Remember Baby Storm, whose sex was under wraps from the world back in 2011? Well, five years on the gender experiment that shocked the world has come to fruition. And Storm has chosen.
At the time, raising a 'gender neutral' child was considered scandalous to most parents. Today, not so much.
Toronto couple Kathy Witterick and David Stocker had good intentions - to let their third child decide which gender it wanted to identify with, without the influence or persuasion of a highly gendered society. They took their cues from The Gender Book, which allows kids to map out their gender 'journey.'
Though the other Stocker-Witterick children, 10 year-old Jazz and 7 year-old Kio, were also free to choose their gender, it was Storm who garnered the media's attention all over the word after the couple refused to reveal Storm's sex after birth.
These days Storm goes by 'she,' while her siblings and parents respectively go by pronouns from 'he' and 'they.' Granted, such gender fluidity may seem extreme, and it's not for everyone.
Yet it doesn't account for the vitriol directed at the family when Storm's story went viral. After all, it's just another parenting choice, like the decision to keep the kids out of the mainstream education for the time being.
While the Stocker-Wittericks family values may seem radical, many of us are already carrying out a watered-down approach to gender in our own homes - by letting our kids have more of a say in the clothes and hairstyles they wear, the toys they play with, and the activities they join.
And that is undeniable progress.
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