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Comment by ams6110 | Hacker News Reader

Never heard that dresses were gender-neutral for small children in the 19th century. Seems I've seen plenty of old photographs that show boys wearing traditionally "masculine" clothing, though commonly with short pants, transitioning to long pants during adolescence.

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I love the picture of FDR in a dress.

http://media.smithsonianmag.com/images/pink-and-blue-Frankli...

The 19th century photographs of children you see are, as a general rule, the children of people wealthy enough to afford photographs of their children.

The effect of this is two-fold; firstly, you're seeing a small segment of society, and secondly, because having a photograph taken is special, you're not seeing everyday clothing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeching_(boys)

It's hard to say if a 5 year old is a boy or girl withought clothing identifiers so it's not always obvious. However, from a practical standpoint a dress takes less effort to make, you don't outgrow them as fast, and it makes changing faster so I can see why it would be the gender neutral choice.

But why does it need to be obvious? Traditionally sexism led to people liking to flout their boys, but today I would hope we would be passed this (albeit pie in the sky thinking, we obviously aren't past whats in a kids nethers).

I can't wait for the day people just don't give a crap if the 5 year old has a dick or not.

For me it's the simple issue about knowing which gender pronoun to use. It seems rude to call someone's child "it."

I think "they" is preferred over "it", and not rude at all.

Really? That sounds worse to me...

"How old are they?" "When did you have them?" "Are they a boy or a girl?" "They are adorable."

I would probably just drop the pronoun completely.

"How old?" "When did you give birth?" "Boy or girl?" "So adorable!"

>"How old are they?" "When did you have them?" "Are they a boy or a girl?" "They are adorable."

Those sentences sound completely normal and grammatical to me.

> Those sentences sound completely normal and grammatical to me.

Only if you are talking about more than one person. If you are talking about a single person those sentences sound bizarre.

'They' is fine as a singular, for instance the person that you have just replied to, they say that you are completely wrong, and I agree with them. See?

Look up the "epicene they".

If you say "how old is they?" or "they is adorable" it will sound cooler, like you're speaking some sort of patois.

I just read this fun Wikipedia article for language nerds:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they

That's pretty cool. The verb conjugation for "to be" seems to be actually useful in this context. It sounds a little wrong to me, but that's just a matter of habit, and it would probably flow better in written English than writing he/she.

You're in dangerous territory if you ask boy or girl - people often assume their child's gender is as obvious to you as it is to them. I've gotten some unexpected hostility from strangers this way.

"How old is your child?" "How old is the little one?"

When pronoun is unknown, "they" is the common choice. At queer conferences it is becoming the practice to include preferred pronouns on your name tag.

I demand to be formally addressed as the Wizard of Speed and Time.

well, it is highly dependant on the language, some require distinction between sexes, and using a gender neutral term is sometimes offensive.

As a Father of four, this makes a whole lot of sense to me. I'd guess they'd potty train faster in a dress than in pants.

I don't know about potty training. Disposable nappies are a miracle of habituation. It seems they can deposit bucket loads in them and never know it - at least until they saturate and the dam bursts.

Living in a climate that is warm to hot most of the year, little kids basically just need a nappy and a tshirt or singlet around the house. It looks very ghetto but it is practical and not unlike wearing a dress I guess.

Chucking shorts on over the nappy to dress up for a public outing doesn't seem to alter the complexity of things appreciably. Little boy fire engines take great pride in being accessorised with a fire hose and whipping it out never seems to present any challenges or inhibitions to them. At least compared with aiming it. Perhaps we should paint a fly in the toilet bowl.

They were common in early 20th century as well. I have photographs of both my grandfathers wearing them as small children.

My guess is that it was very rare but because of agendas, it'll be played up and mentioned to seem as though it was more common than it actually was. Just me guessing... knowing nothing about the subject.

Yes, you don't know. This isn't a matter of opinion or guessing; its a matter of established fact, with lots of written and photographic documentation. As Daniel Patrick Moynihan supposedly said: "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts." You add nothing to a rational discussion with nasty slander.

Fantastic quote - I'm going to use that.

isn't this a nice example of healthy, unbiased skepticism?

lmao. "agendas".

No, the commenter admits to "knowing nothing about the subject."

To be credible, a skeptic can't be ignorant.

> To be credible, a skeptic can't be ignorant.

No. To be credible, a skeptic must begin by asking honest questions.

Well, if we are playing that game, I think it was a plot to hide the fact that we were being invaded by a race of alien dwarves and having a common dress for everyone below a certain height was their method of avoiding detection... knowing nothing about the subject.

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