I’m reaching an age when my biological clock is beginning to tick. I don’t have the financial wherewithal to respond to its call and I’m not sure I would even if I did. My stance on breeding is that there are enough ecological rapists in the world; I want to be part of the solution, not the problem. Hats off to those who have babies because without you humanity wouldn’t have a future.
Recently, some of my detractors, citizens of a once colonized nation whose government is now offering financial incentives for couples to conceive, asked me who would take care of me in my retirement years. Isn’t that a selfish reason to repopulate? Besides, there’s no guarantee that feeding someone for twenty years will make them feel any sense of obligation to you.
A wee little one by whom I would attempt to do right might instill me with a sense of purpose but the truth is the doldrums of my childhood soured me against conventional family life.
If I were to have a child, God help it, I would be tempted not to reinforce stereotypical gender roles. There would be no Barbies or G.I. Joes in the house and though I love them, there would be no fairy tales either. I would clothe my child in gender-neutral, traffic light colours such as yellow and green and red and allow their tresses to grow long and Mormonesque, just like Céline has done with her little gender bender. By doing this, I would hope against hope that my child, my beloved Orlando, would turn out to be a progressive human being, a free spirit in the purest form. Orlando would learn to relate to the world as a person first and not as a pretty girl or a strong boy. S/he would learn to make hir own decisions vis-à-vis gender identity, society be damned.
To my chagrin, I discovered this thinking is not as radical as I had initially believed. A Swedish couple actually beat me to the punch and is currently raising a genderless child known as Pop (Sweden, go figure). * I realize such parenting, although well intended, might border on abuse; a child raised such as this is destined to become a best-selling author at the very least, not to mention the main attraction of multiple television specials and autograph sideshows at local malls throughout the land.
While I like that my genderless child would astound and perplex the masses, I’m not sure I would want to force hirm to face the loaded existential question of “What are you?” on the school playground. How does one answer such a query without the benefit of gender stereotyping? Other people’s children can be so cruel, so bullish, so obtuse and so narrowly defined.
Age six would be the logical time for the child to realize hirs biological identity and would thus be allowed to use gender specific washroom and change room facilities. By that time my good work will already have been done and no one can take that away from me. At long last, my little one will help me conquer the normative Alphas of the world, and that’s definitely worth two decades of room and board in my book.
*http://www.thelocal.se/20232/20090623/
