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.

这个小家伙身穿粉色芭蕾短裙和舞鞋，背着一对精灵翅膀，看来着实费心打扮了一番。小男孩叫萨沙，今年5岁。如果萨沙每天都这么穿，他的父母也不会有任何异议。

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’.

其实，萨沙的父母刻意要把他培养成一个“中性人”，希望他能无拘无束地展现自我，而不只是一个纯粹的“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.

从萨沙出生时起，妈妈比可·拉克斯顿和爸爸基蓝·库珀就一直担心固有的社会性别偏见会阻碍儿子的全面成长。

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，他们只叫他“小孩”，除了极少数亲朋好友，没人知道萨沙的性别。萨沙长大一点后，就睡在淡黄色房间里，玩乐高娃娃，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.

但现在5岁的萨沙该上学了。于是，46岁的拉克斯顿和44岁的库珀感到再也瞒不住他的性别了。

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，加拿大有对夫妇因拒绝确认小孩的性别而成为众矢之的，人们指责他俩把孩子养成了一个怪物。

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.

萨沙的父母现在也受到了同样的指责。在英国，他们是较早敢于反对用传统方法培养小孩的夫妇。自然，他们也愿意将这个问题公诸于世，和其他父母一起探讨。

‘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，妈妈拉克斯顿表示：“老一套的方法很蠢，我不想那样抚养小孩。为什么一定要按社会模式培养孩子呢？性别会影响小孩在穿着和玩伴上的选择，进而决定他以后会成为一个什么样的人。这种模式可能会扼杀小孩的潜能——这一点让我很不爽。”

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。”