Boy!

6:06 a.m. -- 3 mos., 20 days old

As far as I can determine, infants wearing diapers display no indication of gender. This has not failed to stop innumerable people, vast numbers of people, virtually everyone we meet, from assuming that Baby A is a boy.

M and I, who have seen Baby A diaperless, know her to be a girl.

Like most babies, Baby A has short hair. Unlike most baby girls, Baby A is not routinely decked out with accoutrements (pinks and pastels, bows, ribbons, baby jewelry) that tell the world she lacks a penis. Therefore -- the logic here is irrefutable, vacuum sealed -- Baby A is a boy.

To the extent we can determine -- and we live in New York City, so this is a more rigorous experiment than could be conducted in much of the world -- this assumption appears to cross cultures, classes, and genders. Waiters in Chinese restaurants, shop keepers in sari stalls, Wall Street execs, dowagers at the Met, professors, reporters, construction workers, secretaries, random Joses and Laticias on any street in any neighborhood: "Oh, what a darling boy!" "Your boy is so cute." "Good-looking son you've got there." "What's his name?"

Since Baby A's name offers no clear gender signal to most ears, the answer to this last question does nothing to disprove the assumption.

For Baby A's first few weeks, the most common sentence we uttered in public was, "She's a girl, actually." With supreme will I resisted my desire to respond, at least once, "Actually, she's a lesbian." Now, partly from fatigue and partly in the interests of anthropological inquiry, we have stopped trying to disabuse the world of its sexist notion.

"Why don't they just say 'baby'?" my mother asks, sensibly.

It's remarkable the degree to which American society in the early 21st century wants to classify its children as gendered. Most parents now want to learn while the kid lies in utero, a trend whose appeal I have yet to determine. In either event, we were neither going to abort the child nor repaint the nursery nor begin accumulating a trousseau. We found out when I moved the umbilical cord from between Baby A's legs.

But the penis or vagina question matters to most. Tell the world you have a baby girl and the world beats a pink path to your door. Nurses at our hospital labelled their portable bassinets with pink or blue cards (and, misconstruing Baby A's name, mislabeled hers with a blue card before we informed them of their error); we were given as a parting gift a bag of pink items. Blankets, bibs, bath towels, burp cloths, plastic rattles, frozen teething rings, sockies, shoesies, onesies, sets, overlays, layettes, overalls, caps, PJs, diaper covers -- all come in more shades of pink than I knew existed. No one has yet bought us pink camouflage, but it's out there. Other pastels are acceptable but remain in the minority. Sex clues such as ribbons or ruffles are encouraged.

Most of this stuff we instantly put in the "re-gift" pile, or wore once to please the giver before re-gifting. To my knowledge we have not purchased one article of clothing for Baby A, accepting hand-me-downs from M's sister and a couple of work colleagues. (Some of this stuff is at least third-hand; "Cho" is written on many of Baby A's labels, and we know no Chos.) All of these major donors shared our disinclination to mark their infants, so Baby A wears lots of perfectly cute clothes that tell the world she is male.

Two of these friends, the parents of Baby N, who's about 9 months older than Baby A, have made further field notes. When folks assume Baby N is male, they'll comment on her size and strength: "What a big boy!" When they know she's female, they'll comment on her looks: "Oh, she's so beautiful!" When Baby N's father tosses her in the air or roughhouses with her, he often gets disapproving looks -- but only from observers who know Baby N is female.

None of this much surprises M, who's dedicated her life to feminist causes and has felt society's sexist lash (if lightly, compared to the majority of the world's females). But it has all rather stunned clueless me. I've been forced to rethink the depths to which humans, even those of us most desirous of overlooking distinctions of color, religion, class, and physical ability, cling to and nurture notions of "female-ness" and "male-ness."

I'd like to imagine it will be different by the time Baby A considers having children. But, boy, I doubt it.