Straight people are alllllways stealing queer shit. The latest example is a recent article in New York Magazine about a "new" trend of raising children to be gender-neutral. Queer folks have been doing this for years (with mixed results), but the basic idea is that there are no gender reveal parties, no boy names or girl names, no pink or blue outfits, etc. Instead, kids are raised without gender designations at all. You don't even tell people what sex they are. They aren't babies; they are "theybies."

Here's a passage from the piece, which was written by Alex Morris:

The couple crafted an email to friends and family explaining their decision and asking them to disregard any sex revelations they’d shared. They set up dinners with their parents to answer questions and try to allay concerns. They looked for a midwife who would be willing to not register a gender and began researching how and if they could apply for a birth certificate without one listed. Before their baby shower, Fleishman sent an email saying, “The greatest gift you could give me would be practicing the pronouns.” How could she say whether the fetus growing inside her was a boy or a girl (or neither or both)? It was clear to her that sex (which is medically assigned) and gender (which is how someone identifies) were two different things. “We wouldn’t tell somebody else how they should identify or who they should be or what they are,” McCullough points out. The baby stirs, and he pats their tiny back. “I’ve definitely had thoughts like, Why isn’t everybody doing this?”

Because it's dumb? I realize it's against the rules to judge the way other people parent, but there's a much easier solution than nonconsensually forcing your kid to be the only one at daycare who goes by "they." Ready? Here goes: Raise children without rigid gender roles. It's really pretty simple. Don't tell girls they can't play baseball. Don't tell boys they can't take dance. Let girls have short hair and boys have long hair, and let them wear whatever the fuck they want. Let them grow up to choose if they want to be a he or she or they or we. But by "rejecting" the concept of gender entirely, these parents are actually just re-enforcing it. They are saying, if my male child doesn't like "boy" stuff, he must not be a boy, and if my female child doesn't like "girl" stuff, she must not be a girl. "They" is a gender identity, whether these parents like it or not, and what it projects to the world is "not cis." And maybe their kids will grow up to be not cis, but when they can't even hold their heads up, it's a little too early to tell.

The evidence that gender roles are entirely bestowed on children by society isn't even clear, as Morris points out:

Yet even without human socialization, scientists have seen evidence of distinct — and distinctly gendered — toy preferences in young primates, who tend to group themselves along male-female lines. And a 2017 study found that children’s preferences for gendered toys were not much changed in countries known to be more egalitarian. There is no way to entirely untangle nature from nurture.

For gender-creative parents, however, these types of arguments are almost immaterial: The ways in which gender is constructed are so obvious that it behooves us to consider how we’re constructing it — or at least stave off its construction during the most formative early years — especially considering that gender does have real, tangible outcomes. When people ask new parents whether their child is a boy or a girl, argues Myers (who now has a doctorate in sociology focusing on population and health), they may as well be asking whether the child is more likely to develop an eating disorder (girl) or to die in a car accident (boy). “So many of the root causes of health outcomes are related to gender, not sex,” she tells me. Eliot agrees: “Given the way that every society is constructed, that gender label is probably the most important determinant of a child’s future except maybe for their family’s wealth.”

Perhaps Eliot is unfamiliar with the concept of race? Regardless, refusing to assign your children—one of whom, in this story, is named Zoomer—a gender is no more consensual than the reverse. It becomes more about the parent than the kid. As Morris wrote, "There is an element of proselytizing — if not an Über-progressive form of virtue signaling — on the part of some parents. Choosing to raise a theyby cannot help but function as a statement to the outside world."

Here's what that statement says to me: I'm special. My child is special. Unlike the rest of you. Personally, I don't think that's good for anyone—theybies or babies alike.

Anyway, read the whole thing. It's a trip.