Essay on “The story of X” of Lois Gould

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.