We here at Breeder’s Digest have been nothing short of frazzled by the rising trend in gender-neutral parenting. In fact, we’ve been so stirred up about it that we decided to read. From what little actual information we could glean from NPR’s bewildered hallucination of an article “The End of Gender?,” we now know we are definitely headed for this summer’s second man-made apocalypse: A gender apocalypse!
I’m so glad we had this hastily-assembled “article” (complete with a dictionary definition of gender) to warn us about the four horsepersons of the apocalypse: a hot androgynous model who walks both male and female runways, a blogger mom who posts about her “boychick” child, another kid who got hir hair braided, and these gender-neutral parents who haven’t a clue in the world of what they’re not doing. Obviously, once again straight people have saved the world by ending it, destroying the gender binary once and for all!
America’s Next Top Hangover
But before you go getting any big ideas, Dear Breeder, think just for a second about what your gender-free future might look like. Are you really so sure you’re going to be able to survive this dreadful apocalypse of doom?
We know, for instance, that behind all of your “clever,” “non-gendered” baby names (Parker, Ashley, Octavia Butler) and “gender-free” toys you’re espousing with big shit-eating grins on your faces, there’s a creeping low-level anxiety that haunts your every gender-neutral move–some sense that THIS is not really, truly how the world should be. We know you’ve thought it, and we certainly know Grandpa has come right out and said it on at least two occasions, one of which involved him holding a loaded rifle in what he normally refers to as his “vodka hand.” That was scary for all of us, Dear Breeder, and was just one of many warning signs that come with this media frenzy known as “gender-neutral parenting.”
Parent-free parenting
The problem with gender-neutral parenting, Dear Breeder, is this: You have churned out sissies and tomboys, butches and femmes, twinks and leather daddies like baby factories since the beginning of time, and we really don’t want you to stop now. Unlike you, we queers like gender and still continue to do interesting things with it. But lately it’s starting to feel like we’re the only people on Earth who don’t want gender to end! Just because you and your wife can wear each others’ jeans and still find each other attractive doesn’t mean we can.
The truth is, Dear Breeder, that for all of your heterosexual showboating you are about as gender-neutral as they come. We understand that it’s a lifestyle choice but why impose such bland nonsense on your innocent, perverted children? Doesn’t every child deserve the right to become a piss-guzzling, moustacheod cartoon of the gender of his/her/hir choice? We damn well thought so.
RIP Grandpa.
Listen, what we may have never confessed in family therapy sessions (or while prying the bottles out of grandpa’s cold, dead vodka hand), is that your good old-fashioned fucked-up parenting is what makes for the best queers. My parents let me play on all-boys sports teams as a child–and my father even called me “Luke” at certain hardware stores–and take a look at me now! I’m just your run-of-the-mill mannish queer blogger who still has no idea what shiz my gender is. As usual, your self-congratulatory efforts help no one but yourselves (and burned-out NPR bloggers).
So please, if you know which goose is good for the gander, discontinue your hair-braided schemes of bleeding heart progress and return to your more terrifying, baldly narcissistic brand of parenting.
Sure, we’ll hate you for it then, but we’ll love you for it now.
Breeder's Digest 