Recommendation: X: A Fabulous Child’s Story

A recommends…
Baby X

Baby X is a story of a child raised as an experiment. X is raised just named X, and X’s physical sex is kept a very tight secret. Nobody other than the parents know, and they are sworn to exclusive secrecy, telling everybody who asks that X is neither a boy or a girl: just an X. The story follows Baby X as it grows up without any pressure towards either male or female, encouraged strongly in both areas. X thrives in school, but soon complications arise. It’s a very sweet story with a very, VERY good message.

» Recommend something. «


Posted by on February 9th, 2011 at 08:00 am

Category: recommendations, short story 13 comments »

13 Responses to “Recommendation: X: A Fabulous Child’s Story”

  1. Face

    Saw this, went and read it, almost cried. I like it loads.

    [Reply]

  2. G3nd3rValid

    This made me cry a little bit. Should I ever decide to have a child of my own I am doing some long and hard thinking about this before hand!! I want an X <3

    [Reply]

  3. George Grey

    This is adorable, thanks for sharing it! And ‘husky biceps’ made me laugh out loud :D

    [Reply]

  4. phoebe

    after a lot of work (and a bit of money) I managed to get my hands on a copy of this book – its kind of my favourite book ever…

    kind of wish it would go back in print, so I can be sure millions of children will read this book…

    [Reply]

    Samson replied:

    I was thinking, “I bet there’s somebody to talk to about getting this back in print,” so I dug around and discovered that the publishing company folded in 1978, and the author and her partner are both deceased. Good grief, maybe not.

    [Reply]

  5. Lassie Stuart

    “X’s favorite TV program was “Lassie,” which stars a girl dog played by a boy dog.”

    [Reply]

  6. oddboyout

    The excerpt reminds me of the child named Pop. They should be about 4 or 5 years old now.

    [Reply]

    Keanan replied:

    That is who I thought about first when I first read this. I remember hearing about Pop about two years ago. I hope all is going well for them. As for the story- that was great. I thought it was a very nice story and has a good message.

    [Reply]

  7. Elliot

    I read this last semester as part of a class. It was in the textbook that was used for “Introduction to Feminist Studies” The textbook “Women: Images and Realities, A Multicultural Anthology” was a great book. It is truly an anthology. There are news articles, speeches, individual’s personal stories, scientific studies, poetry, etc. The story of X is really thought provoking. Maybe all school kids (especially middle school) should be required to read it. I bet it would challenge a lot of people’s points of view.

    [Reply]

  8. George Grey

    Also, it reminds me a little of ‘Bill’s new frock’ by Anne Fine, about a boy who wakes up in a pink, frilly fiddly dress and is horrified about all the gendered activities he has to do at school. The message is less radical, but the author’s commented that she has mixed feelings about it still being popular and in print, because she hoped that school would have stopped being such gender-enforcing spaces in the 20 years since it was published.

    [Reply]

  9. Clare

    A really great surprising book – with a great twist at the end. Read it years ago, and will certainly look at it again now!

    [Reply]

  10. happeningfish

    Believe it or not, that was on my grade 11 high school syllabus… gosh, something like 18 years ago. At the time I thought it made PERFECT SENSE and I think I rather overestimated how many of my classmates thought so too. It excited me, made me proud of my tomboy manners and my girlishness at the same time. All teenagers should have to encounter this.

    [Reply]

  11. Edd's Stories

    The book is very well written. Surprising .

    [Reply]


Leave a Reply


Can I show your picture? If you have a Gravatar associated with this email address, it will be displayed as your photo. If not, I'll just put a picture of a fork next to your comment. Everybody likes forks.

Be nice. Judgmental comments will be quietly deleted and blacklisted. There's plenty of room for those elsewhere on the web.

For legal reasons, you must be age 13 or older to post a comment on Genderfork.

You can use some HTML tags for formatting, e.g. <em>...</em> for emphasis (italics) or <strong>...</strong> for strong emphasis (bold) or <a href="http://(url)">...</a> for links.


Back to top