Helicoptering Son’s Gender
How it works, and why it’s wrong
Here’s a story ripe for a take-down, if there ever was one:
It’s a boy! And he’s five. Beck Laxton, 46, and partner Kieran Cooper, 44, have spent half the decade concealing the gender of their son, Sasha.
Laxton might think of Cooper as a partner, but for the rest of the world he’s either a husband or, considering that marriage is a patriarchal, homophobic institution, a baby-daddy.
“I wanted to avoid all that stereotyping,” Laxton said in an interview with the Cambridge News. “Stereotypes seem fundamentally stupid. Why would you want to slot people into boxes?”
Good question. Male and female are only boxed in bureaucrat’s paperwork because in the real world sex differences are a source of creativity and joy. The only individuals stereotyped in this news story are the Cooper/Laxton family — or whatever social unit they consider themselves to be — who sound like people who took one Gender Studies class too many.
Laxton, a UK-based web editor, and her partner, Cooper, decided to keep Sasha’s sex [gender! It’s gender, you idiots! You didn’t get the memo? — ed.] a secret when he was still in the womb. The birth announcement stated the gender-neutral name of their child, but skipped the big reveal. Up until recently, the…
