We get asked that a lot, “Boy or girl?”
I was getting tired of it, and had come to a resolution:
I’m done answering people when they ask if Emma is a girl or a boy. I am just going to shrug. If they press me, I am going to accuse them of being a pervert. We’ll see how far that gets me.
I didn’t call anyone a pervert, but I did try shrugging. I figured that was a polite reaction to something I deem culturally unacceptable. I got away with it a couple of times. The person seemed to either understand the inappropriateness of their inquery, or much more likely, they understood that I wasn’t going to answer.
It wasn’t long, of course, before someone started pushing.
“You don’t know if it is a girl or a boy, and you are holding it?”
What an odd question, on many levels. “This is my baby, it is okay”, was all I could think to reply.
“You don’t know?”
I replied honestly, “I do know, it just isn’t something that…”
“You’re an asshole!”
So, there is that. It was unfortuante, and it bothered me. Not because I was particularly offended or hurt by it. I just like solving problems, and I see this as one.
Baby gentitals
This comes up because we believe, “[that] the whole world must know what is between the baby’s legs is unhealthy, unsafe, and voyeuristic“.
If the phrase “baby gentitals” doesn’t sound like a polite topic of discussion to you, then you are getting a sense of what parents with a new child deal with non-stop while in public. I amuse myself by wondering if those same people would ask about gentitals of a person that didn’t exude gender identity (as per their hetero-normative definition of such).
I don’t have to quote the research that shows how people treat babies differently based on their sex; it is apparent to anyone listening to adults talk about how pretty a little princess will be, or how strong and good at sports a little boy will be.
My basic issue with such musings is that it limits the potential of a sentient being, while reinforcing, by means of communicative media (culture, language, etc.) role assignment that is not based on the actual circumstances of humans. We do not need to be pretty or good at sports; we need to be self-reflective and good communicators, unburdened by assumptions.
Switching up tactics
On the way home from a cafe just now, a neighborhood person walked by as we were waiting for a crosswalk signal to turn in our favor.
“Is that a boy or a girl?”
Smiling, I turned to em and replied, “It is just our baby.”
“Sheesh, I just asked if it was a boy or a girl.”
“I’m not offended by the question, everything is cool.”
“Whatever dude!”, came the over-the-shoulder reply.
I yelled after em (across the street), “Wait! Why are you offended?”
I didn’t get a reply to that, so I am still perplexed. I think it is not so much the challenging of that particular assumption, but rather just because it is a challenge. Susan believes that people think of themselves as going out of their way to be polite, and are thusly offended at the response that diverts their attention. At any rate, until I get to the bottom of the cause(s), I need new tactics to deal with these interactions.
One thought is to pretend they are just asking , “How’s it going?”
“Fine. Thanks for asking!” Smile.
“No, I said is it a boy or a girl.”
“Oh, nothing much, same old same old. And you?”
Another idea is to explain that in my culture we avoid such topics of conversation. If asked which culture that is, I would just deflect it with, “oh, it is kinda hard to explain.”
My preferred method would be to explain to them how I feel about gender, sex, role assignment and language, but despite how wonderful that is, it also seems to piss people off the most, as well.
Any ideas on this?
I think it would be wrong to suggest that there’s anything perverted in asking. The best single-sentence I can come up with off the cuff is, “I don’t like to perpetuate gender roles.” Direct, but not confrontational. I’m sure some people will still be offended, but for those people you’re just not going to get around the issue with anything short of says “She’s a girl.”
Or, if you’re in the mood to troll, you could say “Hermaphrodite.” and stare blankly… :)
I don’t know what my friends with babies do with the general public, but among the friend group we acknowledge that the kids have biological sex (one is male and one female), but don’t yet have gender and we don’t know which gender they’ll have (or create). So maybe another possible response for you, if you want to skip the first part, is to say “I think you’re asking me about gender, and we don’t believe that Emma has a gender yet.” If you get a followup question, “I don’t know, and don’t want to limit the options by discussing that” might work.
Jason, have you read up on the word pervert? It is neat. In common usage,I don’t think of anyone as being capable of sexual perversion; you are either assaulting someone, or it is consensual. But I joked about that because I presume some people would be taken aback at being called one (perhaps the same kind that would press me).
And considering the “hermaphrodite” tactic, it really makes me wonder if people ever say, “both” or “neither” or “all”.
So, those suggestions are great, Jason and Alexis.
Here is a further discussion tangent: are people asking about gender, or sex? This is one of those things that I don’t have direct access to, because I don’t ask for either when I meet parents of babies. I normally ask their name, so I may have something to refer to them as, and then inquire as to the well-being of the parents if I care, or I feel like being polite.
My assumptions have been that adult humans know that babies don’t have gender, and what I am trying to prevent is people assigning gender based on sex. Based on your responses, it seems that many people don’t distinguish between the two (gender and sex).
Hmmm.
Well, I think it would be strong to say that people don’t distinguish between the two, since most people could articulate a difference if pressed. What you need to keep in mind is that the use of “boy,” “girl,” “male,” “female,” and so on, are not precisely restricted in colloquial speech. A single person in some circumstances might mean sex, in others gender, but often it will be something of a blur of the two (when instantly inferring gender from sex).
I think it’s safe to say that no one (or close to it…) is directly interested in whether it has a penis or a vagina, but rather with the properties and roles they associate with each. You can test this out. If you answer “Boy.” you’ll hear things like, “Boys are fun, but they sure will tire you out!”, contrasted with things like “Aww, girls are so sweet, but you’ll have your hands full when she’s a teenager!” What you won’t get is people asking follow-up questions about his testicles or her labia.
So, I think your assumption is right: most adult humans do know that babies don’t have gender. When they ask if its a boy or a girl, they’re usually interested in /future/ gender in accord with their narrow conceptions.
A better way of dealing with the situations now occurs to me: Ask, “Are you curious about the sex, or about the gender?” Their thoughts were no doubt swimming around future gender, but they’ll be confronted with the fact that babies don’t have gender leaving them with nothing but sex to be curious about… which should make them feel a bit awkward, and hopefully notice their tendency to immediately infer gender from sex.
I am going to try that! That is a pretty concise way to get to what they mean. I will report my results. ^_^
Another option: [tilt head a bit] “This is Emma, but I don’t think babies have genders.”
I hope (but not really) you get a chance to experience the animostity people muster, and how quick it is, when they are challenged on this.
The “neighborhood person” I mentioned above, they are a regular at the Bread Workshop, and used to loan video games to Justin. Ey and I were on very good terms. I was taken aback by their reaction.
I am definitely going to try to temper my own reaction with your suggestions, but d00d, it is crazy to be on this end of the interaction!
In other news, the nesting of comments in this WordPress theme is cute, but after a while these replies get really narrow. ^_^
Well, I don’t have qualms with gender pronouns, so I won’t experience it on this particular issue. That is until I get curious and start answering in these sorts of ways — for science! Now I just need to find a baby…
[Apparently comments don't get any more narrow than this, though. I have to reply to my own post.]
Here’s my hypothesis: they don’t have to call the baby “it”, because babies are animate, and it’s insulting to call something that is animate an “it” (since “it” is reserved for inanimate, or perhaps more specifically, un- or sub-human things. Like, on the playground: “tag! you’re it!” == “you lost/were caught, now everyone else will run away from you!” even in play. Or when kids use the word “it” instead of “sex” (or any other taboo word) cuz they’re afraid of uttering the word “sex”).
Why I think of this hypothesis: when passing a human with a dog on the street, I say, “Hi! What’s your name?” to the dog, and fully expect the human to tell me their name (which sometimes opens up a friendly conversation, like, “and she’s 14 years old!” or something). Then I can either say “he” or “she” if it’s obvious, or, if not, I call the dog by its name, and say “rocket is so cute!” I realized that I asked the name partly to find out its gender so that I don’t have to say “it”, and I even pretend I’m talking to the dog to avoid saying “what’s its name?”.
So I guess it’s because babies, like dogs, make people want to talk to you (maybe they make them smile, maybe it’s humanness to be joyful around new life/babby, etc), but before they can talk to you about babby, they need to know whether to call it a “he” or a “she” because calling it “it” is wrong.
That doesn’t explain why they get so mad, though. Maybe (and I’m reaching haha) they can’t accept the idea of a person without knowing whether the person is a he or a she, because American English doesn’t have a gender-free pronoun. So it’s like integrated really strongly into our sense of what a person is.
In Mandarin Chinese, you say “ta” to mean both “he” and “she” … BUT I would say the gender differences embedded in chinese culture society is even worse. I wonder if random people on the street in China also ask, is it a boy or a girl, or if they don’t, because they are satisifed with calling it “ta”. (Side note: there is a way to distinguish between a boy “ta” and a girl “ta” in WRITING, but it’s optional, and they still sound the same. Isn’t it confusing?)
Ramon told me about these studies in Japan on pronouns. Apparently (and you may know more about this than me) there are different-gender pronouns, and different ways to say “i” based on the seniority of the person you’re talking to and stuff. So the study was on Japanese women and which word they used for “I” under which circumstances. One of the findings was that when the women were in a room by themselves, talking into a tape recorder, they would use the masculine “I” pronoun that like a male CEO would use or something. And this was supposed to illustrate something about the concept of self. I don’t know, sociolinguistics is hard. I’m gonna have to ask him more about that to talk about it haha. But I think it’s fascinating.
Re: babies and dogs: Maria Bamford has a really short bit that goes, “I was walking down the street and I saw a woman with a baby in a stroller, and I said, “how much does your baby weigh?” and she said “15 pounds” and I said “oh that’s how much my dog weighs!” And she said “yeah. that’s a dog, and THIS is a BABY.” And I’m like… “ah knoooow… ah just wanted to know how much your baby weighed….”
It’s a lot funnier when she says it, but I can’t find a clip for you right now. Haha.