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Look closely and you may see signposts.

* Kathy Witterick and her husband, David Stocker, are raising their 4-month-old child, Storm, without revealing the child's gender. According to the birth announcement from the Toronto couple: "We've decided not to share Storm's sex for now - a tribute to freedom and choice in place of limitation, a stand up to what the world could become in Storm's lifetime (a more progressive place?)"
* Andrej Pejic, an androgynous Australian model, worked both the male and female runways at the Paris fashion shows earlier this year.
* A recent J. Crew catalog drew national attention when it featured a young boy with his toenails painted pink.

Could we be heading toward the end of gender?

And by "gender" we mean, according to Merriam-Webster, "the behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with one sex." In other words, the cultural expectations that go along with saying that someone is a boy or a girl. In other other words, not someone's sex - the person's gender.

"Sex differences are real and some are probably present at birth, but then social factors magnify them," says Lise Eliot, an associate professor of neuroscience at the Chicago Medical School and author of Pink Brain, Blue Brain: How Small Differences Grow Into Troublesome Gaps and What We Can Do About It. "So if we, as a society, feel that gender divisions do more harm than good, it would be valuable to break them down. "

As history shows, one enterprise in which Americans excel is the breaking down of divisions.
Gender Neutrality
Perhaps you have a friend or family member who is more comfortable with a new gender. Or maybe you have had dealings with someone of indeterminate gender in the checkout line. Maybe you have seen the old "It's Pat" routines from Saturday Night Live.

Because there is a growing societal awareness of gender consciousness and of a certain blurriness of genders, the question "Is it a boy or a girl?" may not just be for expectant parents anymore.

And so what? Does gender matter? In a country with the ideal of treating everyone fairly and equitably, do we really need to know if someone is a boy or a girl? These questions are driving decisions and actions around the country.

* In Muskegon, Mich., officials at Mona Shores High School declared this year's prom court would be gender-neutral - with no "kings" and "queens" - after denying a transgender student the homecoming-king crown last year.

* In Johnson City, Tenn., East Tennessee State University recently announced that it is exploring gender-neutral housing for students - following the lead of Stanford University, the University of Michigan, Rutgers University and other colleges. These are not just coed dorms, but dorms for anyone regardless of how they express their gender. The roommate you choose can be gay or straight or whatever.

* Around the beginning of this year, the State Department began using gender-neutral language on U.S. passports - replacing "father" and "mother" with "Parent One" and Parent Two" - to make it simpler for nontraditional parents, beyond the male/female combination, to get passports for their children.

Everywhere you turn, it seems, there is talk of gender-neutral this and gender-free that: baby bedding (Wild Safari by Carousel); fashion (Kanye West in a Celine women's shirt); Bibles (the New International Version).

Gender neutrality, writes one blogging parent, is the new black.
'High-Stakes Social Constructions'
A female-to-male transsexual and advocate for transgender rights, Dean Spade writes often about gender issues. Spade is an assistant professor at Seattle University School of Law and founder of the Sylvia Rivera Law Project in New York City, which offers free legal guidance to transgender, intersex and gender-nonconforming clients.

In a 2008 paper, "Documenting Gender," Spade examines the gender reclassification polices of public agencies and departments in the United States. In the past 40 years, Spade observes, society has come to recognize the existence of a group of people, currently known as "transgender," who identify with and live as a different gender than the one assigned to them when they were born.

In an interview, Spade makes a passionate pitch for the elimination of gender categorization in most government record-keeping. "I really don't think that data needs to be on our IDs or gathered by most agencies and institutions," Spade says. Tagging someone as female or male "enforces binary gender norms and it pretends that gender is a more stable category of identity than it actually is."

Spade says, "I can see why we might want institutions to be aware of gender at a general level in order to engage in remediation of the sexism and transphobia that shape our world."

For example, Spade says, gender-based affirmative action - that rectifies discrimination against women - might be called for in certain programs and institutions "so we might want institutions to do an analysis of who is getting to participate." But, Spade adds, in order to gain a general idea of the gender makeup of a particular population, it is not necessary to then turn around and post that information on a particular participant's personal record.
- Linton Weeks
Developing policies to counter the impact of sexism and transphobia, Spade adds, does not require a belief that gender categories are "real - stable, unchangeable, natural. We can engage such strategies while understanding that gender categories are high-stakes social constructions deployed in ways that endanger and harm socially determined groups."
Boychicks
To chronicle her adventures in gender-neutral parenting, Arwyn Daemyir writes a blog called Raising My Boychick. She describes herself as "a walking contradiction: knitting feminist fulltime parent, Wiccan science-minded woowoo massage therapist, queer-identified male-partnered monogamist, body-loving healthy-eating fat chick, unmedicated mostly-stable bipolar."

She describes her boychick, born in March 2007, as a "male-assigned at birth - and so far apparently comfortable with that assignment, white, currently able-bodied, congenitally hypothyroid, cosleeper, former breastfed toddler, elimination communication graduate, sling baby and early walker, trial and terror, cliched light of our life, and impetus for the blog. Odds are good he will be the most privileged of persons: a middle class, able bodied, cisgender, straight, white male."

The adjective cisgender - as opposed to transgender - describes someone who is at peace with the gender he or she was assigned at birth.

Daemyir lives in Portland, Ore. She and her straight male partner are expecting another baby in September.

For Daemyir, gender-neutral parenting is not an attempt to eliminate gender, "because the 70s'-era gender neutral parenting movement proved that's not possible."

But, she adds, she has concerns about the ways we designate and segregate gender in public, "starting with the idea that there are two-and-only-two genders - a construction, and a myth, in our society that excludes many."

To that end, Daemyir supports, among other changes, non-gender-designated single-stall bathrooms and an option for unisex washrooms and locker rooms. "Right now, when an establishment only has one toilet stall, of course it is non-gendered. Why, when there is room for two, must they arbitrarily be designated for 'Men' and 'Women'? When a place has room enough for several large rooms of toilets and free-standing single-stalls, why must they all be gendered, when it would be as easy to make some single-gendered and some not, giving people the ability to make choices that are most comfortable or convenient for them?"

Daemyir does not think that eliminating all single-gender areas "is beneficial or safe either, necessarily, but ... we over-designate many of these things when it's simply not necessary, and actively harms a particularly marginalized population - people with non-binary genders."

Eliot, the neuroscience professor, is not so sure about total change. "Perhaps I'm too old-school - or fussy - to argue for the elimination of men's and women's bathrooms," Eliot says, " but certainly employment forms and loan applications should not require gender information. Also, if parents did not buy into the gender stereotyping of children's toys and clothes, kids would stay open-minded longer during childhood. The goal is to keep girls physically active, curious and assertive, and boys sensitive, verbal and studious."

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A fashion model walks both male and female runways, college campuses offer gender-neutral dorms, and a Toronto couple refuse to reveal the sex of their baby - all signs that some people may be ready to relax their grip on gender categories.

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A state Senator wants single-occupancy restrooms throughout the state in schools and businesses with public accommodations to have a gender-neutral sign.

Amendment 1 to Senate Bill 556 from Sen. Melinda Bush, D-Grayslake, would require any single-occupancy restroom to be labeled with a gender neutral designation, but some within her own party worried the measure may add to what some business owners see as a growing list of regulations that make doing business in the state more difficult.

Bush said the measure does not require any new plumbing or new facilities be built, it would only require that if the place of public accommodation has a single-occupant bathroom that it have a gender-neutral label. If passed, such restrooms could only be used by one person at a time, or by a family.

State Sen. Linda Holmes, D-Aurora, said some women may not want to use the same facility as a men.

"I actually think women are a little bit cleaner," Holmes said.

Others took issue with what they feel will be concerns from small business owners.

"We just kind of did a minimum wage bill that kind of ticked off a lot of small business owners," said state Sen. Michael Hastings, D-Tinley Park. "And now you're about to come back on a pizza shop owner who has one bathroom ... has a restroom, and the bill specifically says it has to indicate all gender."

Bush said she'd bring back an amendment to change the language to clarify some aspects.

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Bill would require single-occupancy bathrooms in Illinois be gender neutral

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A state Senator wants single-occupancy restrooms throughout the state in schools and businesses with public accommodations to have a gender-neutral sign. Amendment 1 to Senate Bill 556 from Sen.

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My father usually starts off his curries by roasting a blend of cinnamon, cardamom, coriander, anise, cumin and bay leaves. Then he incorporates the onions, garlic and ginger - and then tomatoes and chilies and a touch of cream.

The North Indian cuisine I grew up eating is about melding together distinct, disparate flavors and building up layer upon layer of spice and seasoning. Much of European cuisine, by contrast, is about combining complementary flavors - think potatoes with leeks, or scallops with white wine.

A recent study tried to explain the divide in Eastern and Western culinary philosophy through some nifty data crunching. Researchers from the Indian Institute for Technology in Jodhpur looked up the ingredient lists for more than 2,000 Indian recipes.They then analyzed the chemical components of these ingredients, looking at the compounds that, when combined, give foods their taste.

They concluded that what makes Indian cuisine so exquisite is its tendency to bring together lots of different ingredients with flavor molecules that don't overlap.

That's quite different from how Western cuisine works - previous research has shown that it relies on pairing ingredients that, at the molecular level, share lots of similar flavor compounds.

While some have praised the new research for revealing the secret to why Indian cuisine is so delicious, this notion of layering many contrasting flavors and spices isn't unique to Indian cooking.

In fact, most of the world's cuisines tend to follow that principle, says Tulasi Srinivas, an anthropologist at Emerson University who studies food and globalization. And up until the mid-1600s, European cuisine was the same way.

In medieval Europe, those who could afford to do so would generously season their stews with saffron, cinnamon, cloves and ginger. Sugar was ubiquitous in savory dishes. And haute European cuisine, until the mid-1600s, was defined by its use of complex, contrasting flavors.

"The real question, then, is why the wealthy, powerful West - with unprecedented access to spices from its colonies - became so fixated on this singular understanding of flavor," Srinivas says.

The answer, it turns out, has just as much to do with economics, politics and religion as it does taste.
Haute Cuisine And The Price Of Pepper
Back in the Middle Ages, spices were really expensive, which meant that only the upper class could afford them. But things started to change as Europeans began colonizing parts of India and the Americas.

"Spices begin to pour into Europe," explains Krishnendu Ray, an associate professor of food studies at New York University. "What used to be expensive and exclusive became common."

Serving richly spiced stews was no longer a status symbol for Europe's wealthiest families - even the middle classes could afford to spice up their grub. "So the elite recoiled from the increasing popularity of spices," Ray says. "They moved on to an aesthetic theory of taste. Rather than infusing food with spice, they said things should taste like themselves. Meat should taste like meat, and anything you add only serves to intensify the existing flavors."

The shift began in France, in the mid-1600s, adds Paul Freedman, a professor of history at Yale University. "It was a way to also show off the wealth of the French provinces," Freedman says.

The rest of Europe soon adopted this new style. "It's a redefinition of what elegant is," Freedman says. "It's sort of like - in fashion - for a while having more frills, more jewelry was fashionable. But then someone said that a basic black dress with some pearls is much better."
A Philosophical Shift
European ideas about diet and medicine began changing in the 17th century as well.

"In the Middle Ages and in antiquity, Europe had had a theory of humors that was similar to medical philosophy in India," says Rachel Laudan, a food historian and visiting professor at the University of Texas, Austin.

Both Indians and Europeans believed that certain energies circulating within the body affected both general health and mood. And by eating the right foods, people believed that they could balance out these bodily energies.

"So, for example, if you were slow and lethargic, you could be pepped up by eating hot spices," Laudan explains. "But if you were impetuous, you would want to eat more cooling flavors."

With the rise of Protestantism in Europe came another theory: that digestion is a matter of fermenting food. "Now the theory was that you want to eat things like fresh vegetables and greens, and fresh herbs that can be rapidly assimilated in the body because they ferment easily," Laudan says.

With this new way of thinking, spices lost their medicinal value. It's not that Europeans rejected flavorful ingredients altogether, Laudan says. "It's just that they began using a different set of ingredients."

And there was another shift, Laudan says: "There was a shift in the nature of sauces."

"Indian sauces - and many sauces in the world - are basically purees with flavors and spices," she says. "In Europe, they go over to sauces that are based on meat stock."

For Indian and Asian chefs, the sauce or curry was the star. In India, Jains - and many Hindus - don't eat meat. And in general, most Indians believed that meat was unclean and inelegant, so the goal was, in part, to cover up the fleshiness of meat by thoroughly infusing it with spice.

"In Europe, meat was considered the manliest, strongest component of a meal," Laudan notes, and chefs wanted it to shine. So they began cooking meat in meat-based gravies, to intensify its flavor.
The Modern Palate
To a large extent, the move toward subtler flavor pairings was permanent. And the results of this shift have been scrumptious. French gastronomy has long been prized as the epitome of culinary expression (though its supremacy is no longer a given).

But hints of the older, medieval way of cooking still remain in Western cuisine.

"Think of a barbecue sauce - very medieval," says Ken Albala, a professor of culinary history at the University of the Pacific, in that it's sweet and sour and full of an array of spices and flavorings. "We do like contrasting flavors."

In the last century, Westerners adopted a few Asian ideas about spice and contrast as well. After colonizing India, the British developed a taste for curry that they still haven't shaken. The Brits often serve their fries with curry sauce. And chicken tikka masala - an Anglicized version of a North Indian curry - is so popular in the U.K. that in 2001, British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook declared that it was Britain's national dish.

The big data crunching is interesting, Albala notes, but it doesn't tell the whole story.

"What's been done so far is very superficial," he writes in an email. "And it doesn't account for all the cultural, social, economic, political reasons people eat what they do."

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How Snobbery Helped Take The Spice Out Of European Cooking

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My father usually starts off his curries by roasting a blend of cinnamon, cardamom, coriander, anise, cumin and bay leaves. Then he incorporates the onions, garlic and ginger - and then tomatoes and chilies and a touch of cream.