Educational institutions are doing their best to combat traditional gender roles (read: patriarchy) through initiatives such as gender-neutral toilets and gender-neutral nursery rhymes.
The mind boggles at all the rewriting of children’s poems that will be involved. “Little unspecified-title Muffet sat on a tuffet”: “They and Them went up a hill to fetch a pail of water”
“All the gender-neutral monarch’s horses and all the gender-neutral monarch’s gender-neutral security detail couldn’t put Humpty together again.”
This is all very well, but gender bias does not begin in preschool. It begins in the womb, and parents are the worst offenders.
Every woman (sorry, person) who has ever been pregnant can probably attest to the two questions asked incessantly: “When is it due?” and “Do you know what it is?”
The answer to the second question, as everyone knows, is not “It’s a baby” but “It’s a boy” or “It’s a girl”.
It gets worse. In prosperous humanity’s endless quest for ever more frequent and flamboyant social functions, there are now not just bachelor parties, kitchen teas, weddings and baby showers (which I used to think were cleansing ceremonies for muddy infants).
There are now gender reveal parties. Any self-respecting status-seeking woman (sorry, person) faces instant pariahdom if she (they) does not hold a lavish do at which fireworks or streamers or confetti or other such frivolities are exploded over the assembled crowd. If these are blue, it’s a boy. If they are pink, it’s a girl.
Incidentally, I have written previously about the strange U-turn taken by the colours pink and blue. In the early part of the 20th century, women’s advice magazines advocated the strong pink (a variation of red) for boys and recommended softer baby-blue as more appropriate for girls.
This changed for various reasons, one involving the pink triangles affixed to vilified homosexuals in Nazi Germany. If you think about it, nobody should countenance the colour pink, but we humans have short memories.
Getting back to gender bias, there are some parents who prefer not to know what their infant is until it is born. You might call this the hidden gender bias.
If society was really serious about creating a non-gendered or gender-neutral world, all forms of gender reveal would be outlawed. Woke doctors and midwives would not hold up the glutinous newborn and tell its parents: “It’s a girl!” or: “It’s a boy!” They would simply say: “It’s a baby.”
Getting back to gender bias, there are some parents who prefer not to know what their infant is until it is born. You might call this the hidden gender bias
Some progressively-inclined parents try to mitigate the effects of a gender-biased environment by giving their sons girl-dolls and their daughters action-man figures.
But if we are to embrace the new spirit championed by South Africa’s state-sanctioned schools, even the words “son” and “daughter” should be banned.
Parents (never to be referred to as mothers or fathers) would call their children simply children, and even if the child had no siblings, it would be referred to as “they” or “them”. Toilet doors would be marked “Theirs” and “Theirs”.
I still think this plural pronoun thing is way too confusing and we need to come up with something else, but be that as it may, these points illustrate how difficult, not to mention ridiculous, a task it is to inculcate a truly genderless country.
All suggestions are welcome. In the meantime, I think the public interest would be better served by a new political assemblage called the Agenda Reveal Party.
Just imagine: a party that did not exist simply to complain about what other parties might or might not be doing.
A party that solved its internal disagreements in the privacy of its own caucus chambers and presented a united front in public. A party that clearly stated its intentions and delivered on these promises, whether or not an election was looming on the horizon.
A party that transparently broadcast the qualifications and track records of every one of its members, and justified their promotion to senior ranks.
A party that was willing to admit when it might have strayed from the path of its clear and explicit agenda. A party that was willing to apologise without caveats and that exhorted civil society to assist it in getting that agenda back on track.
Now that would be a party worthy of fireworks, streamers and confetti, in every colour of the rainbow.
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