Gender bender
by RAF KATIGBAK
January 19, 2012
An editorial in the Canadian Medical Association Journal urging doctors to conceal the gender of a fetus has stirred up a roaring cross-country debate.
The doctor who wrote the editorial, interim CMAJ editor-in-chief Rajendra Kale, said that “female feticide happens in India and China by the millions, but it also happens in North America in numbers large enough to distort the male to female ratio in some ethnic groups.”
Delaying the information until 30 weeks, he said, makes it much more difficult to get an abortion unless there’s a medical reason.
Source: Montreal Gazette
Now, I’m not one to tell a woman what to do with her body, unless of course she’s asking me to and the request includes the term “sexy piggyback ride,” but I think the idea of terminating a fetus solely based on gender is a major bummer. Without getting too much into the giant, festering can of worms that is the abortion debate, I think there are definitely understandable reasons for going through with the procedure, but doing it just because the fetus will have a hoo-hoo and not a wang-a-lang just doesn’t seem like a good one. Part of me is for Kale’s idea. On the other hand, some doctors argue that withholding information from a patient is unethical, especially in light of the availability of biochemical gender testing products on the market, which renders that withholding of information pointless anyway.
But the painful truth is this, knowing a baby’s sex is the first step towards a long life of gender bias and stereotyping. As soon as parents find out if it’s a boy or girl, they’ll be putting them into a conceptual gender ghetto and getting all kinds of frilly stuff if they’re female and sporty stuff for the dudes. Eventually these babies will grow up and learn that little girls should play with dolls instead of rough-housing with the boys, and little Filipino boys will learn to not try to play with dolls and will instead grow up with a secret collection of Bratz figurines which their girlfriend will eventually find at the back of their closet and have a totally unreasonable freak-out in front of his friends while watching the hockey game last week. Yes, gender inequality is rampant in our society, and perhaps not knowing the sex of your future child is the first step in fixing that.
But why stop there? I say being serious about eradicating gender-stereotyping needs to start early, before these darn things are born. Only allowing unisex names is a start. Sure, it’ll be annoying to live in a world with only Pats, Taylors, Chrises, Alexes, Robins and Morgans everywhere, but think of how much the souvenir industry will save on personalized commemorative mini-license plates? And maybe withholding the sex of the fetus for 30 days is not enough. Why not take it a step further and keep that information even later, say, until their early teens? I know what you’re thinking; won’t the parents see the sex of their child eventually?
Well, that’s where my proposed state-sanctioned baby-harvesting facilities come in. It’s simple: as soon as the kid is born, they’re whisked away to a government-run institution where their precious newborn cells are harvested to be used in beauty products. I know what you’re thinking: “I don’t want my precious baby to become used to a cushy lifestyle in a research facility and not know the rewards of a hard day’s work.”
Well, don’t worry. When their bones have regained rigidity after an idle year of marrow extraction, we integrate them into places where their little hands will be useful, like a small factory, a boron mine or sorting through recyclable computer components for valuable lead and copper (remember, Billy Boron says, “Keep it green, kids!”), where they will learn all kinds of good science-y type stuff, until they’ve worked long enough to gain their release back home, or strong enough to compete in the “Ultimate Challenge,” a vicious dystopian blood sport that marries Survivor, UFC and Real Housewives of Atlanta.
Perhaps only after all of this can we truly do our part to eradicate gender stereotyping. In the end you have to ask yourself: do we want our kids to live in a world where girls aren’t allowed to play football with men just because they’ll probably get seriously injured, and men have to pretend to go out for “smokes” and do secret toy store runs because their girlfriends will never understand just how rare a Limited Edition Formal Funk Sasha doll is, or do we want to live in a gender-neutral world where kids blossom into gloriously asexual beings that will have a tough time figuring out which deodorant to buy? ■
Short URL: http://www.montrealmirror.com/wp/?p=28688
