The Gendering of the Young

[Gemme]

Originally Posted by Cyclopea

Nice. Oversexualizing at an early age. When people get upset about the statistics for teen pregnancy, someone should show them this.

This may be the bitch in me speaking, but it would have been better with gay boys. That one girl was all over the place.

[Soon]

I watched that video yesterday and am completely stunned and disgusted at adults allowing, coaching, watching, encouraging (!) these SEVEN year olds performing this sexualized dance.

Appalling.

[Cyclopea]

Originally Posted by HowSoonIsNow

I watched that video yesterday and am completely stunned and disgusted at adults allowing, coaching, watching, encouraging (!) these SEVEN year olds performing this sexualized dance.

Appalling.

Right???
The sad thing is that they are SOOOOOOO talented! But the whole Jon Benet Ramsey thing just killed it.

[betenoire]

Oh my god, that was so inappropriate. I actually started crying because it -upset- me to see little children doing that.

[Cyclopea]

Originally Posted by betenoire

Oh my god, that was so inappropriate. I actually started crying because it -upset- me to see little children doing that.

Oh hon! I'm so sorry!
It freaked me out too...
One of the problems with gendering the young is that much of what genders "female" has traditionally been serving as an object for the sexualized gaze.
Sad...

[betenoire]

Originally Posted by Cyclopea

Oh hon! I'm so sorry!
It freaked me out too...
One of the problems with gendering the young is that much of what genders "female" has traditionally been serving as an object for the sexualized gaze.
Sad...

Don't be sorry. It's not your fault that I'm such a weepypants about stuff like this.

It really -is- fucked that this is what gendering females leads to. You don't see anybody making little boys go about topless with lots of baby oil on or anything (although, thank god for that.)

It just goes to show that to the world at large we -really- aren't worth anything more than what's going on between our legs. So so fucked.

This is one of the reasons that I'm never having children.

[SuperFemme]

THIS is the original knock off....and the only one worth watching IMO.

[Nat]

http://www.wpix.com/news/wpix-rivers...,1999838.story

Cops: Babysitter Struck, Killed Infant

RIVERSIDE, N.Y. (WPIX) - A man is accused of fatally striking a 17-month-old infant he was babysitting Sunday night on the Shinnecock Indian Reservation on Long Island, according to New York State police.

The suspect has been identified as Pedro Jones, 20, of South Hampton. He has been charged with first-degree manslaughter after allegedly hitting the boy "several times throughout his body with close fists" and grabbed him by the neck, according to the felony complaint filed by police.

Authorities say Jones also told them, "I was trying to make him act like a boy instead of a little girl. I never struck that kid that hard before."

The infant, Roy A. Jones, was reportedly found in cardiac arrest and was rushed to Southampton Hospital where he died around 8:30 p.m.

"I just found out my Grandson died last night that's all I know," Donna Collins Smith.told PIX 11 News.

Police said Jones, who is not a member of the Shinnecock nation but lives on the reservation, is the boyfriend of the baby's mother.

"He infiltrated my family through our trust, through the heart of my daughter and then stole the life of her child," said the baby's grandfather Daniel Collins. "I hope the justice system turns around and steals his."

Jones pleaded not guilty during his arraignment Monday at Southampton Town Justice Court. He is currently being held without bail at Suffolk County jail.

Additional charges or the current charge could be upgraded pending the completion of the investigation, police said.

[Soon]

Ads for a FL Martial Arts Academy:





Yeah, Pops. Nip that gaiety in the ass, and get junior kicking some ass and karate-chopping some wood, all while listening to Eye of the motherfucking Tiger. That'll knock those show tunes out of his head and some sense into him. Other tips: Make him change the oil in your pickup, naked. And take him deer hunting, naked. Better yet, queer hunting. You and your drinking buds can go to a local Miami gay bar and show him how to pound the dust out of some fairies, who hopefully haven't taken martial arts classes at Key Biscayne's RDCA.

http://copyranter.blogspot.com/2010/...tle-cross.html

[Nat]

Swedish parents keep 2-year-old's gender secret

A couple of Swedish parents have stirred up debate in the country by refusing to reveal whether their two-and-a-half-year-old child is a boy or a girl.

Pop’s parents, both 24, made a decision when their baby was born to keep Pop’s sex a secret. Aside from a select few – those who have changed the child’s diaper – nobody knows Pop’s gender; if anyone enquires, Pop’s parents simply say they don’t disclose this information.

In an interview with newspaper Svenska Dagbladet in March, the parents were quoted saying their decision was rooted in the feminist philosophy that gender is a social construction.

“We want Pop to grow up more freely and avoid being forced into a specific gender mould from the outset,” Pop’s mother said. “It's cruel to bring a child into the world with a blue or pink stamp on their forehead.”

The child's parents said so long as they keep Pop’s gender a secret, he or she will be able to avoid preconceived notions of how people should be treated if male or female.

Pop's wardrobe includes everything from dresses to trousers and Pop's hairstyle changes on a regular basis. And Pop usually decides how Pop is going to dress on a given morning.

Although Pop knows that there are physical differences between a boy and a girl, Pop's parents never use personal pronouns when referring to the child – they just say Pop.

"I believe that the self-confidence and personality that Pop has shaped will remain for a lifetime," said Pop's mother.

But while Pop’s parents say they have received supportive feedback from many of their peers, not everyone agrees that their chosen course of action will have a positive outcome.

“Ignoring children's natures simply doesn’t work,” says Susan Pinker, a psychologist and newspaper columnist from Toronto, Canada, who wrote the book The Sexual Paradox, which focuses on sex differences in the workplace.

“Child-rearing should not be about providing an opportunity to prove an ideological point, but about responding to each child’s needs as an individual,” Pinker tells The Local.

“It’s unlikely that they’ll be able to keep this a secret for long. Children are curious about their own identity, and are likely to gravitate towards others of the same sex during free play time in early childhood.”

Pinker says there are many ways that males and females differ from birth; even if gender is kept ‘secret,’ prenatal hormones developed in the second trimester of pregnancy already alter the way the child behaves and feels.

She says once children can speak, males tell aggressive stories 87 per cent of the time, while females only 17 per cent. In a study, children aged two to four were given a task to work together for a reward, and boys used physical tactics 50 times more than girls, she says.

But Swedish gender equality consultant Kristina Henkel says Pop’s parents' experiment might have positive results.

“If the parents are doing this because they want to create a discussion with other adults about why gender is important, then I think they can make a point of it,” Henkel says in a telephone interview with The Local.

“You can talk about there being a non-stereotypical gender; if you are a girl you can do the same as a boy, and if you’re a boy you can do the same as a girl.”

Henkel also says a child's sex can deeply affect how they are treated growing up, and distract them from simply being a human being.

“If the child is dressed up as a girl or boy, it affects them because people see and treat them in a more gender-typical way,” Henkel explains.

“Girls are told they are cute in their dresses, and boys are told they are cool with their car toys. But if you give them no gender they will be seen more as a human or not a stereotype as a boy or girl.”

She says that without these gender stereotypes, children can build character as individuals, not hindered by preconceived notions of what they should be as males or females.

“I think that can make these kids stronger,” Henkel says.

Anna Nordenström, a paediatric endocrinologist at Karolinska Institutet, says it’s hard to know what effects the parents' decision will have on Pop.

“It will affect the child, but it’s hard to say if it will hurt the child,” says Nordenström, who studies hormonal influences on gender development.

“I don’t know what they are trying to achieve. It’s going to make the child different, make them very special.”

She says if Pop is still ‘genderless’ by the time he or she starts school, Pop will certainly receive a lot of attention from classmates.

“We don’t know exactly what determines sexual identity, but it’s not only sexual upbringing,” says Nordenström. “Gender-typical behaviour, sexual preferences and sexual identity usually go together. There are hormonal and other influences that we don’t know that will determine the gender of the child.”

Both Nordenström and Pinker refer to a controversial case from 1967 when a circumcision left one of two twin brothers without a penis. Dr. John Money, who asserted that gender was learned rather than innate, convinced the parents to raise 'David' as 'Brenda' and the child had cosmetic genitalia reconstruction surgery.

She was raised as a female, with girls’ clothes, games and codes of behaviour. The parents never told Brenda the secret until she was a teenager and rebelled against femininity. She then started receiving testosterone injections and underwent another genetic reconstruction process to become David again. David Reimer denounced the experiment as a crushing failure before committing suicide at the age of 38.

“I don’t think that trying to keep a child’s sex a secret will fool anyone, nor do I think it’s wise or ethical,” says Pinker. “As with any family secret, when we try to keep an elemental truth from children, it usually blows up in the parent’s face, via psychosomatic illness or rebellious behaviour.”

But with a second child on the way, Pop's parents have no plans to change what they see as a winning formula. As for Pop, they say they will only reveal the child's sex when Pop thinks it's time.

[Soft*Silver]

omg. I cannot believe they would raise a child with no gender. The power and courage of being human lies in the self acceptance of who we are. To cut thru the primative cultural trappings, go beyond the stereotypes of religion and family, to look into the mirror, that great obsidion mirror and see who we are...that is part of the journey of our evolution, to discover what we are not, as well as what we are.

A child's first few years establish the vase of persona that the body will express for the remainder of its existance. To devoid it of any gender, sets it apart from the rest of its species. How did they not see that by trying to not trap this child in a stereotype that they literally snapped off its connection to the rest of us? Pop stands alone. It could create an ego manical personality as well as a totally isolated and fragmentally alone human being.

Again, in theory this sounds like it would work. In their passion, they are myopic and hopefully nieve and innocent about the developmental damage this could do to POP. In reality, POP stands alone. And in a vast universe, this creates an inflated sense of self as well as a very lonely sense of self.

If we want to war against the stereotypes of gender characteristic assignments, then offer it all to a child and tell them they are not limited.

This just sickens me....feminism at its worst....IMO only....

[greeneyedgrrl]

Originally Posted by HowSoonIsNow

Ads for a FL Martial Arts Academy:





http://copyranter.blogspot.com/2010/...tle-cross.html

can i just say i absolutely effin love those picks! who'd wanna stop that??

[Fancy]

I showed this version to my son....he loves dancing to Beyonce (and Janet Jackson).

Originally Posted by Gemme

Nice. Oversexualizing at an early age. When people get upset about the statistics for teen pregnancy, someone should show them this.

This may be the bitch in me speaking, but it would have been better with gay boys. That one girl was all over the place.

[betenoire]

Originally Posted by Freckle-K

I showed this version to my son....he loves dancing to Beyonce (and Janet Jackson).

omg, that's so hot. I got a little bit tingly in my bottom

[~baby~doll~]

In a society which is rife with gender stereotypes and biases, children regularly learn to adopt gender roles which are not always fair to both sexes. As children move through childhood and into adolescence, they are exposed to many factors which influence their attitudes and behaviors regarding gender roles. These attitudes and behaviors are generally learned first in the home and are then reinforced by the child's peers, school experience, and television viewing. However, the strongest influence on gender role development seems to occur within the family setting, with parents passing on, both overtly and covertly, to their children their own beliefs about gender. This overview of the impact of parental influence on gender role development leads to the suggestion that an androgynous gender role orientation may be more beneficial to children than strict adherence to traditional gender roles.

http://gozips.uakron.edu/~susan8/parinf.htm

We are assigned these roles before we get home and are expected by tradition to adapt and follow what has gone before us.
Melissa says in her song Gotta Go Now

Women can work
As long as dinner is done
And if you let little girls play with trucks
Their sexuality gets all screwed up
This is so the truth about being forced into expectations rather than allowing us to be who we are.

[Ginger]

Every time we reach for an article of clothing to get dressed in the morning we're making a decision based on countless considerations; some conscious, some unconscious. It isn't possible to dress in a neutral way.

As adults on this site supporting the butch/femme identity, our clothes might be seen to send signals as to our sexual preference.

I don't dress "like a femme" because I'm supporting the binary gendering of girls in childhood. But some might interpret it that way.

I also don't dress this way because I'm sending a message to butch women, though that's a perk I guess.

So why do I affect a stereotypically feminine appearance (if you don't look too closely)?

Can't even begin to answer that one right now. But good thread! I like the questions it brings up.

[Nat]

I saw this posted on facebook - no idea if it's a true story or not, but it's cute.

[puddin']

i was kicked out of ballet, not girl enough.
i was kicked out of girl scouts, not girl enough.
i neva wanted to be girl enough, so thank you vera much...

[Greyson]

I think each and everyone of us are impacted by the stereotyping of gender markers. Can children really make an informed decision on many things? Most likely some can and some cannot. (BTW, it depends on one's interpretation of "informed".)

Here is an article/link I ran across today. For better or for worse this camp for young genderqueer cis-boys, I think is a step forward. There is a space where they are free to express their gender without harsh retribution, judgement.

Here is another link on a blog that offers some comment, thought to as the why and how of it in gender expression of genderqueer children.

http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2012/...on-better-hed/

__________________________________________________ _______

A Boys' Camp to Redefine Gender

By David Rosenberg | Posted Monday, July 15, 2013

Over the past three years, photographer Lindsay Morris has been documenting a four-day camp for gender nonconforming boys and their parents.

Although it is unknown if the kids at the camp will eventually identify as gay or transgender—or even if the way gender and sexuality are defined throughout society will evolve—the camp allows the kids to look at themselves in a completely different way.

Read More:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/behold/20...lugin_activity

[Sheridan]

As a little kid I fought against those that tried to make me a little cute girl. I would ask my mother for boy toys and she let me have them. If I was given dolls I played superheroes and cops and robbers with them not house and barbie dream house (my dolls were GI-Janes). My favorite things were my toy cars and trucks, my bicycle, and stuff animals (which every gender in childhood love, they are soft and cuddly). I would not wear girlie clothes and if someone tried to stick me in pink and ruffles, I threw a total fit.

This kid is my hero: