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Patricia J. Williams (1951– ) writes monthly for the Nation, a weekly

magazine known for its liberal perspectives on culture and politics. Williams’s
column, “Diary of a Mad Law Professor,” examines issues related to law and
culture in the United States, Britain, and France. She is most widely known as
a legal scholar whose work focuses on understanding legal theory from per-
spectives that acknowledge the experience of people from different racial and
ethnic groups. Currently, she holds the James L. Dohr Professorship of Law at
Columbia University. The author of four books, she was the recipient of a
MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (often referred to as the Genius Awards) in
2000. In this essay, which appeared in June 2011, Williams’s focus is not race
or ethnicity but stereotypes related to gender, using the example of Storm
Stocker, a child whose parents and siblings have decided not to reveal Storm’s
biological sex. Thus, people aren’t sure whether to refer to Storm as he, she,
or it. As Williams notes, when this item made the news in English-speaking
countries, it created quite a storm—no pun intended! Contrary to some specu-
lation, Storm is not intersexed, that is, the baby does not display both male
and female genitalia; instead, Storm is biologically male or female. At the time
we are writing this headnote, December 2011, nonfamily members (except for
a midwife and a few other medical professionals) do not know which. As you
read this essay, consider the ways in which language, and more specifically,
pronouns, can encourage us to think in terms of stereotypes.

Are We Worried about Storm’s Identity—

or Our Own?
PATRICIA J. WILLIAMS

W
hen my son was 2, he went to a nursery
school where he often played with a cheer-
ful little girl I’ll call Jessie. Jessie’s parents
dropped her off earlier than most of the other kids,
and she was in the habit of standing by the door as
others arrived, taking their lunchboxes and helpfully
lining them up in the classroom’s big old refrigerator.
As my son and Jessie became better friends, he began
to imitate her every move. Every morning Jessie
would stand on the right-hand side of the door taking
lunchboxes; my son would stand on the left-hand side
taking lunchboxes; and they would take turns run-
ning to and from the large, battered fridge.
I remember this ritual of theirs, however, not just
because they were so gosh-darned adorable. I remem-
ber it because one morning the classroom teacher

545
 546 C h a p t e r 2 2   how does popular culture sterEotype YOU?
smiled warmly as they went through their identical
paces and said, “Your son is such a sturdy little secu-
rity guard! And Jessie, she’s our mini-hostess with the
mostest!”
That story came to mind when I read about Storm,
the 5-month-old baby who has become the center of an
international controversy because the child’s parents
have refused to reveal Storm’s sex. Kathy Witterick and
David Stocker sent an e-mail to their circle of friends,
saying, “We’ve decided not to share Storm’s sex for
now—a tribute to freedom and choice in place of limi-
tation.” In no time, that message went viral, showing up
on The Huffington Post as well as radio, TV and in
newspapers throughout North America.
The public response has been overwhelmingly
negative. Although Kathy Witterick’s follow-up letter
in the Ottawa Citizen made clear that Storm’s imme-
diate family knows the sex, and that there are no
secrets withheld from Storm’s siblings, most people
have found it strange, “creepy” or “freakish.” On The
View, Elisabeth Hasselbeck called it “a social experi-
Storm, often incorrectly referred to as “the genderless baby”
22_LUN_06045_Ch22_477-567.indd 546
ment.” Others called for the couple’s children to be
removed by social services.
While it seems to me that “not sharing Storm’s sex 5
for now” is hardly a full-fledged commitment to life-
long gender suppression or neutered identity, I will
leave to mental health experts the propriety of Storm’s
parents’ stance. As a purely philosophical matter,
however, the situation is intriguing. After all, it is a
much under-interrogated ° political truism ° that
“we’re all just people,” or “we’re all equal” or “it doesn’t
matter what your religion is” or “I don’t see race.”
Who cares about anything else if “we’re all American
citizens”?
Yet when some intrepid souls actually follow such
identity-erasing truisms to their logical, uncomfort-
able ends—refusing altogether to engage in the con-
ventions of gendered identity, as with baby Storm—it
is profoundly unsettling. We’re not supposed to talk—
to think—about difference based on gender, race, eth-
nicity, religion et al. But that supposition holds only
when the marks, the phenotypes,° the stigmas,° are
under-interrogated: rarely exam-
ined or questioned.
truism: a statement assumed to
be true; a frequently uttered
statement that is ultimately
meaningless or nearly so.
phenotype: someone’s physical
appearance, often in terms of
apparent racial or ethnic back-
ground, in contrast to genotype,
or the genetic makeup of an
individual.
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 WILLIAMS / Are We Worried about Storm’s Identity—or Our Own? 547

clear—indeed so clear that all conversation coagulates
around the dynamics of denial: “I didn’t notice you
were black—what a reverse racist you are for labeling
yourself !” “Why can’t you be like everyone else
instead of flaunting your religion by wearing that khi-
mar,° that yarmulke,° that bindi?”° “If women want
equality in the workplace, they should stop demand-
ing womb-based privilege.”
Where, however, there is ambiguity, a switch gets
flipped. If race or ethnicity is at all indeterminate, the
first question is “What are you?” Where gender is not
instantly discernible, anxiety or even rage ensues. We
want our boxes, our neat cabinets of thought. When
crowing over a newborn and asking, “Is it a boy or a
girl?” what we really are seeking is the satisfaction of
our own eagerness to assign gender. The instant we
know, we run out to buy blue rather than pink or dolls
rather than trucks. The pitch of our cooing goes up or
down accordingly. Gender, rather than sex, is a social
response, embedded in our language, culture, educa-
tion, ideology, vision. When my son and his friend
Jessie went through exactly the same motions, it was
gender assignment that led their teacher to describe
them in such unconsciously distinct ways.
Our anxiety in response to Witterick and Stocker’s
decision reveals a tension in our culture between the
insistence on pinning down unknown aspects of
another’s identity and the assumption that we don’t
need to know anything about anyone except that
they’re human. Indeed, if there is “a social experi-
ment” being done, it surely also tests those of us
beyond the Witterick-Stocker household. Spoken or
unspoken, assigning identity is something we are
always doing—in fact, we need to do so as to order
our world. Yet we almost always do so without giving
one whit of thought to all the underlying histories of
assortment we imply; perhaps taking the occasional
time out to review is not a bad thing.
And so we must find some way to speak of this
child. If we don’t want to call Storm “it”—and really,
Chapter 9 offers different types of
definitions that writers use in
developing arguments of definition.
On which, if any, does Williams’s
argument depend?
link to p. 190

stigma: a distinguishing
mark. While the term can
be used in reference to a
mark on the skin that indi-
cates a disease (e.g.,
measles, leprosy), here, it is
used figuratively to mean
a stain on one’s identity
caused by membership in a
group that society views in
a negative way.
khimar: one of the many
kinds of head covering
worn by some observant
Muslim women around the
world. Generally, a khimar
covers the hair, neck, and
shoulders, and falls down
the wearer’s back, often to
the waist or lower; thus,
only the wearer’s face is
revealed.
yarmulke: the small, round
headcap made of cloth
and worn by Orthodox
Jewish men to keep their
head covered at all times
in fulfillment of a require-
ment of religious law.
Another common term for
yarmulke is kippa.
bindi: a forehead decora-
tion, often a red dot, worn
by some South and
Southeast Asian women
and women of South or
Southeast Asian descent.
While it was originally a
Hindu custom, the practice
of wearing a bindi has
spread to women of many
religious backgrounds in
or from these parts of the
world.

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 548 C h a p t e r 2 2   how does popular culture sterEotype YOU?

we don’t—we have to call Storm, well, um, Storm.
All the time. No shortcuts. In English, there is no
adequately humanizing yet universal pronoun,° no
general reference to common humanity; in order
to speak comfortably, we automatically must yield to
the partitions of him, of her, of gender. In the
absence of pronouns, address necessarily becomes
specific, individual, even intimate.
What would it mean if we were forced to hold in
abeyance ° that foundering loss we feel when we
encounter the limits of the known? What if we had
to sit—just “for now”—with the uncertainty that
exists beyond the bounds of the normative,° the eas-
ily colloquial?° What if we had to greet one another
with such boundary-muddling specificity that the
hostess in the security guard and the security guard
in the hostess were made manifest? ° Perhaps we
should bring less panic to that moment of liminality°
10 and instead hold ourselves open to the wealth of
possibilities.

universal pronoun: a third- to hold in abeyance: to colloquial: the language of liminality: being on the
person singular pronoun postpone or stop   everyday, familiar   threshold between two
that has a single form   temporarily. conversation. places or, figuratively, as
rather than forms that here, between two ways
normative: relating to, manifest: apparent or
require distinguishing of seeing or experiencing a
conforming to, or prescrib- obvious; easily observed.
between males (he) and situation.
ing norms or standards,
females (she) and/or
that is, the way things
humans and inanimate
should or must be.
objects (he and she versus
it). In many languages of
the world, there is such a
pronoun, although the bio-
logical gender of a person
being spoken about may be
indicated in many other
ways.

RESPOND .
1. Rather than passing judgment on the decision Storm’s parents have
made not to reveal their baby’s biological sex, Williams uses the case
of Storm to pose what she terms a “philosophical” question (para-
graph 5), although the question is not posed until later in the article.
What specific philosophical question is Williams posing? Can you put
the question in your own words? In light of her comments, how is this
question and the accompanying discussion an argument? What kind
of argument is it—one of fact, of definition, of evaluation, of cause, or
a proposal? Why? (See Chapters 8–12 for discussions for these catego-
ries of argument.)

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