTube and watching any Beyonce video you want. Because Beyonce is in fact very convincing  using everything but her vagina. In fact lots and lots of girls and women can be very convincing about their sexuality using anything but (a fact that some young men will endlessly whine and complain about if you let them get started).

This whole debate about genderless children is supposed to establish the importance of some inner experience. What the child the really wants to be is supposed to be more important than what is or isn't between their legs. But what the parents are unconsciously admitting is that it isn't some inner experience of important aspects of our identity such as sex that really matters but the outward expression of it. For they are firmly convinced that the outer experience of dressing in pink rather than blue will trump these inner feelings.

The moment a child’s sex is announced, so begins the parade of pink and barrage of blue. Tutus and toy trucks aren’t far behind. The couple says it only intensifies with age.

“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?!.”

 Does that sound familiar? Because as extreme as this child's parents might seem, they line up exactly with the logic used by the anti-princess people:

Orenstein finds one such enlightening explanation in developmental psychology research showing that until as late as age 7, children are convinced that external signs — clothing, hairstyle, favorite color, choice of toys — determine one’s sex. “It makes sense, then, that to ensure you will stay the sex you were born you’d adhere rigidly to the rules as you see them and hope for the best,” she writes. “That’s why 4-year-olds, who are in what is called ‘the inflexible stage,’ become the self-­appointed chiefs of the gender police. Suddenly the magnetic lure of the Disney Princesses became more clear to me: developmentally speaking, they were genius, dovetailing with the precise moment that girls need to prove they are girls, when they will latch on to the most exaggerated images their culture offers in order to stridently shore up their femininity.” For a preschool girl, a Cinderella dress is nothing less than an existential insurance policy, a crinolined bulwark to fortify a still-shaky sense of identity.

And there is the give away: what both Storm's parent's and the anti-princess movement have in common is that they don't want to give their children certain experiences. This isn't about freedom but control.

Look at what Orenstein doesn't want:

“It’s not that princesses can’t expand girls’ imaginations,” Orenstein explains. “But in today’s culture, princess starts to turn into something else. It’s not just being the fairest of them all, it’s being the hottest of them all, the most Paris Hilton of them all, the most Kim Kardashian of them all.” Translation: shallow, narcissistic, slutty.

Because there is nothing even remotely narcissistic about parading your parenting choices in the media for all the world to see and your child's privacy be damned. Okay, turning the snark off, back to the serious point. If Orenstein really believes her daughter should be free to make her own decisions about identity, why is she so busy shutting the doors on some options?

I'm not saying that parents shouldn't teach their daughters not to be sluts (and their sons for that matter). Quite the contrary actually. But remember that, from Orenstein's perspective and from the perspective of the parents raising the "genderless" child, the most important thing is that the child be really free to choose who they are and yet their very first move is to shut off a whole lot of options. The painful irony is that the only input Storm is being allowed about his or her sexuality is what they have between their legs.

Except, of course, that the whole charade is doomed to fail as all these parents must know at some level. The inner experience is useless. The child, like everyone else, will learn about sexuality by looking at the outward signs and not by looking deep into their own consciousness. (And what do these people say if their daughters turn to them at seventeen and say, 'I've thought about it and I really want to be a slut. That is who I really am and feel more fulfilled and happy this way.' The old-fashioned moralist at least has no illusions about the fact that they are trying to shape their child into a particular sort of person.)

Children are capable of changing their minds as they grow up. The fact that Elsa wears pink PJs as a child will not limit her forever.