Parents defend decision to let child choose its gender

Tuesday, May 31st, 2011

A Canadian couple are defending their decision to keep the sex of their child secret and in time let the child choose its gender.

“If you really want to get to know someone, you don’t ask what’s between their legs,” Storm’s father, David Stocker said.

The couple, Kathy Witterick and David Stocker, have decided to raise their 4 month old child “genderless” to protect its right to choose its own sex.

Widely criticised for imposing their ideology on what is an essentially natural social process, they say they want to spare the child the pressures of social norms.

In an e-mail to the Associated Press news agency, Witterick, a stay-at-home mother, said a four-month-old infant was still learning to recognise him or herself, and said it was inappropriate to impose a gender identity on the child.

Witterick and Stocker have also been criticised for the way they’re allowing their two sons Jazz, five, and Kio, two to choose their own clothing and hairstyles, even if it means wearing girls’ clothes.

The boys are “almost exclusively assumed to be girls,” Mr Stocker told the Toronto Star.

Not even the grandparents know Storm’s gender and the Toronto Star reports they have grown weary of explaining the situation, but are supportive

The couple told friends their refusal to answer such questions was “a tribute to freedom in place of limitation” and a “stand-up to what the world could become in Storm’s lifetime”.

“What we noticed is that parents make so many choices for their children. It’s obnoxious.”

Sources