Julie Bindel and Oliver James discuss the merits or otherwise of keeping a child's sex secret
Julie Bindel: Time to end our gender obsession
The reaction to the couple who have refused to announce the sex of their newborn baby highlights the way we demand that boys and girls be treated differently, despite decades of feminism. The Canadian couple have told only one friend and their two other children whether the baby, Storm, is a boy or a girl. "We've decided not to share Storm's sex for now – a tribute to freedom and choice in place of limitation," says the father. Hear, hear! As a radical feminist I want to rid the world of gender. I am sick and tired of the way people insist on socialising little girls into pink-fluffy doll-lovers, and encourage boys to adopt the worst excesses of masculinity.
Storm has two brothers who, according to the parents, make their own decisions about their lifestyle regardless of gender rules. Both have long hair, and love purple and pink respectively. Most people assume they are girls. Why? Because boys should wear blue, silly!
People regularly confuse sex with gender. Sex is the biological and physiological characteristics that define male and female. Gender is learned behaviour that society considers appropriate – a set of rules laid down to benefit men and keep women in our place. The minute we become aware of a child's sex, we police its behaviour like crazy.
Those who claim to be raising their children in a gender neutral way are fooling themselves. After the birth of her daughter, Marianne Grabrucker kept a diary in which she chronicled her child's behaviour, looking for "feminine traits". Grabrucker noted in the subsequent book based on the diary that many of her friends were in denial about raising their children to conform to gender roles, and concluded that "everything happened like a computer program set to 'girl upbringing'".
Differences between the behaviour of boys and girls are not biological truths, but modern versions of old sexist ideas about how women should behave. Science is part of culture and is itself massively influenced by sexist stereotyping. There is no such thing as a male brain and a female brain, only brainwashing. Both women and men are severely punished for stepping out of line in terms of what is seen as appropriate male and female behaviour. Go into any schoolyard and hear the taunting of boys and girls who transgress.
Storm's parents, I expect, will soon be forced to reveal the sex of their child. But for now this cute little baby can enjoy the freedom it has to simply be itself.
• Julie Bindel writes on feminist issues
Oliver James: Dismissing gender is easier said than done
There has been a grotesque overstatement of the evidence that males and females are born with different brains, as Cordelia Fine has documented in her book Delusions of Gender. The only biological certainty is that the differing sex chromosomes almost invariably result in differing reproductive kit and body shape. The most comprehensive survey of psychological differences was by Janet Shibley-Hyde, of Wisconsin University. Her meta-analysis of the 46 meta-analyses showed that in a large majority of respects (78%), psychological differences between men and women are either nonexistent or small. There is a case for not disclosing your child's gender, to protect it from stereotyping. While it might then "naturally" begin to display some of the stereotypes, at least these would be coming from the child, not imposed.
However, there are several big buts. Leave aside the most obvious one – that a child who goes into the playground as gender neutral will quickly be stigmatised. The biggest problem is that identity is hugely influenced by the projections parents make on to children and that, without these, they are liable to lack a sense of self.
It has been proven pretty conclusively that children raised in institutions are often emotionally flat. This is largely because of neglect or maltreatment, but it is also caused by the absence of parents relating to them based on attributions of who they are. As Donald Winnicott famously put it, "there is no such thing as a baby". Who a baby is depends on who the people caring for it project it to be and the way they express this through their empathic care.
An unavoidable component of the largely unconscious projections parents make towards their children is gender. Depending on their own experience of siblings and their own parents, a newborn's parents will bring all kinds of hidden assumptions to bear if told "it's a boy" rather than "it's a girl", when it pops out of the womb. Since parents cannot avoid knowing their child's gender, these will strongly influence how they relate to each child, however much they may try to override them. And for better or worse, this will enable the infant to develop a sense of self.
It is true that the gender can be concealed from visitors and strangers, at least in the early years. But the cost of doing so, and of parents attempting to ignore their own projections, could be massive confusion for the child. Identity has to come from somewhere. Gender is one of the bulwarks of social identity.
It is a fantasy to suppose every individual can find their "true self" independent of their relationship with parents and society. Unless you want the rudderless blank of an institutionalised child, accepting gender as one of the signposts for who your child is seems not only inevitable, but also desirable. Far more important than rejecting gender altogether is that parents understand their own gender-related unconscious projections.
• Oliver James is the author of How Not To F*** Them Up