Gender Neutral Parenting is something I feel incredibly passionate about, however also something I feel is very misunderstood. To understand it you must first acknowledge that there is a huge difference between sex and gender. Sex refers to biological differences, so internal and external sex organs, whereas gender describes the differences that are socially constructed as masculine or feminine.
Gender neutrality aims to break down the boundaries and eradicate the idea of a gender binary, acknowledging that gender exists on a spectrum rather than just make or female. My personal belief is that gender can be fluid throughout your life and is not necessarily something that stays the same and I would like Luna’s upbringing to reflect the same. Luna was assigned female at birth so will be referred to as she/her/daughter throughout and I will explain my thoughts on this as I go along.
Struggles we have found so far have mainly been with clothes and toys. Everything seems to be gendered, girls clothes are pink, boys blue. Girls have kitchens and boys have work benches. Greater societies belief being that these things can be gendered. Being gender neutral does not mean that I will not buy pink clothes or kitchens for her, but that there is an element of choice involved, that things are bought relevent to a child’s interests rather than their sex. But it isn’t just my choices that will effect her, but my language.
I work hard to not call her a princess, as I believe the connotations to be of a weak individual who needs to find their Prince to feel whole, try to describe her as hard-working, innovative and creative as well as beautiful, and make sure I don’t use fat negative language around her. However important as it is to empower girls it’s also equally as important to watch the language we use around boys too, phrases such as “man up” or “boys don’t cry” are toxic masculinity which is just as harmful.
I also want Luna to be aware of gender neutral pronouns, as they are an important part of acknowledging the gender spectrum. I recently read about parents who used Xe/Xim when reading books to their child, I absolutely love this idea as not only does it normalise the idea of gender neutral language from a young age, but takes away to stereotypes of females and males in children’s books as they are not aware if the hero is male or female.
I’ve been playing with the idea of referring to Luna by gender neutral pronouns too, as I want her to feel like her gender is something she is in control of. However I feel that bringing up a child outside of the male/female dichotomy is still incredibly problematic due to wider society’s somewhat archaic views, and I do not want her to be teased because of my choices. However, making sure she knows that she can change her pronouns, name and appearance to however she feels comfortable is absolutely a top priority to me. But for now I will teach her to be proud to be female, but not limited by it.
Nemimothers 