So far, baby-having has been pretty damn awesome with only a few minor niggles, the main one so far (other than breast-feeding) being our gender-neutral approach. We knew that not telling people M’s sex would be a bit contentious, but hadn’t realised that our biggest opponent would be… my mother. Having gleefully ignored my statements during pregnancy (as she ignores so much of what I say), she shouted at us both in the hospital the day after birth, accusing me of being dishonest for not telling her what we were going to do, and has continued to be unpleasant ever since by deliberately acting against our requests and outing M to everyone she can.
As of this past weekend, she has kicked it up to another level. She is now refusing to see the baby at all until we stop using pronouns such as “they” and “it” to refer to M. She has also accused us of child abuse & repeatedly insists (despite me telling her that she’s clearly misunderstood) that she knows what we’re doing and it’s “disgusting”. She’s pretty obstinate at the best of times, so I can’t really see her apologising any time ever.
So, I don’t think we’re going to be seeing much of her for a while.
My father, meanwhile, has simply refused to take an interest in my “nonsense” by just arbitrarily assigning M a sex & a pronoun of his choosing. I refrain from correcting him & we continue on our merry way.
I have no hope of getting either of my parents to change their minds, but we’ve decided to write a short statement for other relatives & interested friends to try & explain the situation to people who haven’t really thought about gender. It was surprisingly hard! We’d appreciate thoughts & suggestions to make it even more comprehensible. I decided against using references as I didn’t want to make it an academic exercise, but thought the included image might be helpful, unless anyone can suggest a better visual aid. We’ve been rather tired so do please tell us if any of this doesn’t make sense!
“Dear all,
You may wonder why we’re talking to you about our baby’s gender and indeed, in an ideal world this is a conversation which shouldn’t need to happen. That would certainly be our preference. But clearly that is not the case. We have therefore decided to clarify our views & intentions on this subject.
As you may already know, our baby, M, was born on 8th Feb 2013. Long before M’s birth, we had decided that it was very important to us for the sake of their healthy development that M’s gender identity should be as much as possible a product of their personality, not something imposed on them externally. We therefore decided to take what we call a gender-flexible approach to parenting. Gender identity is not the same as sex or orientation – please see the diagram below for a brief overview of the differences.
It probably doesn’t really matter whether gender identity (by which we mean behaviour & expressions, not biological features) is innate, socially constructed or a mix of both; what matters is that it is personal and cannot be determined simply by examining physical characteristics such as chromosomes or genitals. We wish M to be able to be true to their own gender expression, not to feel compelled to present what they think others wish to see. To this end, we are trying to use gender-neutral pronouns for them and to ensure they are given as wide a range of choices in everything as we can manage. The matter of pronouns may seem unnecessarily inflexible but we think it is a good discipline to get into as a matter of habit, because all of us have unconscious biases around sex & gender. Language is a very strong influence on our behaviour. We appreciate that this is not easy, especially if you’re not used to gender-neutral language, so many thanks in advance for your efforts, they are greatly appreciated.
What this means in practice: We would greatly appreciate it if you could avoid treating M as a specifically ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’ baby for now, but just treat them as a baby. Please therefore refrain from referring to M’s assigned sex as much as possible if you know it, and please absolutely avoid doing so in front of others who may not know it. M will, no doubt, make their preferences clear as they develop. Behaviours to avoid include, but are not limited to: expecting that M will wear clothing in specific colours or designs – eg pink princesses, blue footballers, fairies, military-style camouflage; expecting M to play with specific toys or games exclusively (although a balance is most welcome – dinosaurs as well as dolls, teddy bears as well as toy trains); building M up with ideas that particular subjects, activities, sports or careers are not for them to enjoy; giving M the impression that they should only express certain kinds of emotion.
What this doesn’t mean: preventing M from behaving in particular (gendered) ways that they enjoy, or limiting their choices except when we consider something potentially harmful (like any other parent) ; raising M without any gender identity at all (we’re just not rushing it – children commonly start expressing their particular gender identities before the age of 4); forcing M to confirm to our own ideas of gender; punishing M for expressing “traditional” gendered behaviour.
We realise this is an unusual approach to take, but it is not unique and we do not believe it will be harmful; quite the opposite, we wish to reduce the demonstrable harm that rigid gender roles create. Like any parents, we aim to support & protect M in life and hope we can count on your future support with all of this. We are happy to discuss this further if you have any further questions.
Thank you.”
Hunter Not The Hunted 
Oh lord…much sympathy about the parental dispute. It must feel awful I hope you have plenty of support around you.
I think the letter and gingerbread man pic are both well worded and presented. Whilst we did not raise our children as gender neutral we did insist on challenging gender roles and any gendered behaviour around them. THis does seem to upset some people, far more than you would ever imagine. A quick example, painting the youngest’ s toe and finger nails because he was watching me and wanted to. His grandfather went ballistic and we too were accused of child abuse.
The thing is though it works…even to the degree we did it i see the boys being happy with their gender(so far, and comfortable with the idea of transexuality, intersex and non binary genders), with a variety of ways of expressing it, less homophobic than many of their peers and more comfortable with discussions of non hetronormative behaviour. I hope that this will mean as they explore their sexuality/gender expression they will be saved many of the problems society imposes.
I think M can only benifit from your stance.
Thank you. That is all. Much support.
Well done on the approach and the way you have explained it to others. You’ve acknowledged that this will be difficult for them and have presented enough (not too much) information to assist.
It baffles me how many people don’t get it and actually get horridly offended by the idea. My own niece replied to a tweet of mine about gendered baby clothing with a comment along the lines of “how will people know how to treat them if they’re not dressed the right way”. Sadly, I found it impossible to explain everything that was wrong with that comment in a series of tweets and simply gave up :-(
I hope you have more luck. As jemima101 says, M can only benefit from this.
Good luck to you all. I have to admit the main thing stopping me trying gender neutrality beyond birth was the lack of any gender-neutral names I liked – I’m assuming your baby has a name longer than M?
Though I can see the attraction of a one-letter name, after the fab characters played by Judi Dench and various men!
With B, having to explain to A as much as possible about being pregnant meant we referred to her by name and as his sister, until he got upset because his friends had baby brothers at their houses. So we started only mentioning getting a baby, which he was fine with. And still dotes on the baby a year on.
He finally said he was a boy about when he was 4, and also started to play only with boys in his class, but that’s likely to be as there’s only 10 there and he’s known 3 boys for years, whereas the other 6 kids are all nearly a year younger. The girls he used to be close to went to school this year. Will be interesting to see what happens when he gets 29 classmates.
I am impressed with your approach; I thought about going gender-neutral while I was pregnant but decided in the end it would be too hard. I did refuse to find out what bits my baby had until it was born though. I’m sorry your family are being so unsupportive.
I’m sorry your parents in general and your mother in particular are being so obstinate and hurtful. I can’t help but think the least bad way forward is to just leave her out of M’s life unless/until she comes around and realises that M is your child, not hers, and that normal sensible people respect parents’ wishes when it comes to their children. :/ I mean, she’s been verbally abusive of you and has deliberately tried to sabotage a perfectly sensible decision that you’ve made, and if she’s now gone and declared she won’t see M unless you parent in a way that is acceptable to her (which by the way is utterly ridiculous and totally way out of line), then quite frankly, no grandchild for her IMNSHO. :P
Regarding the letter:
I think you can remove the first paragraph, since it probably only makes sense after reading the rest of the letter (assuming the target audience hasn’t been exposed to much if anything beyond the conventional gender binary).
You may also want to skip the next line about M’s birth, and start the letter with “Long before our baby M was born, we decided… [etc.]” since my hindbrain’s knee-jerk reaction to reading a letter I know will be about about a baby’s gender and a paragraph opening with said baby’s birth was to go “oh gods was it born with HALF A PENIS‽” (Thanks, uncivilised hindbrain; you can be useful sometimes.) I think the fact that you decided how you wanted to raise M well before they were born is important, and a nice way to start such a letter. (And only partly because it hopefully stops people reacting with “It’s because they were born with freaky genitals isn’t it! Can’t you just get surgery for that?”)
Depending on how strongly you feel about it, you may wish to remove “for the sake of their healthy development” and just leave it as “we had decided that it was very important that M’s gender identity should be as much as possible a product of their personality… [etc.]”. Emphasising that you’re doing this because you want your baby to develop healthily may suggest to the more tetchy and sensitive reader that doing it any other way is ZOMG UNHEALTHY. (And I wonder if part of the reason your mother has reacted in such a hostile way is because she feels threatened by someone else choosing to raise a child in a way that is different to the way she raised hers.)
You may also want to expand “sex or orientation” to “biological sex or sexual orientation”; I spent a couple clock cycles working out which definition of the word “sex” was being used there, and it’s only a couple of extra words for hopefully extra clarity.
I’m a bit of a noob, but regarding the next paragraph, I thought gender identity was how someone thought of themselves, and not necessarily how they behaved and expressed themselves (that being gender expression)? Of course, those distinctions may be one too many for an audience that is presumably encountering such concepts for the first time.
I’m not convinced the Genderbread diagram is terribly enlightening to anyone who hasn’t already encountered most of the terms used therein. It’s a useful quick visual reference for people with at least a passing familiarity with genderbendage, but for anyone who’s only just been introduced to the idea that the world is much broader and more complex than “well, what has it got between its legs?”, the diagram is far too brief and probably makes no sense. (I mean, is the hypothetical reader likely to know what two-spirit means? I’m not even sure I know what it means, for that matter.) I think a very brief paragraph summing up the various different aspects of a person’s genderosity might be more useful to the uninitiated, e.g.: “Biological sex is a combination of biological markers which usually (but don’t always!) cluster around one of two possibilities, male or female. Gender identity is to do with how a person thinks of themselves: whether they think of themselves as a boy or man, or as a girl or woman (or both or neither of the above!). Gender expression is to do with how they express themselves: what clothes they wear, how they do their hair, how they move and speak, and so on. Sexual orientation indicates which genders a person is attracted to. All of these things exist on a spectrum – they’re not always just one or the other – and they can all vary from person to person.” Something like that. And then maybe the diagram might make more sense, if you decide you want to keep it in.
Again, to reduce possible anxiety-driven negative reactions from readers, you might want to amend the first line of the last paragraph to make it less about the harm of rigid gender roles (which is trufax but may not be the most tactful way to introduce alternatives to potentially curmudgeonly relatives) and make it more about happy rainbow babies, something like: “We realise this is an unusual approach to take, but we are not unique in choosing to raise a baby in this way, and we do not believe it will be harmful; quite the opposite, we hope this will allow M as much freedom as possible to discover their identity for themselves.”
Hope that makes some sense and is vaguely helpful at least!
(ETA: Hm, maybe I should have written “Biological sex is a combination of biological features” instead of “markers” since I imagine the former might be more easily parsed by a non-tech-talky audience.)