Judith Butler believes that “ the distinction between sex and gender serves the argument that whatever biological intractability sex appears to have, gender is socially constructed; hence, gender is neither the causal result of sex nor as seemingly fixed as sex.” In other words the gender that we perform is not static, it is learned and can be changed or performed differently from the sex we were born as. Gender performance is learned from a young age, we learn how girls and boys are supposed to act and dress from the media, our parents and our peers.
After reading Butler’s essay I remembered a news story that I read a while back about a couple from Toronto who had a baby that they named Storm, but they weren’t going to disclose the sex of the baby to anyone. They wanted to raise a genderless baby. The parents wanted to let Storm make his/her own decisions about what he/she wanted to wear how he/she wanted to act or perform. There was a lot of outrage from parents and experts on this story. Most people said that Storm’s parents were messing their child up psychologically by not telling him/her what gender he/she is. This story provides an example of how gender is learned and can be fluid in its performance. Baby Storm has the freedom of being himself/herself and doesn’t have to worry about performing gender correctly. Although I’m not sure if the choice that these parents have made is the most ethical I think that it would be interesting to see how Storm turns out.
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/baby-storm-raised-genderless-gender-dangerous-experiment-child/story?id=13693760#.T35hLHgh9UQ
The ungendered baby was a first statement people were making that gender should not matter. We are too gender oriented and should not be like that. As we look at our current society, we see that everything is gender oriented and nothing beyond that. As we grow, we should not do this. It causes a divide that is uncurable in this society. Gender is not important, it is the person that is doing this that we should judge.
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