Meet Sasha, the gender-neutral child

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London - The parents of a five-year-old boy being brought up as ‘gender neutral’ have posted an internet video of him saying it is ‘silly’ to talk of differences between boys and girls. In the 90-second clip, Sasha Laxton laughs with his mother as he rejects the notion that girls like pink and boys prefer blue. [The video cannot now be found on YouTube, though. - IOL] When Sasha was born, his parents simply referred to him as ‘the infant’ and kept his sex a secret from all but a few close friends and relatives. His gender has only been revealed because he started school recently.

In the video clip, his mother, Beck Laxton, asks him if he thinks girls and boys are different. A grinning Sasha simply replies: “No.”

Miss Laxton, 46, who is filming her son as he walks along a road near their home, goes on: “What do people sometimes say to you about colours?”

Sasha replies: “Pink and yellow are girls’ colours and blue and green are boys’ colours. I think that is really silly!”

“What about dressing up in a tutu and being a fairy? Do you remember when you did that for Christmas and I sent it on the Christmas cards because you looked so beautiful?” asks Miss Laxton.

A smiling Sasha replies: “Yeah.”

When Miss Laxton says: “Do you think people would think that boys are meant to do that or girls are meant to do that?”, Sasha replies: “Girls were. I think that is so silly.” To which Miss Laxton, a website designer, cheers: “Yeah!”

The video had been posted on YouTube where hundreds have viewed it, with some leaving comments criticising Sasha’s parents.

Miss Laxton and Kieran Cooper, 44, have taken pains to avoid what they view as the traditional stereotyping associated with gender.

Their son been encouraged to play with dolls as well as Lego and allowed to wear both boys’ and girls’ clothes. Last year parents in Canada who refused to say whether their child was a boy or girl stirred up accusations that they were turning their child into a freak.

Sasha’s parents are thought to be among the first British parents to speak about their far-from-traditional method of raising a child.

“I wanted to avoid all that stereotyping,” Miss Laxton, from Sawston, Cambridgeshire, explained last week. “Stereotypes seem fundamentally stupid. Why would you want to slot people into boxes?”

Mr Cooper, a computer software designer, said that Sasha is aware he is a boy and has been allowed to grow up taking an interest in whatever he wants.

“If Sasha wants to dress up in girls’ clothes then so be it,” he added. “But we’re not forcing it. The girls’ clothes and fancy dress are for fun at home. We don’t make Sasha go out in girls’ clothes.”

Lucie Russell, of Young Minds mental health charity, said: “Children aren’t experiments. Early child development is about finding an identity. Knowing and promoting whether you are a girl or a boy helps with forming one’s self-identity.”

But other experts say stereotypes do cause problems, citing the abundance of pink toys available for girls that turn them into “passive princesses” with little chance to form their own preferences. - Daily Mail