I saw two cute kids this week. Two girls. Or maybe boys. Or one of each? I’m not sure! So the question on my mind now, which I’m sharing with you, is: Does it matter?

Kid Specimen #1: I’m in the elevator going to work. A woman gets on with her little girl, who looks to be about five years old. The pony-tailed child has on shorts, sneakers and socks. She’s sure not shy, says “hello!” to me in a very confident voice, with a wide smile to match. I respond in kind. She repeats this, and so do I. I’m tempted to say something to the mom, something complimentary about her cute little girl, as I usually do in my elevator building – we’re all kind of friendly even though we don’t necessarily know each other – but I’m stuck… for a pronoun. I can’t say, “She’s so cute,” or “How old is she?” or “What’s her name” or any such thing, because as I’ve been looking at her, “she” morphs into a “he”…and back again… and then back again. Y’see, “her” (I’ll stick with “her” for expediency) clothes looked distinctly masculine. Dark-coloured shirt buttoning on the “guy” side; dark-coloured shorts with a zillion pockets, like the ones little boys wear; navy socks and black shoes. Dark, heavy clothing, in other words, that we tend to associate with masculinity. So I thought to myself, “Hmm, could be a cute little… boy. But ‘he’ has a pony tail, which looks girly on ‘him.’” So I shut up and just smiled and waved at the little gender-nonspecific child as they got off the elevator a floor before me.

Kid Specimen #2: Today. I’m walking to my car after work. Half a block away I see a high-school girl, wearing the local high school’s uniform of white blouse and plaid skirt, black socks and shoes, crossing the street. Her skirt is very short, scandalously so, I think! Doesn’t leave much to the imag- Wait a sec, hold on. As I get closer, I notice her hair is cut and styled like a boy’s. Short. Very short. Extremely short hair along with extremely short skirt? Does. Not. Compute. So now I’m thinking, maybe she is a he, and maybe his lenient, progressive school lets him wear a skirt. Or: maybe he’s a she, and just likes short hair. Or wants to be a boy. Who knows? Maybe he or she cut his hair in sympathy with someone who has cancer. And then I’m thinking…

Does it matter? Does it really? Why should a kid (or anyone of any age, for that matter) have to be pigeon-holed into one gender or another? Just so we’re sure of what pronoun to use, when addressing the parent? So we know which side of the divide to peg the kid for his/her whole future? Whose business is it, anyway?

This all reminds me of a synopsis I wrote years ago for a sci-fi film, featuring a gender-free society of the future, in which the fascist (aren’t they all) government fights determined ‘backward’ subversives who try to buck the system.

Hmm… maybe I would be one of those subversives…