I’ve heard some bizarre shit in my time, but I recently came across the term ‘Theybies’ and thought “here we go again, more of this stupid shit.” This is essentially coming off the back of the whole ‘gender-neutral’ parenting movement that has slowly but surely been picking up a lot of steam lately. I will apologies in advance before you continue, this post will contain some curse words in it. I don’t tend to swear too heavily in my blog posts but fuck it, this one deserves it.

If you want to see some of the stupid shit I’m referring to, then here’s this:

Anyway, on with the shit show.

What the fuck are Theybies?

I guess I’ll start with the obvious question that many of you might be asking. What the fuck are theybies?

‘Theybies’ is a stupid, cool sounding little term that naive, overly concerned parents are giving their children due to the fact they want to be super gender-neutral. When the child hits an appropriate age – whatever that means – they will then let them decide the gender they want to identify as. You know, because huge life choices should be granted to a five year old. Screw it, let’s give them the vote and get them a tattoo of some twat from paw patrol whilst we’re at it.

There is Nothing Wrong with breaking gender stereotypes and refusing to see things as gendered

Look, I am all up for breaking down gender stereotypes and giving people an equal opportunity to do what they want. I suffered with postnatal depression for fucks sake, and some people say men can’t get it. Talk about defying my gender.

There is nothing wrong with refusing to see something that is pink as ‘girly’, trying to encourage more girls to get into the tech industry, changing our language so we don’t speak differently to girls, or even getting more men to be the main caregiver to their children. Life should be a lot more gender neutral.

But that has absolutely fuck all to do with the fact that some people have dicks, and some people have vaginas.

If anything in life should not be gender neutral it’s our ACTUAL GENDERS. They’re literally the only thing, unless you speak certain foreign languages, that has a gender. The colour pink doesn’t have a gender, we’ve just given it one.

I have a daughter – I want her to be free to make the choices she wants to make. If she wants to play in the mud, be a coal miner or do anything else that people perceive as a ‘male’ thing, then I want her to be able to do that. But she will be doing all of those things with a vagina. And what’s the problem with that? Which brings me to my next point.

What’s Actually Wrong with Having a Gender?

As I just mentioned, we have a girl. Her name is Isabelle. As of right now that’s what she is. We don’t have a non-binary, gender fluid theybie called Isabelle. We have a girl. Without our intervention she’ll have periods, grow some sort of breasts, potentially be able to get pregnant and have a lower level of testosterone than people who have dicks.

Here’s our little girl looking girly as shit on her **first birthday**. She’s got some sort of gender stereotyping princess vest on a pink sprinkle cake and a big “fuck you I’m a girl” pink frilly tutu on

If she wants to change gender, call herself Steve and grow a penis – not quite sure how that last bit works – then she can absolutely do that. Besides, it’ll give me something interesting to blog about. I’m just not letting her do it when she’s FUCKING FIVE. Although you can buy fake penises for those who fancy confusing the shit out of their toddler.

Sometimes Children are idiots

Look, I wanted to be a bastard cement mixer when I was a child. THE ACTUAL FUCKING CEMENT MIXER. Children are occasionally very stupid. They’re supposed to be. It’s our job as parents to go “No, Billy, that’s a fucking awful idea, you’re worse than your father” not “Aye, I’m sure we could just cut the thing off.”

There was even this other ridiculous article on HuffPost about how we should stop assuming babies’ gender. Here’s a snippet from the post:

“Assuming a baby’s gender would be the same as assuming their sexual orientation, what taste in music they’ll grow up to have, whether or not they’ll go to university and who they’ll prefer, Ant or Dec.”

Fuck me there’s so much wrong with that sentence that I almost can’t be arsed to explain it. Although in fairness, I feel that if I have to explain the difference between your GENDER THAT YOU WERE BORN WITH and whether you prefer Ant or Dec then we have a lot of work to do.

Despite my opposition I Actually see where they’re coming from

I might have made my position on this fairly clear, but I do see where they’re coming from on this one. So this is where I turn the tables and actually side with these gender neutral parents.

It all comes down to the fact that they see gender as a choice. Much like we choose whether we prefer Ant or Dec, we can choose which gender we want to identify as. If you accept that gender is a choice, then it is one of the only choices that we forcibly apply to someone without their consent. We don’t force other preferences like ketchup or mustard onto children, so why do it with gender?

I get it. I really do. And I don’t want to come off like an ignorant dick with this post – although I probably am succeeding. But unfortunately, much in the same way we don’t pick our eye colour, gender is something that we are just born with. Yes we can make the choice later in life to change ourselves in some way, gender included, but that doesn’t mean we should assume a change will be made.

That’s just how life is I’m afraid. It’s the same for dogs, cats and every other living organism. And yes, there are animals out there who are gender fluid, so don’t hit me with that one. But that doesn’t stop the gender from existing in the first place.

We’re just incredibly lucky that we live in a world where you can literally choose to have your penis willingly removed and turned into a vagina. That’s an amazing thing. Sometimes you have to step back and appreciate how far science has come.

I know these people are just trying to be good parents – even if they are missing the mark

At the end of the day, we all want to be the best parents we can be. Well, most of us do. There’s still the odd twat out there popping them out to get the extra benefits cash.

But I dare say the couple in the video above, and all the others doing this, are doing it because they want to raise happy, healthy children not bound by gender constraints. It’s probably being done out of a place of kindness and love. Although I do suspect a certain level of narcissism and the desire to be unique and different. Blame the internet for that one. But that doesn’t make the concept of theybies a good thing.

Gender exists, and that’s ok. All you’re doing by hiding and ignoring gender from children is making them more confused about what it actually is. Just because they are a boy or a girl doesn’t mean they then have to fall into all the stereotypes that go along with them. Maybe they will. Maybe there’s also a biological element that helps dictate our life choices. It’s almost like millions of years of evolution has made us slightly different. Perhaps men are just biologically prepositioned to select different jobs to women – although don’t get me started on that gender pay gap, we all know it’s bullshit so let’s cut the bollocks.

Obviously I’m Far From Transphobic – Not that this is necessarily a Transgender issue

Not that I feel like I should have to mention this, but I’ll do it just in case. I am not transphobic. Obviously.

Gender dysphoria is a complicated, hard to unpack issue these days and it’s something I have full sympathy with those who go through it. But I feel like this isn’t an issue of transgenderism. It’s an issue of pre-emptive transgenderism – and to a certain extent it’s not even that. Most people who go through some sort of gender dysphoria want to change their gender, not find themselves somewhere in the middle. Although I do know those people exist too.

This is just parents assuming that their child might have some sort of gender identity issue when they’re older so they’re tackling it a little bit too early and calling them theybies. It’s progressives trying to out-progressive other progressives.

I’ll be honest, there’s also a part of me that really doesn’t care about any of this. Sometimes I just see things and feel compelled to write about them.

Just do what you want

If you want to call your daughter a bloody theybie then go for it. We’re all a little narcissistic from time to time and this is one sure way of acting like your child is special. We all also do the occasional stupid thing that might massively mess our children up in their adult life. We’re not perfect.

Can we all just appreciate how far we’ve come in our society that this is even a thing? A few generations ago we were worried about going to war, the destruction of the world via the atomic bomb or even at one point just simply having a good harvest. Now we’re raising babies without a gender because…

If someone gets pissed off with me for writing this and talking about it like this, just be thankful that this is what we’re getting annoyed about. I love the fact that this is what gets me mildly irritated. Fuck me, it’s a damn sight better than sitting in piss wet boots in a trench in Passchendaele getting ready to go over the top to my obvious death. I’m sat talking shit about parents essentially going “fuck it, I see that little penis but you’re not having a gender. You’re going to be a theybie” And that’s hardly the worst thing we could be arguing over.