Is it a boy or a girl?

One of the first things people ask expecting parents is it a boy or girl?

We live in an age where we can find out..

Hmmm... well we can find out what the doctor based on her/his experience & understanding of human anatomy believes the child's sex at birth will be. (Remember assigned sex at birth does not equal gender identity)

A question I have is:   Why do we want to know this?

Watch this video:

Notice the characteristics you started to assign at the beginning of the video.

It's my humble opinion one of the reasons we desperately want to identity the person's gender (before they even leave the womb) is so we know how to interact with them, how to think about them, what to expect of them....  Basically we want to make sure we know what well worn stereotypes should be heaped on them so we can continue to function as we always had.

Whatever would we do without the stereotypes???

Well maybe we should think about that... we are basing a lot off of ASSIGNED SEX AT BIRTH which might be very different than the individual's gender identity...

Here are some statistics snatched from Intersex Society of American (http://www.isna.org)

Bodies are unique. According to these stats 1 individual in a 100 people differ from the standard "male or female body". We're driven as a society not to deviate from the pack to the point we subject infants to surgery. 1-2 persons out of 1000 have received surgery to "normalize" their genital appearance. Now this is not to say all surgery is unnecessary but it raises the question. (We can discuss all the various issues that result from these surgeries another time.)

I leave you with this thought... instead of asking the parents if it's a boy or girl I think you should ask if they have educated themselves on issues around having a child fall outside the spectrum? Advocates for Informed Consent are helping parents and doctors to take a more measured approach: WAIT!!! Get the facts. Allow the child to be part of the conversation... after all it's their body. (http://aiclegal.org)

Hugs, Z.