Post on 03-Apr-2018
7/29/2019 Announcing Gender
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Excerpt copied from a previous edition
(circa 1999?) of the bookGender in
Canada; Adie Nelson (Ed.) p. 136
[We] would like to announce the birth of Arju
______who arrived at 14:37 EDT on 17
September 1992, at Kitchener-Waterloo
Hospital weighing 3080 grams and measuring
51 cm from head to toe. [The mother] wentthrough twenty-six hours of pre-labour and
seven hours of active labour at home before
going to the hospital; after nine more hours
of labour there, our natural childbirth was
facilitated by the team of______(our family
doctor),______(our midwife), and______(the
duty nurse). We left the hospital six hours after
the delivery, and we are all resting at home,
with all the phones unplugged.
Some answers to questions you may have:
Arju (pronounced Are-jew, factually if not
grammatically correct, accent on the first
syllable) doesnt mean anything. Its a nicesounding pair of syllables, nothing more, and
we made it up more than a year ago, after
trying lots of different combinations. We
wanted a name that was short, sounded
good with [the mothers last name], and
didnt lead to any obvious derogatory
nicknames. (If you can think of one well, its
too late.)
Please dont rush out and buy a gift. We
stocked up on the basics before the birth,
and it will take us a while to figure out what
else we need, or what might prove useful or
entertaining. If you still have the gift-giving
urge a few weeks from now, we may be able
to suggest some possibilities to you. But really,
dont feel obligated to do anything morethan smile and coo when you first meet Arju
(and you dont even have to do that, if
youre really in a bad mood.
No, we didnt forget to mention whether Arju
was a boy or a girl, we deliberately left that
out another decision made many months
ago. We are concerned about early gender
stereotyping. Studies have shown (see the
bibliography at the end of this
announcement) that adult perception of
infant behaviour is affected more by the
perceived sex of the child than the actual
behaviour of the child. There is a difference
in the way adults talk to girl babies and boy
babies; there is a difference in the way adults
hold and play with girl babies and boy
babies. We think that the sex of a newborn
child who will still be sorting out its senses for
weeks if not months after birth is the least
interesting bit of information about that child.
We hope youll help us in our task of raising
our child properly by focusing on Arju as a
developing human being, with all the
wonder that entails.
No, we dont know when were going to
have a second child. Shame on you for even
thinking of asking!
Bibliography
Pomerleau, A., Bolduc, D., Malcuit, G., &
Cossette, L. (1990). Pink or blue:
Environmental gender stereotypes in the
first two years of life. Sex Roles, 22(5),
359-367.
Sidorowicz, L. S., & Lunney, G. S. (1980). Baby
X revisited. Sex Roles, 6(1), 67-73.
Stern, M., & Karraker, K. H. (1989). Sex
stereotyping of infants: A review ofgender labeling studies. Sex Roles, 20(9),
501-522.
[Approximately three years later, a second
University of Waterloo professors
______ and ______ , both of the
Department of Computer Science,
intentionally gave their babies first names
devoid of gender implications and
family names in alternating order. With
the permission of the parent-authors, we
reproduce their birth announcements,
complete with an accompanying
bibliography, as they appeared on the
World Wide Web. We also reproduce,
again with permission, comments from
professor ______ on the reactions theproud parents have received to the
announcements.
7/29/2019 Announcing Gender
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birth announcement appeared, as follows...]
We would like to announce the birth of
Zazuki______who arrived at 8:06 EST on 24
March 1995, at Kitchener-Waterloo Hospital,
weighing 41600 grams and measuring 52 cm
from head to toe. The birth was assisted byour midwife______and duty nurse______
Labour started at 2:00, Elsie arrived at 6:00,
we left for the hospital at 7:00. Weve been
home since 11:00 and are resting
comfortably with the phones unplugged,
happy and healthy.
Some answers to questions you may have:
Zazuki is pronounced Zah-ZOO-key. Like
Arju, it doesnt mean anything in any
language we know or have checked. We
tried a lot of combinations of syllables until
we found one that sounded nice to us.
Please dont rush out and buy a gift. We
have everything we need and plenty that is
sheer luxury, and there are Arjus feelings to
consider. If you feel the urge to mark the
occasion, please consider a donation to
Planned Parenthood. Local councillors
blocked a provincial grant to our local
branch and they could really use the money,
but wherever you are located, theres likely
to be a branch near you. You get a nice tax
deduction and you can feel good about
helping others. (Yes, Zazuki was planned, and
we dont plan on having any more.)
As we did with Arju, we are not announcing
Zazukis sex. We think it worked out just fine in
Arjus case, and were used to dropping sex-
specific pronouns out of our speech now. If
you cant understand why were doing this,
well be happy to pass on a copy of Arjus
birth announcement, which includes a
bibliography containing the articles which
inspired us.
________ [The mother]
________ [The father]
and Arju________
Not everyone viewed these birthannouncements in a positive light. As the
childrens father commented in a letter
to one of the authors about the
announcements:
The first one of course caused quite a
stir. We got almost no gifts (except from
people who could handle the situation)
because people couldnt think of what
to buy without knowing Arjus sex! Others
worried about the effect on Arju of being
handled by people ignorant of this
crucial fact even on Arjus sexual
orientation For months afterward
people would ask us if wed announced
it yet. Strangers would quiz us carefully,
hoping to catch a slip. (I slipped four
times that I can think of twice for each
pronoun he and she!). Regarding the
second child, [professor] ________
observed there was much less fuss;
everyone was resigned to our
eccentricities by then, and Arju would tell
anyone who was really curious.