Oh boy, the rolly eyes imply you're annoyed. In any case, good for you; my comment then doesn't apply to you if your parents really just picked names they just happened to like. Does it? I can somewhat sympathize with it all; including Storm, as there have been times before adolescence that I thought about naming a future first born "Wolverine".

There are, however, plenty of parents who do name their children specifically because they want their children to be unique, including many of my own friends. If they were strangers, I would just nod, but with friends who ask for my opinion, I seriously question their motives. That doesn't automatically preclude your situation.

They sound like idiots to me. But not bad parents or anything. Just stupid. If you don't want your kid to grow up forced into a gender stereotype then don't force your kid into a stereotype, simple as that. Teach them that they can be whoever they want to be. Teaching them to hide their gender is just odd, and it's obviously gonna cause problems in the future.

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You're so right; children shouldn't be forced into stereotypes based on gender.
It would be nice if we could get rid of gender roles altogether. Fortunately, I live in a country where gender roles aren't strictly defined anymore, but it still pisses me off if some guy talks down to me like I'm stupid just because I'm a girl. If I were only allowed to stay at home and do as I'm told, I'd positively kill myself; I wouldn't be able to live with my life not being my own.

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the parents have issues, and thier kids seem to be infected by it
while its better to let ur kid decide their future and life, too bad for him'her about not being able to choose the parent!!!

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That's true.
But there are still special cases when the kid had to grow up in an unhealthy environment still turn out to be good.


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A child is born into this world like a clean slate, and it is society that will begin etching and shaping that slate into what the child will become. The first people to start sculpting this child are the parents and because of this, decisions they make very early in the child's life will influence it greatly. I have several qualms about their actions, partially because i question their morality, their intelligence, and their reasons behind doing this.

From a morality standpoint, their entire reasoning behind doing this is because one of their other children "suffered and intense time over people's reactions to his appearance" which in itself shouldn't be a call to drop one's gender. Instead, it should be a call to promote the child's freedom to dress and look how he wants to act. If one child had problems because of his appearance, this other child is going to have problems because of the ambiguity of his or her gender.

From an ethical standpoint, it is unfair for the parents to treat the third child so differently. They should be raising all three children equally with equal opportunities, whether that opportunity is to choose your gender or not. From a legal standpoint, the child is going to go through some moments of self-questioning whenever they fill out a form that asks for gender, and from a psychological standpoint the child may suffer from choosing the "wrong" gender at such a young age. There was a case where a baby had an accident during their circumcision, and so the doctor simply made the child into a boy. That boy grew up as a girl liking other girls and ended up committing suicide over his pseudo homo-sexuality.

Ultimately, there will be many hardships created by going against the social norms, hardships far greater than that which any child should bear, and far greater than that which any parent can protect the child from. From a developmental standpoint, this can affect the child in a wide number of ways, resulting in god knows how many psychological problems. The child is being home schooled to begin with, so unlike most children, he or she is already going to be socially withdrawn to begin with, and lastly, the child is simply too young to handle such a big decision.

Instead of raising the child genderless, they should just set money aside for a sex change operation for the child, and raise them one gender while teaching them about the other. If they truly want the child to decide his or her gender, then wait until the child has grown up a great deal and is old enough to make that decision on their own. We may not be able to choose our gender, but we can choose how we act and who we are, and the parents should be teaching that to their kids instead.

Lets just say that it could be much, much worse.

If I had a kid, I'd put him/her on a minibike before he/she could walk, and I'd "mould" them with all forms of race-craft (ie: having him/her do a 8hr endurance kart race at around 6 years of age). I'd also teach em "math",... lap-timing, fuel-load, tyre-wear, drag-coefficient...etc

Storm isn't the worst name you could give someone. Anyone remember that NZ couple a few years ago that wanted to name their baby "4real" ?

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~Point & Squirt~

I'm not so sure his parents have any.


That seems like a sensible approach to gender role blind parenting, which I'm basically all for. On the other hand, the whole totally ignoring the child's gender when he has one, his brothers know it, and he isn't old enough to question his gender identity strikes me as not being all that helpful in helping him explore his gender identity and likely to crash and burn when the brothers hit puberty and gender starts becoming that much more important. Basically, yes to gender-role blindness, no to gender blindness.

Note: To keep my head from exploding from constantly typing he/she, I'm using he as a gender neutral pronoun 'cause ze isn't standard usage outside the gender studies, feminist, trans, and assorted related communities.


Technically your partner is still straight because you're a gendered female and sexuality just describes which gender(s) a person is attracted to. Though yes, your partner will likely be creeped out when he finds out you don't have the parts he expected.

I believe in the right to not be schooled. At least not in the stuff i probably won't use. but they should learn basic math, to read and write, and why its a bad idea to mix fire and gas. A genderless child? if you try to raise a child without gender its gonna be confused later on. Not about whether or not its gay but about what it really is. the child will probably be bullied if it does go to school and if not it will not know how to interact with people. It will be naive in a way that could screw it up later in life. have i been suitably vague? English is great, teaches you to bs like no other class.

[quote=story645]
No matter how many operations you undergo and how many people you convince to use the "she" pronoun, you'll still have a man's body underneath it all.

If you call yourself a fish and even get a scale transplant, having sex with you still wouldn't be bestiality.

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"It is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science."

Is it freedom at all to make your kids to do something they cannot even understand?
Their parents did choose a path for them anyway, the compulsory freedom.
Trying to introduce a value to someone who doesn't even know what a value is,
is a prelude for something bad.

I hope you never have a kid, LOL!

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*Wonders How To Post A Picture*

The irritation is towards the assumption that the only reason for choosing a non-traditional name is "trying to make the child unique". In my family's case, the runner-up names were Peter and Molly, so yeah, I'm pretty sure our names were just chosen because they were the ones they liked best.


Oh...wow...this is so completely NOT true! Babies are born into this world with a personality already in place. Yes, society & parents have an influence, but a lot is already THERE when the baby is born.

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"[English] not only borrows words from other languages; it has on occasion chased other languages down dark alley-ways, clubbed them unconscious and rifled their pockets for new vocabulary."
-James Nicoll, can.general, March 21, 1992

Emphasis on your own interpretation. And you keep bringing yourself up as a singular counterexample. I think you are taking it way too personally. Perhaps this matter with names is hitting you harder than it should?

This is what I first wrote and you quoted:

... and one of those ways happens to be giving them unique or at least rare names. Not *all* parents are going for that, but that should go without saying. Did I say there was anything wrong parents that do? Nope. Nothing wrong with trying to be unique. God knows, I don't want to associate myself with plebeians.
:-|
:-)
>:-)~

Sure, I ridicule some of the crazier names I've heard (single, non-alphanumeric characters), but if you couldn't tell, I thought some of them sound kind of cool, or even normal (Asterisk/Star). And if you haven't noticed, I like picking at everything and everyone, including myself, so perhaps you could... I don't know, just let it slide, or get used to it. I'm a bit confused, because you've had your name name for a while now, and I'm sure you didn't need to snap at every person who contributed to a conversation about outlier names.

You added "only" in your own mind. Subconscious strawmanning generally gives me the impression that the other party is itching for a confrontation.

Then again, come to think about it, the vast majority of people I know who have outlier names or interesting pronunciations/spellings of their names have been anal and vocal about their names, excessively so.

"That's Riawwwna... not Ri-Aaah-nna... No one ever pronounces my name right! How difficult can it be?"

"That's Cyndee spelled with a Y and a double E."
"... we're just chatting with each other verbally though."
"Yeah, like, it's just so you know. You know?"

I don't really mind if some parents want to raise their kid genderless in an attempt to differentiate them from others (make their kid "unique"). That's their business, just as is what they want to name their kids. I personally think they are putting way too much effort fighting gender identity, but I won't deny them the opportunity to prove me and/or others wrong. I also think it would be sad if someone relies only on his name or some other gimmick to distinguish himself/herself from others.


I think it's interesting how you are now siding with the nature side of the argument over nurture (slightly).

I have to agree (slightly), and note that what you are saying now (and the existing evidence I'm aware of on the matter) does somewhat discredit the feasibility and rationale behind the genderless identity unschooling.

There are actually a lot of valid and logical reasons for gender identification of roles/jobs, etc which make it more practical for one gender to fulfill a role over the other. On that note, it's reasonable might even be more productive to have kids just focus on what they're more likely to succeed in and what may be better for society... with a rational open eye and ever-open mind for opportunities to rock the boat once in a while, of course.

Last edited by N0x_ at 1:54 pm, May 25 2011

Here's a reaction from the mother of the "genderless baby": http://www.thestar.com/news/article/998960--genderless-baby-s -mother-responds-to-media-furor