Never mind 15, how about 9 or 6?
Its disgusting to see parents out there parading confused kids around as transgender, like they are able to have any clue about what that even means at that age. But if they are told over and over again by their parents, guess what they'll grow up thinking?
Child abuse in my book.
Canadian couple won’t reveal child’s gender
By Amy Graff on May 24, 2011 at 4:13 PM
Ever since the 1970s when Marlo Thomas and Friends introduced the idea of raising gender neutral kids in the Free to Be…You and Me record, parents have encouraged their boys to play with dolls and their girls to build with blocks.
A Toronto couple is taking this concept to a more controversial extreme by keeping the gender of their 4-month-old baby a secret. They have no plans to reveal whether their child named Storm is a boy or a girl. They say it will be up to Storm to deliver the news when he (or she) is old enough and ready.
A Canadian couple is keeping the gender of their 4-month-old baby under wraps. Are they helping or hurting their child?
The parents, Kathy Witterick, 38 and David Stocker, 39, hope to raise their child in a world that’s “unconstrained by social norms about males and females,” according to the Toronto Star. They want their child to freely grow into his (or her) own person and to find his (or her) true self unhindered by gender stereotypes.
Only a handful of people know whether baby Storm is a boy or a girl: the parents, of course; Storm’s brothers, Jazz, 5, and Kio, 2; a close family friend; and the two midwives who delivered Storm at home in a birthing tub.
You might assume Storm’s appearance would give the gender away but photographs posted on the Toronto Star depict a blonde-haired baby that looks no more like a boy than like a girl–there’s really no way of telling. The parents mix up the pronouns they use when referring to their child. They dress Storm in pink one day and blue the next, and often the baby is wearing gender-neutral colors like red. What’s more, Storm’s longhaired brothers are often wearing more girlish colors and they’re mistaken for females.
The parents alerted friends and family of their idea to keep Storm’s gender under wraps in an email: “We’ve decided not to share Storm’s sex for now — a tribute to freedom and choice in place of limitation, a stand up to what the world could become in Storm’s lifetime (a more progressive place? …).”
Their announcement was met with mixed reactions. The grandparents were slow to warm up to the idea. Many friends were supportive but a few were confused, even angered. Some feared that Storm would grow into a child who’s bullied by peers.
Reactions in the Internet world have been equally conflicted. Some criticize the parents for treating their child like a lab rat and others applaud their efforts to fight against societal pressures. Many point out studies indicating that male and girl behaviors are influenced by prenatal development, not only by societal pressures. They say boys will go after toys that are stereotypically male even if you push dolls on them.