安能辨我是雄雌：5岁中性小孩性别终揭露

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.
其实，早在萨沙出生前，他的父母在做胎儿检查时就开始刻意回避性别问题了。他们这么做并不是要吊人胃口，只是希望能消除小孩性别引起的固有期望。

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.
因为不想用性别来评判小孩以后的人生，产出萨沙半小时后，他们才问助产士是男孩还是女孩。而且，他们取了“萨沙”这样一个中性的名字，只叫他 “孩子” 而非 “儿子” 或 “女儿”。

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.
直到最近萨沙开始上学，秘密再也藏不住了，他们才公开承认萨沙其实是个男孩。

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.’
妈妈拉克斯顿来自剑桥郡的索斯顿，是一名网站设计师。她表示，一直隐瞒小孩的性别绝非易事。在亲子俱乐部里，别人都觉得她是个傻子，连小孩是男是女都分不清。“没人愿意跟我喝咖啡，他们觉得我是神经病。”拉克斯顿说。

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.
在学校里，萨沙有时候会穿很女孩子气的、带花边的衣服。但到现在为止，还没人嘲笑过他。拉克斯顿表示：“现在还没人取笑过萨沙。如果有，我希望萨沙能理直气壮地回应他们。”