安能辨我是雄雌：5歲中性小孩性別終揭露

His fairy wings, pink tutu and ballet pumps suggest this little boy has raided the dressing up box. But if five-year-old Sasha wanted to wear this every day, his parents would have no problem at all.
這個小傢伙身穿粉色芭蕾短裙和舞鞋，揹着一對精靈翅膀，看來着實費心打扮了一番。小男孩叫薩沙，今年5歲。如果薩沙每天都這麼穿，他的父母也不會有任何異議。

In fact, as they are bringing him up to be ‘gender neutral’, they would see it simply as their son expressing himself. Not that they usually refer to him as ‘him’.
其實，薩沙的父母刻意要把他培養成一個“中性人”，希望他能無拘無束地展現自我，而不只是一個純粹的“男孩”。

From the moment Sasha was born, Beck Laxton and Kieran Cooper have been at pains not to lumber their son with the stereotyping they fear that gender brings.
從薩沙出生時起，媽媽比可·拉克斯頓和爸爸基藍·庫珀就一直擔心固有的社會性別偏見會阻礙兒子的全面成長。

So they simply called him ‘the infant’ and kept his gender a secret from all but a few close friends and relatives. As he grew older, he was encouraged to play with dolls as much as Lego, slept in a neutral yellow room and was allowed to wear both boys’ and girls’ clothes.
所以，他們只叫他“小孩”，除了極少數親朋好友，沒人知道薩沙的性別。薩沙長大一點後，就睡在淡黃色房間裏，玩樂高娃娃，既可以穿男孩衣服，也可以穿女孩衣服。

But now that he is five and at school Miss Laxton, 46, and Mr. Cooper, 44, believe it will be almost impossible to keep it up.
但現在5歲的薩沙該上學了。於是，46歲的拉克斯頓和44歲的庫珀感到再也瞞不住他的性別了。

Last year parents in Canada who refused to say whether their child was a boy or girl stirred up outrage and accusations they were turning their child into a freak.
去年，加拿大有對夫婦因拒絕確認小孩的性別而成爲衆矢之的，人們指責他倆把孩子養成了一個怪物。

Sasha’s parents, who have faced their own share of raised eyebrows, are thought to be among the first British parents to speak about this far-from-traditional method of raising a child. They are keen to highlight the issue publicly and get other parents talking about it.
薩沙的父母現在也受到了同樣的指責。在英國，他們是較早敢於反對用傳統方法培養小孩的夫婦。自然，他們也願意將這個問題公諸於世，和其他父母一起探討。

‘I wanted to avoid all that stereotyping,’ Miss Laxton explained yesterday. ‘Stereotypes seem fundamentally stupid. Why would you want to slot people into boxes? Gender affects what children wear and what they can play with, and that shapes the kind of person they become. I start to get cross with it if it skews their potential.’
昨天，媽媽拉克斯頓表示：“老一套的方法很蠢，我不想那樣撫養小孩。爲什麼一定要按社會模式培養孩子呢？性別會影響小孩在穿着和玩伴上的選擇，進而決定他以後會成爲一個什麼樣的人。這種模式可能會扼殺小孩的潛能——這一點讓我很不爽。”The process began even before Sasha was born, with his parents choosing not to be told their baby’s sex after scans during the pregnancy. It wasn’t because they wanted a surprise, they just wanted to avoid the inevitable expectations of what having a boy or girl meant.
其實，早在薩沙出生前，他的父母在做胎兒檢查時就開始刻意迴避性別問題了。他們這麼做並不是要吊人胃口，只是希望能消除小孩性別引起的固有期望。

After he was born, they waited 30 minutes before asking midwives his sex because they ‘did not want to prejudice his life with gender’. They gave him a name that suited both boys and girls and referred to him as ‘the infant’ rather than a son or daughter.
因爲不想用性別來評判小孩以後的人生，產出薩沙半小時後，他們才問助產士是男孩還是女孩。而且，他們取了“薩沙”這樣一箇中性的名字，只叫他 “孩子” 而非 “兒子” 或 “女兒”。

It is only now that Sasha has started primary school that the secret has become impossible to keep and they have started telling the wider world that Sasha is a boy.
直到最近薩沙開始上學，祕密再也藏不住了，他們才公開承認薩沙其實是個男孩。

Miss Laxton, a web designer from Sawston, Cambridgeshire, admitted that keeping her child’s gender under wraps for so long had not been easy. At her mother and baby group, she said she was regarded as ‘that loony woman who doesn’t know whether her baby is a boy or a girl’. ‘I could never persuade anyone in the group to come round for coffee,’ she said. ‘They just thought I was mental.’
媽媽拉克斯頓來自劍橋郡的索斯頓，是一名網站設計師。她表示，一直隱瞞小孩的性別絕非易事。在親子俱樂部裏，別人都覺得她是個傻子，連小孩是男是女都分不清。“沒人願意跟我喝咖啡，他們覺得我是神經病。”拉克斯頓說。

At school, Sasha sometimes wears a ruched-sleeved and scalloped-collared shirt from the girl’s uniform list. But he has yet to encounter any teasing or bullying. ‘Nobody’s ever mentioned it and I would hope that if they actually said something to Sasha, he’d be confident enough to make a good response,’ his mother said.
在學校裏，薩沙有時候會穿很女孩子氣的、帶花邊的衣服。但到現在爲止，還沒人嘲笑過他。拉克斯頓表示：“現在還沒人取笑過薩沙。如果有，我希望薩沙能理直氣壯地迴應他們。”