Remember all the whoopla a few months back about Storm, a Toronto baby whose parents decided to keep his gender under wraps? Well, another couple managed to keep mum about their child Sasha's gender for five years. They have, just now, revealed he's a he.
Sasha was referred to simply as "The Infant" by parents Beck Laxton, 46, and partner Kieran Cooper, 44 in the hopes that its 'real' personality would shine through.
Sasha only played with so-called 'gender-neutral' toys, and wore both girls' and boys' clothes. It was only when he started primary school that the cat came out of the bag, so to speak, as his masculinity was harder to conceal.
"I wanted to avoid all that stereotyping," said Beck, a web editor. "Stereotypes seem fundamentally stupid. Why would you want to slot people into boxes? Gender affects what children wear and what they can play with, and that shapes the kind of person they become."
Beck goes on to explain that in her own family gender roles were skewed with her mother being "very sporty" and her dad crying over The Wizard of Oz. Clearly she must have felt this reversal caused a degree of shame or limitation in the outside world.
The British couple was so keen to avoid harmful stereotyping, they only revealed Sasha's gender to immediate family members.
In the process, though, she became stereotyped herself, as "the loony woman who doesn't know whether her baby is a boy or a girl."
She claims as a result of her decision she and The Infant were excluded from play dates. Apparently Beck encouraged her son to play with dolls and wear flowery tops in order to hide his masculinity. So isn't that precluding his natural instinct? You have to wonder who she was doing the experiment for, Sasha or herself?
"I just want him to fulfill his potential, and I wouldn't push him in any direction. As long as he has good relationships and good friends, then nothing else matters, does it?
Is going gender neutral helpful or hurtful to a young child, assuming that he or she will eventually need to fit into a very engendered world?
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