Where Does a Gender Neutral Ideology Fall Between a Male and Female World?

                Before college, I never thought deeply about sex and gender. It was simply something that was there, embedded in society, something construed for years that could not be ignored. While surfing Yahoo news however, I came upon an article titled, “Couple Finally Reveals Child's Gender, Five Years After Birth”. In an attempt to give freedom to their child, a homosexual couple decided to hide the gender of their child from the world for the past 5 years. They wanted to attempt to get rid of the stereotypes that are created by the categorization of people into the groups male or female. This, however, is not the only couple that had tried this. A heterosexual couple in Sweden has raised three children to be gender neutral. This movement and ideology may sound promising in order to push forward to a life without prejudice or stereotypes that only hurt individuals and confine them to a world they do not want to live. So if this idea may give the new generation of children a chance to choose how they want to act and dress, then why decide to do away with it?

                Now I see that although some of us see that a new era of freedom may be ideal to do away with the prejudice, it can never be attained due to the way our society works. Because sex and gender, like religion, is a sensitive gender, there will always be debates about what it means to be a woman and what it means to be a man. Although these parents made an attempt to give their children the freedom of choice in what color they wore and how they acted without giving their choices a label, they may become more confused when stepping out of their dream and into reality when entering school. The homosexual parents in the article decided to declare the gender of their child before the world because they acknowledged that this would be something that would have to be known before letting their child enter school. Then it would be the detrimental teasing and constant name calling that the parents would regret. The Sweden family also decided to declare the gender of their eldest child due to the same reason. Their child begged them to declare his gender on school papers in order to stop the name calling at school. All of this made me think. If some of us want a world that liberates people from certain roles in society, then why do we insist on going back to those that are engrained in society? Are we that afraid of change that once we commit to a gender neutral ideology we turn back to conform to society?