Raising a Genderless Child
What I watched: THEY by Louisa Rechenbach, Producer and Director. Posted in 2019.
In so many ways, we live in a binary world. Designating people as male or female is part of that binary thinking, and it’s often outdated.
I’d be the first to admit that once upon a time I would have rejected non-binary thinking when it came to sex or gender. Old ideas can be difficult to change. I was raised in a starkly binary world when the thought of a non-binary or genderless person was unthinkable. Times change. We learn. We grow. Well, hopefully we grow.
Along the journey of my decades-long LGBTQ activism I have grown past my gay male centric view to embrace the entire gay, lesbian, bisexual, and trans spectrum of experiences and identities. Nowadays the word queer is increasingly used to encompass the entirety of that spectrum and it’s the word I tend to use most often.
However, there are always new frontiers, for society and for me. Learning about and understanding the nuances of the non-binary and how binary standards constrict us in unnecessary ways has been an important part of my growth.
The short video produced and directed by Louisa Rechenbach documents the trials and tribulations, along with the significant joys, of raising a child without gender. The parents are Hobbit Humphrey and Jake England-Johns and their child is Anoush. Humphrey and England-Johns decided to raise their child with a gender-neutral approach until such time as their child decides to choose their own identity, whatever that identity might end up being.
Doing this is not easy. Family members are confused. Strangers express discomfort. But to the parents’ credit, they are sticking to their plan. I believe their child will grow up with a better sense of who they are in the world than if the societal expectations of gender were foisted upon them from birth.
Humphrey expresses why using the non-binary they/them pronouns is important.
By referring to Anoush as they/them, I get to see Anoush as Anoush. And every time I think of them to be the sex that I know them to be, my whole idea of who they are changes and that’s my unconscious bias.
England-Johns acknowledges that the cultural landscape that allows them to pursue the raising of their child in this manner is only possible because of the work of activists and thought leaders who have paved the way for the acceptance of the non-binary.
As someone in a heteronormative-looking relationship, we have to acknowledge that we only get to use them/them as a pronoun on the back of all of the work that the LGBTQ+ community has already put into the activism and the time that they have put in to bring that word into the common usage.
The parents are fully aware that the time may come when their child decides for themselves how they want to identify, if they want to navigate the world with a gender or not.
By the time Anoush is old enough to be in social situations, Anoush will be well-equipped to deal with those conversations. I think they’ll probably have decided something for themselves. They may continue to use the them/them pronoun in which case, yeah, we have some work to do.
I’m not going to say anything else about this beautiful, short documentary. I’ll let it speak for itself. It’s only 12 minutes long and well worth your viewing time. Maybe it will broaden your worldview as it has mine.
Note: I must acknowledge where I first saw this video, The joys and complications of raising a baby without gender in a binary world.
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