I’m sure most of you are aware of the fauxtreversy surrounding Canadian couple’s decision to keep the phenotypical sex of their child Storm a secret. From the BBC:
Kathy Witterick and David Stocker have been widely criticised for imposing their ideology on four-month-old Storm.
The family were the subject of a recent profile in the Toronto Star newspaper.
In an e-mail, Ms Witterick wrote that the idea that “the whole world must know what is between the baby’s legs is unhealthy, unsafe, and voyeuristic”.
Indeed. What I find amusing is that first line – imposing their ideology – a phrase that only makes sense if you imagine a baby being perverted, diverted from an otherwise “natural” path of gender-normative, cis het development.
Sorry, is this not what the media response to this non-story has been? Cissexist binarism is an ideology too, it’s just a dominant one, one that is imposed on every subject so ruthlessly that the mere mention of two parents opting out provokes a mixture of concern trolling and outright fury.
Isn’t it ironic? Yeah, I really do think.
(Arwyn has a good post about this that does not mostly consist of Alanis references)
8 Comments
That last link is borked for me :/
I’m only doing media studies 101 and we’ve already learnt all about dominant ideologies. It’s not that complicated.
Thank you so much for writing this. Most of what I’ve read about this couple either has sounded like eyebrow-raising at their weirdness or has just been bigoted. It’s nice to read something that is neither of those things.
“unhealthy, unsafe, and voyeuristic”
Sounds like the the MSM in general to me.
Maybe a fair chunk of the media shitstorm is nothing to do with gender politics per-se but outrage that these people would dare to consider anything private at all if the press want a look?
Word. The concern trolling is purely because these parents aren’t indoctrinating their kid THE RIGHT WAY. And the media obsession with the baby’s phenotype is indeed effed up.
perfect example: Mitch Albom’s column on this. Delivered with such ignorant duh-these-people-are-moonbats judgmental snark.
I wrote a post about Albom’s weird rant against these parents – it was so strange, particularly for someone who writes trite books on acceptance: http://larkincallaghan.wordpress.com/2011/06/01/mitch-albom-seems-pretty-angry-about-a-gender-undefined-baby/
The concept of the type of people I imagine to be behind the outrage and criticism of this couple (namely Christian conservatives) admonishing anyone for “imposing their ideology” on a child is laughable. Imposing belief systems upon children is the whole M.O. of organised religion. Perhaps that’s not the only group behind this backlash, and I’m putting 2 and 2 together and coming up with 7, but I think it’s probably a safe assumption.