A longtime LGBTQIA ally and proud feminist, my relationship with gender and its associated assumptions, profiles and overall baggage has always been tenuous.
As a cisgender straight, female I’ve encountered my own fair share of situations where I learned being a young girl or adult woman came with challenges, but was always aware mine were insignificant compared to those faced by others.
All of these thoughts about gender, and what it means to be female or male in 2016, came to a head as my husband and I started to think about starting a family.
Would we find out the sex? Will we share the news with family and friends (and in today’s age, with our Facebook community)? How would we word that? Before we even got pregnant (I’m due in March), I started thinking about these questions and what their implications meant for our child.
When I was younger and thinking about my far-in-the-future children I often thought I would wait for the surprise of “It’s a ____” that you see in the movies when baby is born, but my husband always knew he wanted to find out. He wanted to get the nursery ready and be able to start calling our little one something other than “it” or “the baby.”
We would need to think about names, he added.
So before we were even married, I came around to the idea of finding out and letting our surprise be sooner. I liked the idea of not saying “it,” of being able to picture our baby more clearly and have it be more of a real person to us.
I knew that the term “gender reveal” didn’t sit right with me, because we can’t reveal an unborn baby’s gender any more than we can reveal their favorite color or love of puzzles.
The truth is we don’t know yet and they don’t either.
There are some that will roll their eyes at this and say “sex reveal, gender real, it’s all the same thing,” but it’s not. Words matter, and in a world where 40 percent of transgender individuals attempt to take their life at least once and a record number of transgender teens are ending up homeless, defining for any child what their gender is and what it should look like just doesn’t sit right with me.
Luckily I’m not alone in my search for answers on how to parent in an inclusive way that’s not centered on gendering or categorizing children.
I read numerous articles on it, one of which was written by a high school classmate who welcomed twins with his wife in January 2015. His wife and he refer to their parenting style as Gender Neutral Parenting and gave both children gender neutral names.
As part of their approach, they avoid pronouns by saying the child’s name ― and when asked on the street “Are they boys or girls?” the parents respond with “They haven’t told us yet.” I thought that was a really thoughtful answer.
According to Nate, most people are happy with that answer or move on to another, because that question is typically part of the script we all ask, and not part of a stranger’s deep need to know.
The “Do you know what it is yet?” question is one I’ve been getting a lot lately as we approach 20 weeks, the time when most parents find out the “sex” or have found out by. I’ve done a lot of thinking about what my answer to that question will be once we do know.
“It’s genetically female” or “It’s genetically male” doesn’t sound quite right to me as it sounds too clinical or cold to be describing this little, brand new human I love so much already. And as Nate mentions in his post on Fatherly.com, sex itself isn’t as clear cut either.
Part of reconciling my thoughts about gender is understanding that gender, sex and sexuality are all not binaries we make them out to be and they just aren’t as clear cut as we’ve all been lead to believe.
The other way of answering the “What are you having?” question could be “It has a penis” or “It has a vagina,” but that feels aggressive. It’s really forcing whoever we are speaking to to confront, in essence, that’s what they are asking about our unborn child.
I normally wouldn’t be against something so direct, since I tend to be pretty blunt, but to say that to a random stranger, nevermind a well-meaning and excited family member or friend, seems a bit much.
So how will I answer this question? I haven’t really decided yet. It’s a constant struggle because as liberal as our friends and family are, and as well-meaning strangers can be, the minute I say “It’s a boy” or “It’s a girl,” something will have been decided for our sweet baby.
They will see pink or blue or sports or princesses and have assumptions to how they should act, what activities they should enjoy and what kind of person they will be. Even the most progressive person will unknowingly decide something, and that just doesn’t seem fair to me.
The other part of me knows the answer to the “what is it” question is just the beginning. That our response to other questions down the road ― “What does __ want for their birthday?” or “Do you want our hand-me-down kitchen/tool set” ― will give us the chance to respond and gently correct any assumptions. I also find peace in realizing that in the end, the most important answer isn’t to these questions but that of “How will we respond to, encourage and love our child every day?”
That I know the answer to.