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? (more…)