it's a birl... or a goy!

lil, or bill?

For the last few days, there's been a lot of buzz on the message boards surrounding this article on children and gender.  It's about a family that is keeping their baby's gender a secret from family and friends, not just in utero, but long after birth. 

"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?!.” Witterick (mother) writes in an email."

I understand bucking social constructs.  Thanks to my Liberal Arts education, I have an understanding of gender as something that is not binary, but spans five or more sexes (I will never forget meeting a lesbian trapped in a man's body).  I am also an aunt who had to wait until birth not once, but twice to find out if I had a niece or a nephew, and I experienced the frustration and excitement that went along with not knowing the baby's gender.  When I was pregnant, I wanted to know if I had a Lil or a Bill, but I didn't want anyone else to know.  It is hard to accept that babies, who have no use for a gender identity, are defined by their gender before being born.  Maybe it sounds hypocritical, but I experience the same curiosity as everyone else.  Besides, she was in my belly.  I think I had the right to know. 

It is not enough just to have girl things or boy things.  It seems like everything is assigned a gender.  The entire animal kingdom is being divided by the manufacturers of baby goods.  Puppies are for boys, kittens are for girls.   Ocean themes are appropriate for boys, but the forest with its bunnies, deer, and squirrels is reserved for girls (except owls, they're one gender-neutral critter).  According to Baby Gap, zebras go to girls, elephants go to boys, and giraffes can be for a boy or a girl, depending on the color (but guess who gets the pink giraffes).  The parents in that article may be striving for genderless children, but the real baby world is over-saturated with gender.  Maybe it's better for children to experience everything, rather than one way or another, or even the Other.  Is there any other way to lose the labels of "girl things" and "boy things"?