Recently a friend of mine and I were talking about baby names. I have already mentioned on my blog that I want to keep my baby name gender neutral. Why? Well, briefly, because I prefer them and I want to keep a lot of raising my children gender neutral (clothes, toys, etc). I don’t want to place so much emphasis on the important of their gender, and by importance I don’t mean not mentioning it or emphasizing it. I just mean using it as a means to discriminate, or to discriminate them from others. Gender can be a feature, but I think there’s too much emphasis on the gender being a discriminatory factor (not one that necessarily brings discrimination, but one that exists to identify difference). Why? well let me talk about this post.
My friend, who is Austrian, actually said that would be illegal in Germany, a gender neutral name, because people need to know how to address people. I had heard how important titles and formality and addressing people is in Germany (so it’s important your status in relation to others). I always assumed if you had a doctorate or a professor you would address them as such, but I was told you address them as Herr/Frau Dr/Professor So and So. I don’t understand why it even matters. There is certainly more freedom in English, and they said that there was more freedom in English, but it is a traditional and typical German convention. So when people would address others, they use a dear so and so, but this dear form is already conjugated based on the gender of the assumed person. With a language that has basically no gender, speaking German is a pain, where everything is gendered. I have already thought, I want my name to not sound like an infectious disease when spoken in German, but I never knew, or thought about this problem. How people would address my kid.
Oh Germany. Making me always think of things I never thought people even cared about.
So they asked me what I would do for/to my child in this situation with this new info. And I said, the absolute same thing. I am going to name them a gender neutral name. Maybe this is part of my whole, bring down the conventions that enslave us, or all that jazz (anarchy maybe?) but it’s also, WHY? Why do we have to address people like this? I mean, I know it’s a convention, so perhaps I should be culturally sensitive, but why? In an age where gender is fluid, subject to change, why do we have to define ourselves by only this? Why do we have to know? What is this preoccupation, this uncomfortability with not knowing? Why can’t we just say, Dear Adam Smith, Dear Xilighgha Pognah. Why do we have to write Dear Mr. Adam Smith? I really don’t understand it.
It seems like a tradition that has existed to make us comfortable, to assure our knowledge of their gender. I can’t just stop wondering why. Really.
So they asked me, so you’ll have your child be the first generation to have to deal with people not knowing how to address them? And I said yeah. I will. I know people may say I’m making them endure more hardship then necessary. I have many things to say about this.
- Why is it so damn important? Why do I have to maintain this archaic tradition? That I don’t believe in, just so my child can conform? Why do they need to be a square? I want my child to learn, maybe from their very name, that societies can change. They need people brave enough, strong enough, to change them, brick by brick. I want to raise a child who isn’t afraid of their name. Who knows the power of names. Who knows their parents wanted to inspire them to not accept the world they know, but instead begin by building the one they want to live in. It may be a hard life, even harder than their life would be. But maybe it would make people confront that uncomfortability. And so it’ll be their first lesson to themselves: to dare to dream and to break conventions, to be the very essential being of themselves no matter what people try to say.
- If they really hate it, they can change their name when they’re 18, or they can complain to me for a straight period of time and we’ll change it. I don’t want to make them unhappy, but I do want them to know why I named them this.
So there. That’s my thoughts. We shall see how it turns out, eh?