Essay on "The story of X" of Lois Gould

Essay on “The story of X” by Lois Gould

In today’s world it is normal, that people feel uncomfortable and threatened by things they can`t place a label on. That’s why a gender-neutral baby would be confusing for nearly every instance, like the story of X by Lois Gould shows. It is just human to try to label everything and it causes a lot of problems, if this is impossible, even if the “thing” where no label can be placed on is a baby.
Already the beginning of the story shows the first problem group – the parents. It is shown, that it is really hard to find a couple, which can coop with the situation to educate a child completely gender-neutral. The Joneses, the parents, in “The story of X” have to find solutions for so many problems, parents with babies are raised gender specific never have to think about. To make it easier scientists wrote some kind of “instruction guide”, which may tell the family, how to deal with which kind of situation and with its help the Joneses deal with their problems really good. But also if there is such assistance, the parents therefore have to be qualified as people who disregard roles and norms which are given in society.
This already leads to another problem area: the whole society, and especially as shown in this short story the school, where no one knows how to deal with an “X”. Maybe it would be a good idea to give some “instruction guide” to the school, too. Teachers and classmates have to deal with an all-new situation, one student is different from all other pupil. The school has to find solutions, for example which toilette should be used by “X” and what to play with X or even what to speak about with “X”. But surprisingly X´s classmates do not really have problems, on the contrary, they admire X and try to act like it. The boys are going to play with dolls, whereas girls are playing with cars. The copy “X”´s style of clothes, too, just to escape their fixed gender roles.
The persons, who really have a problem with “X”´s education are the parents of its classmates, because they can´t understand, what happened to their children and therefore don´t know, what to do and how to react. They force “X” to go to a psychiatrist, to get to know if it’s a boy or a girl, because our society isn’t able to accept a gender-neutral child and the consequences for their own lives, which are influenced, too. Maybe the most important part is, how X itself copes with its situation. Also if a child is educated gender-neutral from the first beginning, it has to deal with quite more problems than its peers. In Gould’s story “X” has to wear a gender neutral haircut and even gender neutral clothes, and although it’s still a child, “X” has to deal with the problem that parents of its friends don’t want them to play with “X”. For me it is hard to imagine, how a child could identify itself as an “X” and to integrate in normal groups without getting personal problems. Although if a gender neutral education opens many possibilities to our world to slip out of our gender roles, the present society isn’t already ripe to destroy the given gender-barriers.