Is conformity really so bad?

I don’t know if you’ve heard of the Canadian family raising a genderless baby, I read an article on their story by chance last week (I can't find it anymore, so can't link!). Since then I’ve been reading interviews and such and it’s given me a lot of food for thought. I’m not going to get into the merits of what they’re doing and I’m not linking to any of the articles I’ve read, because there’s a lot of negativity out there regarding this family’s decision.

Before sharing my viewpoint, I’d like to say that I’m not judging them, I think that as long as they’re doing what they’re doing because they feel it’s in the best interest of their own children and not because they wanted the media attention, then that should be good enough for all of us. But any sort of highly controversial act, as this one, is going to lead to a lot of discussion and thought, which is why I decided to write about it.

Apparently, the parents decided to do this because their oldest child, a boy, doesn’t “fit traditional gender roles”, he likes his hair long and likes dresses and the color pink. Evidently, this boy has faced some hardships due to his preferences and I think the logic is that keeping the baby genderless as long as possible sets an example to their two older children about how gender distinctions aren’t important, or in any case, aren’t as important as looking at the individual without a gender bias.

The following italicized bit is the comment I left on the article, it was my initial gut reaction, which incidentally is still my opinion after having researched the subject further:

This is interesting, and a little bit scary, I think. It's one thing to not "fit traditional gender roles" and another thing to remove the concept of gender altogether, because we are, in fact, characterized by our gender. The older child may have to face a series of difficulties due to the fact that he doesn't fit traditional gender roles, and his parents will have to help him navigate through them. But preventively creating an issue, where one simply doesn't exist - this baby is only four months - is risky. This child, exactly like the older sibling, will have to go out into society at large sooner or later and will be faced with the issue of his gender. But whereas the older child when faced with the very simple and straightforward  "are you a boy or a girl" question can be taught to answer "I'm a boy and I like pink, it's no business of yours" this baby won't have an acceptable answer at all. And by acceptable I mean an answer that his peers and strangers will be able to understand without lengthy, drawn out explanations. I think the risk here is putting this child in an impossible situation. We don't want to stick our children into categories unduly, but not giving a child a category at all is doing exactly that, isn't it? […]

The only thing I really take issue with is something the mother said in a letter she wrote in response to some pretty harsh criticism that they received, this is what she wrote:  “the idea that the whole world must know our baby’s sex strikes me as unhealthy, unsafe and voyeuristic.”

I take issue with this because in my opinion it is neither unhealthy, unsafe nor voyeuristic that “the world” as she says, knows the sex of her baby, no more than it is unhealthy, unsafe or voyeuristic that the world knows her baby is blond with blue eyes. First of all the whole world doesn’t know the sex of your baby unless you put it out there, which they did in a sense, because though we may not know the sex of the baby suddenly it's become a big issue. 
Generally, for non public figures, which the majority of us are (which this family was before all the hoopla), the people that know our baby’s sex can be counted in the hundreds, possibly the thousand’s at most, if you’ve got loads of friends and acquaintances hell, if you’ve got a really popular blog, maybe hundreds of thousands, but with a worldwide population of a little under seven billion it’s still a comparatively small number. And even then, how many of the people that know your baby’s sex actually care, or remember? I have acquaintances I see only rarely that I know have kids but can’t for the life of me remember how many and what gender.

So her kids don’t have gender appropriate behaviors. So what? They must have done a good job as parents, giving their children the freedom and the security to be whichever way they want to be. Their boy wants to have long, flowing hair and likes dresses and colorful fabrics and they supported him and gave him the self assurance to be any way he wants, so as far as that goes Bravo, I say. But, I believe that with this third child they took it too far, because they turned it into a media thing. Now they don’t just want to teach their children the best way they know how, they want to be an example of something to everyone else. They want to “change the world” as they say to a more accepting, tolerant place, a sentiment I wholly concur with, but... changes happen gradually. We are in a far better place today than fifty years ago, and I believe that fifty years from now we’ll be in an even better place – there’s always room for improvement.

I’m just not so sure that becoming gender-less is an improvement. Some people fit gender roles to a T, some not so much, others not at all, and I do believe that all the options must be accepted and respected. All of the options, including the desire to conform to long-standing societal roles. I’m a conformist, when my kids were born I tended to dress my boy in blue and other “boy colors” and my girl in pink, I thought the clothes were cute and the babies were cute in them. It never occurred to me to dress them any other way. As they grow I’ll support and accept any of their choices, as long as they’re happy and healthy, and I’ll help them navigate society if they decide to make choices that are hard to explain or live with. But in my opinion, there’s nothing wrong with conformity as there’s nothing wrong with non-conformity.

I find it very tiring that everything has to be “original”, original is the new cool. And I find it especially tiring that if someone decides to live their life in a manner that goes against the grain they feel the need to make it public, to teach a lesson where none is needed, to face the world with a look at me, this is how it’s done attitude.

Because, “this is how it’s done” is how we get conformity and uniformity to begin with, it’s the opposite of original if everyone does what you do, isn’t it?

So, again I ask, if everyone tries to be tolerant, sympathetic and understanding, if we face the world with an open heart and a smile on our face and take things at face value, differences and all, then is there really something wrong with conformity?