#6. Girls wear pink

Before I start, I must thank my good friend Thomas for suggesting this topic for my next blog. And I'm going to take this opportunity to publicly say that I'm going to miss him very much when he joins the RAF but I wish him all the happiness in the world as he flies off into the sunset (that's what they do isn't it, like Topgun?).

Now I shall begin.  The topic under scrutiny this Saturday morning is gender, or lack of it.  English as a language doesn't have gender as other languages such as German and French do. However, we do have gendered words, for example "his" and "she".  But in the modern world today the occasion can occur when we just don't know the gender of a person. The androgynous look is everywhere, you just have to look at these images of Agyness Dean or Ollie from Made In Chelsea to see how nowadays, we can constantly push the boundaries of constructed genders.

Additionally, I read a study that revealed that the first thing we notice about another human being is their gender. Not skin colour, eyes, hair colour or shoes, it's their gender, or rather their biological sex.  I'd be surprised if you hadn't been in the situation where you just can't work it out and that awkward, embarrassed feeling develops in the pit of your stomach, can I call them Sir or Madam?

Now, the English language has accommodated for this by using the gender neutral pronoun "they". Although many people may tell you that "they" should only be used for plural, there are many occasions where you just don't know the gender of an individual and therefore "they" has to be used to avoid offence.

Richard Mason tells us how the use of "they" is not, as you would imagine, a completely modern development.


"Not only is this use very natural and common in spoken English, but in written English it is acknowledged by the OED. Singular "they" (or "their" or "them") appears in Shakespeare, in Chaucer, in Spenser, in Swift, in Defoe, in Shelley, and in Byron. It was used by William Thackeray, by Walter Scott, by George Eliot, by Jane Austen, by Charles Dickens, and by Robert Louis Stevenson, as well as by George Bernard Shaw, Lewis Carroll, Oscar Wilde, Rudyard Kipling, H.G. Wells, W.H. Auden, George Orwell, and C.S. Lewis. American writers who used "they" in the singular include Walt Whitman, Edith Wharton, and F. Scott Fitzgerald."

Now to Thomas' input. He told me of a family in Canada who are raising their baby gender neutral. By that I mean that apart from them, the baby's brothers and a handful of midwives and doctors, no one knows the gender of their new baby, Storm.  The parents have said that they do not want to force gender and stereotypes upon their children and they want their children to explore who they are naturally.

Now whilst I do believe that we shouldn't presume girls wear pink and play with barbies and boys wear blue and eat worms, I have slight concerns when it comes to being gender neutral and have the inkling that they are setting baby Storm up for bullying. And furthermore, we are not linguistically ready for a gender neutral society. Which bathroom would they use at a restaurant "male" or "female"?  If you were addressing a letter to them would you put Sir or Madam or Mr or Mrs? 

I support this family in their decisions and I believe that as long as Storm is a healthy and happy baby and is loved by the family it shouldn't make a difference. But, there is going to come a day when Storm has to decided whether to be a "Master" or a "Miss", because despite their best efforts, the world is just not ready or prepared for gender neutral babies. Not only in our language, but in the entirety of Western society. 

Click this link for the full article about Storm!