Undecided:
There are heavy implications that the "no-no" comes from the parents, not the child. Elsewhere in the article the mother outright admits that she makes clothing choices for the kid, and based on the author's writing style, it would be more likely for them to have said that the only clothing the child "won't" wear is hyper-masculine things. Plus, you know, who the hell classifies cargo pants as "hyper masculine" attire unless they have some kind of weird agenda.
I pointed out the Barbie thing because these are parents who claim that they are allowing their child full freedom in gender identification and self expression, but they have banned Barbies because they don't like that particular flavor of gender expression or identification. I can't for the life of me think of any other reason that they would ban the doll for being "horrible." They don't say they banned it for being poorly made, or constructed in China, or any of a dozen non-gender/political reasons, but because Barbie is "horrible." That's a pretty harsh judgment on gender expression right there. Do they also think that women who choose, of their own volition, to dress or behave in the hyper-feminine mene a la Barbie are also "horrible?" It seems that these people do not so much decry restrictions on gender expression as they do acceptance of gender expression they personally do not like.
My criticism of these assholes has nothing to do with allowing their child to wear whatever the hell he likes without consideration of gender specifics. It has nothing to do with sexual orientation or gender expression. It never did. I am criticizing these assholes (and assholes they most certainly are) because:
A) They are so unbelievably pretentious that they kept the gender of their child a secret for half a decade.
B) They are fucking hypocrites for claiming to want total freedom of gender and self expression for their child while at the same time placing restrictions (no "hyper masculine" clothes, whatever the hell those are) and requirements (making him wear girl's blouses to school) on him.
C) Claiming they make no judgments on gender expression (while at the same time describing some specific forms of gender expression to be "horrible" and banned).
D) Using their five year old child to make some nebulous, highly manipulative "point" about their sexual-political agenda, utterly regardless of the insanely high potential for future difficulties for the child from gender identity confusion, bullying, and ridicule, to being held up as some kind of national symbol for his parent's pretentious fucking ideals.
I mean, come on. We live in the age of the internet. You don't think that this kind of publicity isn't going to come back and bite him in the ass repeatedly for as long as he is in school? I am familiar with UK schools. If you think that anti-LGBT style bullying is bad in US schools, you ain't seen nothing. There are areas of the UK where Doc Martin boots (and the people who wear them) are specifically knows as "Queer Stompers" in schools. I'm not saying that this kid is going to be gay, and I'm not saying there would be the slightest thing wrong with him if he were, but some asshole basher in secondary school is going to Google the name of the fey kid in the new class and the next day all of this shit will be spread over the school like crablice at the Kardashian's. You think the thugs are going to stop to find out of this kid is gay or not before they stomp his ass into cheese flavoured dog food?
You think that at some point Sasha isn't going to look at his asshole parents and think "Thanks so much for making my life a living fucking hell." I place the odds of that very, very high.