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Excerpt copied from a previous edition

(circa 1999?) of the bookGender in

Canada; Adie Nelson (Ed.) p. 136

[We] would like to announce the birth of Arju

______who arrived at 14:37 EDT on 17

September 1992, at Kitchener-Waterloo

Hospital weighing 3080 grams and measuring

51 cm from head to toe. [The mother] wentthrough twenty-six hours of pre-labour and

seven hours of active labour at home before

going to the hospital; after nine more hours

of labour there, our natural childbirth was

facilitated by the team of______(our family

doctor),______(our midwife), and______(the

duty nurse). We left the hospital six hours after

the delivery, and we are all resting at home,

with all the phones unplugged.

Some answers to questions you may have:

Arju (pronounced Are-jew, factually if not

grammatically correct, accent on the first

syllable) doesnt mean anything. Its a nicesounding pair of syllables, nothing more, and

we made it up more than a year ago, after

trying lots of different combinations. We

wanted a name that was short, sounded

good with [the mothers last name], and

didnt lead to any obvious derogatory

nicknames. (If you can think of one well, its

too late.)

Please dont rush out and buy a gift. We

stocked up on the basics before the birth,

and it will take us a while to figure out what

else we need, or what might prove useful or

entertaining. If you still have the gift-giving

urge a few weeks from now, we may be able

to suggest some possibilities to you. But really,

dont feel obligated to do anything morethan smile and coo when you first meet Arju

(and you dont even have to do that, if

youre really in a bad mood.

No, we didnt forget to mention whether Arju

was a boy or a girl, we deliberately left that

out another decision made many months

ago. We are concerned about early gender

stereotyping. Studies have shown (see the

bibliography at the end of this

announcement) that adult perception of

infant behaviour is affected more by the

perceived sex of the child than the actual

behaviour of the child. There is a difference

in the way adults talk to girl babies and boy

babies; there is a difference in the way adults

hold and play with girl babies and boy

babies. We think that the sex of a newborn

child who will still be sorting out its senses for

weeks if not months after birth is the least

interesting bit of information about that child.

We hope youll help us in our task of raising

our child properly by focusing on Arju as a

developing human being, with all the

wonder that entails.

No, we dont know when were going to

have a second child. Shame on you for even

thinking of asking!

Bibliography

Pomerleau, A., Bolduc, D., Malcuit, G., &

Cossette, L. (1990). Pink or blue:

Environmental gender stereotypes in the

first two years of life. Sex Roles, 22(5),

359-367.

Sidorowicz, L. S., & Lunney, G. S. (1980). Baby

X revisited. Sex Roles, 6(1), 67-73.

Stern, M., & Karraker, K. H. (1989). Sex

stereotyping of infants: A review ofgender labeling studies. Sex Roles, 20(9),

501-522.

[Approximately three years later, a second

University of Waterloo professors

______ and ______ , both of the

Department of Computer Science,

intentionally gave their babies first names

devoid of gender implications and

family names in alternating order. With

the permission of the parent-authors, we

reproduce their birth announcements,

complete with an accompanying

bibliography, as they appeared on the

World Wide Web. We also reproduce,

again with permission, comments from

professor ______ on the reactions theproud parents have received to the

announcements.

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birth announcement appeared, as follows...]

We would like to announce the birth of

Zazuki______who arrived at 8:06 EST on 24

March 1995, at Kitchener-Waterloo Hospital,

weighing 41600 grams and measuring 52 cm

from head to toe. The birth was assisted byour midwife______and duty nurse______

Labour started at 2:00, Elsie arrived at 6:00,

we left for the hospital at 7:00. Weve been

home since 11:00 and are resting

comfortably with the phones unplugged,

happy and healthy.

Some answers to questions you may have:

Zazuki is pronounced Zah-ZOO-key. Like

Arju, it doesnt mean anything in any

language we know or have checked. We

tried a lot of combinations of syllables until

we found one that sounded nice to us.

Please dont rush out and buy a gift. We

have everything we need and plenty that is

sheer luxury, and there are Arjus feelings to

consider. If you feel the urge to mark the

occasion, please consider a donation to

Planned Parenthood. Local councillors

blocked a provincial grant to our local

branch and they could really use the money,

but wherever you are located, theres likely

to be a branch near you. You get a nice tax

deduction and you can feel good about

helping others. (Yes, Zazuki was planned, and

we dont plan on having any more.)

As we did with Arju, we are not announcing

Zazukis sex. We think it worked out just fine in

Arjus case, and were used to dropping sex-

specific pronouns out of our speech now. If

you cant understand why were doing this,

well be happy to pass on a copy of Arjus

birth announcement, which includes a

bibliography containing the articles which

inspired us.

________ [The mother]

________ [The father]

and Arju________

Not everyone viewed these birthannouncements in a positive light. As the

childrens father commented in a letter

to one of the authors about the

announcements:

The first one of course caused quite a

stir. We got almost no gifts (except from

people who could handle the situation)

because people couldnt think of what

to buy without knowing Arjus sex! Others

worried about the effect on Arju of being

handled by people ignorant of this

crucial fact even on Arjus sexual

orientation For months afterward

people would ask us if wed announced

it yet. Strangers would quiz us carefully,

hoping to catch a slip. (I slipped four

times that I can think of twice for each

pronoun he and she!). Regarding the

second child, [professor] ________

observed there was much less fuss;

everyone was resigned to our

eccentricities by then, and Arju would tell

anyone who was really curious.