2) This is one of the major gender norm problems. The classification of genders under types of clothes, such as skirts, dresses for girls while Trousers, shorts for boys. Also the colours blue and pink used to differentiate unisex clothes noting that blue for boys and pink for girls. Down to the types of toys both these genders are supposed to be seen with, football for boys and dolls for girls. Which is why in Gould’s story while other kids tried to figure out the sex of X they got confused because it said “Its favorite toy was a doll, everyone decided that X must be a girl. But then X said that the doll was really a robot and X had computerized it, and that it was programmed to bake fudge cookies and then clean up the kitchen” (Gould, 1972, p. 6). All the reasons X gave broke free of the gender norms applied to toys for kids. “It was a doll”, which is assumed for girls. “it was a doll that was a robot” robots usually are made for …show more content…
Some people might consider not being identified as female or male a distort in societal order. It is also expensive to raise a genderless baby. You have to buy both sex clothes, put in the extra efforts to bring up the child in a neutral way. Baby X’s parents had to “Buy plenty of everything” (Gould, 1972, p. 3) this costs more money and time. Understanding this story will be different for everyone depending on your background, culture, beliefs, experiences. For me, I understood the point of view of the kids and parents who were confused as to why baby X did not have a gender. I grew up In Nigeria where you could get arrested and jailed for having different views from the usual social norms or looked at differently. The reasons why they might have looked at baby X differently is because of what their parents might have thought them. But at the same time, I understood why there needed to be a baby X. Our society is so gender based that swaying away from that just a bit creates tensions and you are frowned upon. At the end of the X story, baby X was accepted as a genderless baby in hopes to find out when it actually matters. Which I believe is the basis of this story. Why rush, when you can just wait and