“Choose your parents wisely,” goes the quip attributed to Bertrand Russell. This is especially good advice today given a new trend: selecting “gender-neutral” baby names for newborns out of the belief that “gender is fluid.”
Oh, the new appellations aren’t as bad as some perhaps drug-inspired inspirations, baby names such as “Rocket Zot,” “Dzyre,” “Moo,” “Audio Science” and “Bronx Mowgli.” (Pro tip: If you want to saddle a being with a bizarre name, buy a pet potbelly pig.) But they’re certainly more common, with unisex names such as Royal, Charlie, Salem, Skyler, Justice, and Oakley increasingly chosen by parents imbued with politically correct “transgender” notions, reports the AP.
The AP informs that unisex-type names are now more heavily represented in the Social Security Administration’s list of its top 1,000 names and are especially popular, quite predictably, among Millennial parents.
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For example, baby-name site Nameberry.com “analyzed the 2016 Social Security Administration data into a top 50 androgynous name list focused on those with heavy [boy/girl] splits,” writes the AP. “Charlie came in at 50-50, followed by Finley at 58 percent for girls and 42 percent for boys. Skyler was in third place (54-46), Justice was fourth (52-48) and Royal was fifth (42-58).”
“Rounding out the Top 10 were Lennon (50-41), Oakley (52-48), Armani (46-54), Azariah (55-45) and Landry (53-47),” the news organ continued.
Providing a relevant anecdote, the AP also relates:
“We chose a gender-neutral name, Riley, for my daughter,” said Lori Kinkler, a psychologist in San Antonio, Texas. “We knew her sex, but gender is fluid and yet to be determined. Of all the difficulties faced by those who live beyond, or across, the binary, we didn’t want name-changing to be one of them…. I like that she feels she has options and knows she’ll be accepted by us no matter what.” Riley is 3.
To properly interpret this, note that Kinkler is viewing “sex” as the biological reality of being male or female and “gender” as being one’s perception of what he is, which is the current mainstream position of “transgender” activists (tune in tomorrow, though, for the latest theory).
Of course, “gender” is fluid insofar as it may not align with the given person’s “sex”; what’s often missed today, tragically, is that this is called “delusion.”
A more basic delusion, however, is that humans actually have gender. Used mainly in reference to word categories (i.e., masculine, feminine, and neuter) up until relatively recently, the term was widely applied to people by sexual “devolutionaries” who needed language to make delusive states of being sound merely like alternative lifestyles.
Now names reflecting this are being popularized, too. While the AP points out that unisex appellations are sometimes embraced simply because they sound “cool,” the idea when they’re chosen for ideological reasons is that kids shouldn’t be put in a “gender straitjacket.”
In the past I’ve reported on children raised in “sex neutral” ways, examples being “Pop” in Sweden (a nation with a “gender neutral” preschool), “Storm” in Canada, and Sasha in Britain. In some cases the parents won’t even divulge the sex of the child and refrain from using sex-specific pronouns when describing him for fear of provoking “gender specific” influence. As Sasha’s mother, Beck Laxton, put it, “I wanted to avoid all that stereotyping. Stereotypes seem fundamentally stupid. Why would you want to slot people into boxes?” This reflects philosophical juvenility.
Like so many confused parents, box-averse Laxton was on a quest to “let her kid just be a kid.” All right, but then why put him in the “kid” box?
As I explained in 2012, “I remember a cute story about the discovery of the doodlings of a seven-year-old medieval Russian boy named Onfim. In one picture, he drew himself as some kind of monster and included the caption, ‘I am a wild beast.’ This is a common childhood fantasy, but should we point to disturbed people such as ‘Wolfie Blackheart’ the ‘werewolf’ and conclude that perhaps we shouldn’t impose species-oriented norms on children?”
Note here that just as psychologists define “gender dysphoria” (GD) — strong and persistent feelings that you’re a member of one sex stuck in the opposite sex’s body — so do they define “species dysphoria” (SD), the sense that you’re really an animal stuck in a human body. And there’s just as much evidence that SD is an actual biological condition (as opposed to a delusion) as there is that GD is: none.
I continued:
Clearly, we put a little human in a human “box” not because of some arbitrary “social construct” but because he was born in a human body, and it’s far healthier to socialize him as a human than a ferret. In the same way that we cultivate a dog’s innate qualities by training him as a dog, it is how we cultivate a child’s human capacities and prepare him for his role as a human.
The point is this: The idea that you could raise a child and not place him in a “box” is a silly fantasy. We instill norms and ideas about status in children when we put clothes on them, tell them they’re human and American, teach them language and manners and to wash and brush their teeth, laugh at some behaviors and frown upon others, choose some forms of entertainment but avoid others, and when we do a thousand other things. And insofar as the parents don’t serve the role of instilling norms, the village will.
So we place a boy in a boy box not because of some arbitrary social construct, but because he was born in a boy’s body. And this brings us to the idea that, as Laxton believes, sex stereotyping limits a child’s “potential.” You see, there is a different theory — in fact, not that long ago it was recognized as a self-evident truth. It goes something like this: Far from being a defect, sex-specific parenting is a must. In just the same way we help a child with a proclivity for music fully exploit his potential by encouraging musical endeavors, it serves to cultivate and augment the characteristic qualities of each sex. This helps individuals to fulfill their potential, and prepares them for their unique role, as members of their sex. This is, mind you, how man has always created sound husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, those central building blocks of what is the central building block of civilization: the family.
Tragically, many today are making parenting decisions that can have far-reaching consequences based on “transgenderism”-enabling pseudo-science. Good science, as related in the fine Norwegian documentary The Gender Equality Paradox (shown below), informs that the sexes are inherently different womb to tomb.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5LRdW8xw70
Getting back to name shame, it may surprise you to learn that aside from “Lord” and “Savior,” some parents today are actually naming their children “God.” It’s perhaps fitting, however, in a time where people essentially think they can change their sex and that reality is whatever they will it to be.
Photo: Tempura/E+/Getty Images
