A couple of weeks ago, and with bittersweet irony, on the day I found out that one of my favourite aunties had passed, this photo (above)

“If you must put me in a box, make sure it’s a big box. With lots of windows. And a door to walk through.” —Dan Bern

A couple of weeks ago, and with bittersweet irony, on the day I found out that one of my favourite aunties had passed, this photo (above)—cyber-bounced around my family—made my own impending aunthood a reality. So in the spirit of looking at how far we’ve come, baby, and within the real-meets-conceptual space that this genderless creature exists, I’m wondering: when, how, and why do we ascribe gender?

It seems appropriate that this photo would find a semi-permanent home on the Internet, given that it’s likely had more web-fame than most unborn babies have (can I get a fact check?). And though said fetal celebrity has been mostly confined to my family, that’s not always as simple as it sounds. (To get a glimpse of her great-grandfetus, my eighty-five-year-old grandmother, for example, had to track down her computer teacher to unlock the shared computer room* on her kibbutz, but I digress.) Once we all successfully sorted out how to get a hold of this black and white blob—the question on the tip of our tongues was, without hesitation, Is it a boy or a girl?

This instinctual question reminds me of a story from my youth called Baby X. If you’re too busy/lazy/hungry to read the story, a quick spoiler: Mom and Dad keep the gender of their baby a secret, and they socialize their wee one as parents would (traditionally) socialize both a son and a daughter. The result: confusion for pretty much everyone, aside from the family itself, who is so pleased with the result of the Baby Xperiment, that they raise their second child as—you guessed it—Baby Y.

To be frank, at age ten, I thought Baby X was just another fictional yawn. (Was I also expected to believe that James, et al, were actually inside a peach?) I preferred facts—still do. And it would take another ten or fifteen years before I realized that the absence of this kind of critical gender thinking is what’s kept me, and pretty well everyone I know, in narrowly defined boxes. Girls are easier to raise. Boys will be boys. Should we not revisit these unconscious reactions? How much thought is given to the conceptual ride that expecting parents (and their eager families and friends) embark on when a fetus’ sex is revealed? How did these even come to pass?

Rosemary Tong and Gayle Rubin suggest:

The sex/gender system is a “set of arrangements by which a society transforms biological sexuality into products of human activity.” … [our] society uses certain facts about male and female physiology (chromosomes, anatomy, hormones) as the basis for constructing “masculine” and “feminine” identities and behavior…In the process of accomplishing this ideological task patriarchal society manages to convince itself its cultural constructions are somehow “natural” and therefore that one’s “normality” depends on one’s ability to display the gender identities and behaviors society culturally links with one’s biological sex.

It seems a rather obvious explanation, but without delving into a lengthy nature vs. nurture debate, consider, as Tong does, the potential dangers in dismissing a critical analysis of the above premise:

…the followers of Talcott Parsons, an eminent sociologist, used his writings to argue that distinctions between masculine and feminine traits are biological/natural rather than cultural/artificial, and that without rigid gender dimorphism, society could not function as well as it does now. Convinced gender identities and behaviors are not “an arbitrary imposition on an infinitely plastic biological base” but rather “an adjustment to the real biological differences between the sexes,” Parsons’s disciples confidently asserted that women’s subordination to men is natural.

Since becoming a (peripheral) part of this realm of parental expectancy, I’ve noticed that from the decision to breastfeed to appropriate naming—not only does everyone have an opinion—but expecting parents are force-fed advice of all kinds. So while I’m hesitant to join in the chorus of unsolicited opinion, what I’m interested in is this: Are we deliberate about our own roles in ascribing gender? Do we consciously accept that “knowing what colour to paint the baby’s room” is a legitimate excuse to put a not-yet-socialized baby in an easily understood and conveniently contained box? Or in doing so, do we squander an incredible opportunity for meaningful musing behind a very real veil of ignorance?

* This begs the joke: “What was Stalin’s favourite bread? ……… The kind you have to wait in line for.”

Tags: baby, gender, society, women

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Posted on Thursday, August 28th, 2008 at 9:24 am. Follow comments through the RSS 2.0 feed. Comment or trackback.