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Raising a theyby
Aug. 5th, 2019 02:37 pmA week or so ago I sent around this email to friends and family, announcing Podling's birth with a couple of photos, and explaining one of our more controversial parenting decisions as follows...
As we've shared the news of E's birth with people, we've already been asked the same question several times - is E a boy or a girl? We're writing this to explain why we haven't answered that question, and don't intend to do so in the way you might expect.
If you're one of the people who has asked this, or been wondering it, thank you for your interest in our child. We're delighted that you care about them and want to find out more about them.
When people ask this question, it seems to us that it can mean two different things. First of all, it can be about what kind of body someone has. This is very relevant in some contexts - for example, a medical one - but in most contexts it's not really relevant at all, especially in the first few years of a person's life. Secondly, it can be a question about how to relate to someone socially. We've all got a rich set of expectations and social scripts keyed on that apparently simple question of "Boy or girl?" - from simple things like what kind of clothes E might wear (or what colour congratulations card to get us!) to more fundamental things, such as what kind of activities they might enjoy, and what sort of personality and even aptitudes we could expect them to have. We feel that these gendered expectations are more limiting than they are freeing.
Especially at the beginning of our lives, we're all exquisitely sensitive to social cues. Children are strongly influenced by the expectations of the adults around them. We want to create as much freedom as possible for E, and so we want to liberate them from these limiting categories of boy or girl. They will tell us which (if any) they prefer when they are ready. We ask you all to support us in preserving this freedom during E's formative early years.
Once we can talk to E we expect that they'll quite quickly let us know what they want. Growing up is about trying new things, and their feelings will probably develop and change as they grow. Our intention is to create space for them to freely explore their identity. We want E to be free of the subtle social pressures around what boys and girls do - let alone who boys and girls are.
This desire arises from our life experience, our feminist politics, and the good influence of many of our friends, family and other role models in resisting all forms of injustice. As most of you already know, but some may not, Leo and I have both been on gender journeys of our own. Our personal dissatisfaction with the categories of “man” and “woman” for ourselves - the feeling that neither quite fit, and both offer more restrictions than benefits - have led to both of us independently realising that we are genderqueer, also known as non-binary (the first few minutes of this video give a good introduction). It’s one of the things we have in common, and one of the reasons we are such a good match. As such, we both prefer the gender neutral singular pronouns “they/them” rather than “she/her” or “he/him”.
In common usage English only has one set of gender neutral pronouns, which are used both for people with a non-binary gender (such as ourselves) and people whose gender is as yet unspecified. In the spirit of the latter, we are using they/them pronouns for E, at least until they are old enough to tell us they'd prefer something different.
Our personal experience has given us a unique perspective which has helped us realise how restrictive it can be to assign children a gender from birth, based solely on the external appearance of their body. We aren’t assigning any gender to E (even a non-binary one). They may choose to be a “boy” or a “girl”; the important thing is that it’s up to them.
We hope to enlist your support in creating a social environment in which E, at least, is liberated from gendered expectations.
This is a new idea, but we're not the first to come up with it; there are now two entirely gender-neutral schools in Sweden, for instance. Still, we don't have a manual or many role-models, and to some extent we (with your support, we hope!) will be creating this as we go. So we don't have all the answers about how this will work in practice, although we have thought long and hard about it, and believe that this is the best way to give E the start in life we wish we all had. In the meantime if you have any questions, and don't mind somewhat speculative answers, drop us a line - we'd be delighted to chat.
Love,
Halo and Leo
As we've shared the news of E's birth with people, we've already been asked the same question several times - is E a boy or a girl? We're writing this to explain why we haven't answered that question, and don't intend to do so in the way you might expect.
If you're one of the people who has asked this, or been wondering it, thank you for your interest in our child. We're delighted that you care about them and want to find out more about them.
When people ask this question, it seems to us that it can mean two different things. First of all, it can be about what kind of body someone has. This is very relevant in some contexts - for example, a medical one - but in most contexts it's not really relevant at all, especially in the first few years of a person's life. Secondly, it can be a question about how to relate to someone socially. We've all got a rich set of expectations and social scripts keyed on that apparently simple question of "Boy or girl?" - from simple things like what kind of clothes E might wear (or what colour congratulations card to get us!) to more fundamental things, such as what kind of activities they might enjoy, and what sort of personality and even aptitudes we could expect them to have. We feel that these gendered expectations are more limiting than they are freeing.
Especially at the beginning of our lives, we're all exquisitely sensitive to social cues. Children are strongly influenced by the expectations of the adults around them. We want to create as much freedom as possible for E, and so we want to liberate them from these limiting categories of boy or girl. They will tell us which (if any) they prefer when they are ready. We ask you all to support us in preserving this freedom during E's formative early years.
Once we can talk to E we expect that they'll quite quickly let us know what they want. Growing up is about trying new things, and their feelings will probably develop and change as they grow. Our intention is to create space for them to freely explore their identity. We want E to be free of the subtle social pressures around what boys and girls do - let alone who boys and girls are.
This desire arises from our life experience, our feminist politics, and the good influence of many of our friends, family and other role models in resisting all forms of injustice. As most of you already know, but some may not, Leo and I have both been on gender journeys of our own. Our personal dissatisfaction with the categories of “man” and “woman” for ourselves - the feeling that neither quite fit, and both offer more restrictions than benefits - have led to both of us independently realising that we are genderqueer, also known as non-binary (the first few minutes of this video give a good introduction). It’s one of the things we have in common, and one of the reasons we are such a good match. As such, we both prefer the gender neutral singular pronouns “they/them” rather than “she/her” or “he/him”.
In common usage English only has one set of gender neutral pronouns, which are used both for people with a non-binary gender (such as ourselves) and people whose gender is as yet unspecified. In the spirit of the latter, we are using they/them pronouns for E, at least until they are old enough to tell us they'd prefer something different.
Our personal experience has given us a unique perspective which has helped us realise how restrictive it can be to assign children a gender from birth, based solely on the external appearance of their body. We aren’t assigning any gender to E (even a non-binary one). They may choose to be a “boy” or a “girl”; the important thing is that it’s up to them.
We hope to enlist your support in creating a social environment in which E, at least, is liberated from gendered expectations.
This is a new idea, but we're not the first to come up with it; there are now two entirely gender-neutral schools in Sweden, for instance. Still, we don't have a manual or many role-models, and to some extent we (with your support, we hope!) will be creating this as we go. So we don't have all the answers about how this will work in practice, although we have thought long and hard about it, and believe that this is the best way to give E the start in life we wish we all had. In the meantime if you have any questions, and don't mind somewhat speculative answers, drop us a line - we'd be delighted to chat.
Love,
Halo and Leo
