Designing Women - Swedish Feminism

A play on words I know. The U.S sitcom that featured 3 menopausal women and a gay assistant was never something I really could stomach but channel surfed through. Yet, it struck me as another example of the feminist revolution that such a program could even exist let alone thrive for 3-4 seasons (I'm actually not sure how long it lasted, and if you care look it up).

Yet here we see the results of that ideology (here is Google English translation from Swedish):

"Swedish parents keep 2-year-old's gender secret"

Pop's parents, both 24, made a decision when their baby was born to keep Pop’s sex a secret. If anyone enquires, Pop’s parents simply say they don’t disclose this information. They say their decision was rooted in the feminist philosophy that gender is a social construction.

“We want Pop to grow up more freely and avoid being forced into a specific gender mould from the outset,” Pop’s mother said. “It's cruel to bring a child into the world with a blue or pink stamp on their forehead.” The child's parents said so long as they keep Pop’s gender a secret, he or she will be able to avoid preconceived notions of how people should be treated if male or female.

“Ignoring children's natures simply doesn’t work,” says Susan Pinker, a psychologist and newspaper columnist from Toronto, Canada, who wrote the book "The Sexual Paradox", which focuses on sex differences in the workplace.

But Swedish gender equality consultant Kristina Henkel says Pop’s parents' experiment might have positive results. “If the parents are doing this because they want to create a discussion with other adults about why gender is important, then I think they can make a point of it,” Henkel says in a telephone interview with The Local. Henkel also says a child's sex can deeply affect how they are treated growing up, and distract them from simply being a human being. She says that without these gender stereotypes, children can build character as individuals, not hindered by preconceived notions of what they should be as males or females. “I think that can make these kids stronger,” Henkel says.

Anna Nordenström, a paediatric endocrinologist at Karolinska Institutet, says it’s hard to know what effects the parents' decision will have on Pop. “It will affect the child, but it’s hard to say if it will hurt the child,” says Nordenström, who studies hormonal influences on gender development. “I don’t know what they are trying to achieve. It’s going to make the child different, make them very special.”

Oh yes, very "special"!

The article then goes on to mention the sad case of "Brenda", who we now know was David REIMER of Winnipeg, MB who unfortunately had his penis loped off during a botched circumcision in 1965. On the advice of an American Psychologist John Money, he received genital reconstruction, estrogen treatments and was raised as a girl based on the predominate theory at the time that gender was indeed a "social construct" and that genetic heredity was virtually irrelevant. At 14 years he was told about the "accident" and rebelled. He recovered his genetic "heritage" by having the treatments reversed but was tormented by the experience and after a series of unhappy romantic involvements and failed marriage, he took his own life at age 38 in 2003. Yes, how "special" he felt to be de-gendered and used a human guinea-pig for a political ideololgy.

The article closed with this spine tingling quote:

"Pop's parents have a second child on the way and have no plans to change what they see as a winning formula. "

Given the recent case in Winnipeg MB of a child being removed by Child Protection Services (CPS) from her mother and step-father due to their "White Supremacist/Nazi" sympathy's after their 8yr old daughter came to school with swastika drawn on her palms, I wonder if there is any plans by the equivalent Swedish Child Services "Storm-Troopers" to visit "Pop's" parents?

To further castigate the Swede's about how far astray their social policy had gone, there was another story about a decision by the Swedish health authorities. A women with two daughters had twice had abortions after findng out about the gender of the foetus underwent tests for foetal abnormalities, but also wanted to know the gender of the most recent child. The Hospital Board ruled that gender-based abortion is not illegal according to current law and can not therefore be stopped. And who says that women everywhere are not using abortions as means of birth-control? What do you think would happen in Canada?