My wife and her staff had to burn an extra hour and a half yesterday kowtowing to the needs of a problem client who needed a test run by a different lab (yay insurance bullshit) so they could do their gender reveal party. It had not occurred to me that from a transgender standpoint, they're much ado about nothing.
It’s just another excuse to do a party! Maybe i’m culturally unaware of traditions having grown up in a Russian household, but I feel there has been a proliferation of what I feel are corporation driven fake celebrations. Take weddings with the engagement parties, bridal showers, bachelorette parties, bridal luncheons... I feel that’s a bit too much. And they all have been codified with “what you’re supposed to do” down to the decorations and games. Has it always been like this and I was just oblivious? I feel the same about the gender reveal parties. Feels like a fake occasion invented by the party industry. But maybe it’s just because it’s never been a thing in my culture and now I see my generation of people throwing these, with the parents a bit confused about what’s going on. I mean, I’m all about parties and I don’t want to rain on anybody’s parade. We all need excuses to get together with friends and family and enjoy each others company. But there is a lack of authenticity in the cookies cutter nature of these that rubs me the wrong way somehow. Maybe it has to do with the fact that a lot of them are centered around giving someone presents and not the actual occasion. About the transgender standpoint, maybe I’m talking out of line here, but gender does matter! If it was all inconsequential, there would be no queer movement. Celebrating that you’re going to have a boy does not mean you will not be supporting them in whatever gender indentity they will later identify as.
Nailed. It. Thank you Elisabeth. "... If (gender) was all inconsequential, there would be no queer movement. Celebrating that you’re going to have a boy does not mean you will not be supporting them in whatever gender indentity they will later identify as... "
Nobody here is claiming that gender doesn't matter, though! You're right, gender is clearly not inconsequential. The problem is that gender is a socially constructed category into which people place themselves depending on how they identify. So when you get the word from your doctor that your unborn baby has XX chromosomes, you still have no idea what gender they will have. Celebrating that as proof that your child will later identify as a girl only reinforces unfounded societal expectations that their gender identity must correspond with their genitalia (which does kind of imply not supporting them if they identify with a another gender identity later)! At best, celebrating what genitalia your child will have is pretty weird; at worst, it's deeply transphobic.About the transgender standpoint, maybe I’m talking out of line here, but gender does matter! If it was all inconsequential, there would be no queer movement. Celebrating that you’re going to have a boy does not mean you will not be supporting them in whatever gender indentity they will later identify as.
You're right, it's more of a "sex reveal party" technically. I don't think it has anything to do with how the child will later identify, more about their present sex status. I have no doubt that if it was technically possible, people would do "eye/hair colour reveal parties". It's a redhead! And if they grow up and wear lenses/dye their hair purple - that's all good too. People just want stupid milestones to celebrate their babies coming into the world.Celebrating that as proof that your child will later identify as a girl only reinforces unfounded societal expectations that their gender identity must correspond with their genitalia (which does kind of imply not supporting them if they identify with a another gender identity later)!
But nobody calls it that, and that's the problem. By calling it a gender reveal party, you're making it about gender. Not to mention the colors, the "it's a boy!" balloons, the whatever else is there-- it's all about gender, not sex. And yeah, obviously, this doesn't impact the baby. But a parent who so early celebrates their child's assumed gender identity, purely on the basis of the child's sex, is a parent who will be less receptive to a child that later identifies in other, "unexpected" ways.You're right, it's more of a "sex reveal party" technically.
I don't think it has anything to do with how the child will later identify, more about their present sex status. I have no doubt that if it was technically possible, people would do "eye/hair colour reveal parties". It's a redhead! And if they grow up and wear lenses/dye their hair purple - that's all good too.
please help me understand the current definition of "gender" vs. "sex". Somewhere along the way, I feel like the definitions have evolved, and have gained some emotional gravity that I'm ignorant about. I don't want to go around offending people by using the wrong term in the wrong way. (and I'm being completely genuine and vulnerable here).
the gist of it is "sex" is what you are from a reproductive-y, chromosome-y perspective and "gender" is the role you play socially - e.g. little XX humans don't pop out the womb as "female", that's the set of behaviors / expectations 'n' all that that get placed on you when society sees you have a vagina people are born as whatever sex they are and get assigned a gender associated with their bits, then later their "gender identity" (their own sense of what set of behaviors / expectations align with them) develops and either matches the gender assigned to them or not people that have a gender identity = assigned gender match are cisgender (although that word isn't well liked sometimes) people that have a gender identity =/= assigned gender mismatch are transgender I personally don't think that "gender reveal parties" matter one iota for reference but if you wanna be finicky then yeah "sex reveal parties" would be a better name - who gives a shit frankly
it's a silly example but it helps me remember: back in the day pink wasn't associated with femininity and it wasn't a gender-related thing, but somewhere along the line pink became associated with one gender and suddenly little girls like pink they aren't born liking pink inherently, they're encouraged to like it by society - in contrast they aren't encouraged to have ovaries and shit like that, they just have it the characteristics of sex are the characteristics of sex; gender is anything you want it to be because it's arbitrary
I totally agree with you. I think we live such a crazy and stressful life that we need to find reasons for celebrations that "we supposed to do" just to get away from our usual activity without feeling guilty of wasting time/money.
I have never met an expectant father who wanted to have a gender reveal party. The inclusion of the Tannerite is to try and make the whole phenomenon more accessible to men in the most base way possible. I imagine a hypothetical where a husband doesn't want to have a gender reveal party or doesn't want to attend, and is convinced to go and to bring friends because he gets to blow something up. There is a large portion of the population to whom this is appealing.
I mean, I can go one deeper than that. I designed, built and own a half-million dollar medical facility where the clients question my presence every time I'm there. Fundamentally, pregnancy is about motherhood. It has fuckall to do with fatherhood. And when our communities were closer, and when our social net was stronger, motherhood was all about the women of the village/tribe/bowling league getting together and celebrating the bond of women necessary in bringing a child to term and then raising it in the community. Midwives were generally the unmarried medical practitioners who held a repository of how to make a birth go right; with no medical expertise, the fatality rate from childbirth was about 1 in 5 (women's pelvises are a compromise between being able to walk upright and being able to birth viable offspring that require human fetuses to become human children about a month early from a zoological standpoint). Then we modernized and took it out of the hands of the village and into the hands of medical professionals. Morbidity rates plummeted and mothers and babies survived with such regularity that childbirth became mundane, rather than risky. This kicked the womenfolk out of the equation, however, so they had to create new rituals around it, like baby showers. Then we eroded the social fabric still further such that your friends in high school aren't your friends in college aren't your friends at work. You live a thousand miles away from your relatives. And now, the tight-knit camaraderie of motherhood is replaced by that poor hapless, feckless, no-handle-on-this-shit victim of circumstance, the husband. And since he has zero traditional role in pregnancy and childbirth, the rituals industry has had to punt. With medical ultrasound becoming common, and the mystery of a child's gender being solved long before birth, the rituals industry saw an opportunity to cash in once more on a shattered tradition and thus, fuckin' gender reveal parties. Another terrible attempt to replace kinship with themed paper plates and Costco cakes, except since it isn't a baby shower, there's a higher likelihood that the man is going to get saddled with "choosing" what the fuck it's going to look like. Never mind the fact that historically, men just grew their beards out or some shit. Imagine Falstaff going to a fucking "gender reveal party." Fundamentally? Every stupid awkward social ritual we have around birth is an ersatz substitution for a natural social and familial connection we've severed over the past 150 years. But sweet holy jesus. They're all some form of "I don't have enough close girlfriends therefore we're roping your friends into this bullshit because Facebook is fundamentally dissatisfying."
I suppose for the same reason a few of my profs throw pictures of their kids into the slide deck. The love parents feel for their children is so strong you want to share that excitement with others. Having a gender reveal party is another way of revelling in the excitement of having a child and catching everyone else in a moment of suspense. Also it is possible a lot of these people don't believe in the validity of being transgender. A large segment of the American population still has a problem with homosexuality so there is clearly a lot of work to do. Selling explosives to these people surely doesn't help.