Gender reveal parties are now transphobic apparently

[Soubriquet]

On a friends page

I did point out that it’s usually a sex reveal party not a gender reveal and in this case sex and gender mean the same thing

Tempted to call her cisphobic if she tries to argue

I hate the word cis too btw

This could go two ways on MN.

1. All those innocently buying in to this sweet but pointless “reveal” will first be hurt and then angered that their little surprise celebration is seen as potentially hateful, and will begin to see how wrong and harmful genderism is.
2. All those (above) will jump straight on board with the idea that the celebration is transphobic and their parties will indeed reveal to family and friends that the expected infant is non-binary, genderqueer, whatever. It could go either way IMO.

Cwen I like your style.

Did MN give you a condescending "not in the spirit of the thread" warning? The get out clause for any thread that walks the tightrope of sex and gender?

@Bananabixfloof I actually snorted into my coffee

My head always hurts after looking at Assigned Male Comics. The knots they tie themselves into to prove a point is ridiculous.

Here's the person behind Assigned Male Comics:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophie_Labelle

I'm not going to link to their website although you can find it very easily.

Nope, went unremarked upon, thread died though. Will be interesting to see if it now gets mysteriously reported, way after the event, after mentioning it here where the monitors keep watch.

2) All those (above) will jump straight on board with the idea that the celebration is transphobic and their parties will indeed reveal to family and friends that the expected infant is non-binary, genderqueer whatever
Wonder what colours will there be for the 125 genders, will everyone at the party need a colour coded chart.
Shart brown is demi queer, chocolate brown is Albanian sworn virgins, barbie pink is androgyne, ultra pink is trans femme.
Then if held in real daylight, watch everyone try to match the colour. Oh the fun.

Yes, my woke friend started campaigning against these parties a while ago.
I think arguably they are about "gender" to a large extent, it's all blue for a boy, pink for a girl, etc. I actually don't mind cultural markers of sex necessarily, but it's rather over the top.

I think they are largely meant to make money for party suppliers, so they can sell more junk. But maybe part of it is that people crave rituals around major life changes. It's just kind of a lame ritual.

Donquixote--Nope

As an oldie - no scans when I was pregnant - I am utterly baffled why anyone would want to know the sex of their baby before birth anyway. It risks leading to expectations of what the baby will be like (because of subconscious or even conscious ideas about gender ingrained in many of us) ,

A surprise gives a better chance for the baby’s personality to emerge unfettered by months of expectations.

Plus possibly less of the ghastly pink/blue garbage in readiness for the baby’s arrival.

Thank you those who have mentioned the same fight.
It's the same argument- rejection of gender stereotypes. We are just wanting different outcomes.
Eventually this will all come full circle.

I too am not against gender markers for sex, in fact I think that certain aspects of gender are really valuable (provided no-one feels compelled to comply). I also see huge value in rituals and marking events, a value that is increasingly dismissed. I agree, though, that the new crop of baby showers and gender reveal parties feel over the top, perhaps because they do feel rather like manufactured rituals for commercial gain, rather than rituals that have organically risen to fulfil a need (and then been taken over by commercial forces!). But then again I don't know enough about their origins to be honest.

Loathe sex reveal parties but that's because I'm a crusty old snob and because I have more than one friend who had very late miscarriages so I'm effectively superstitious about pre-birth celebrations.

Agree entirely that the TRA argument and the feminist argument on this are pleasingly similar - in a sexist society making the sex of your baby a gendered deal before it even arrives is a negative thing. It's like a flashback to when transsexuals and feminists were able to fight sexism together. Now distorted by gender poison.

Genderists have a point but they always stop short of taking it to their internally “logical” consistent conclusion. In essence what they are saying is “gender reveals are transphobic because the baby with a penis you are celebrating as a boy with blue things might turn out to reject those blue things in favour of pink things and therefore is actually a girl”. Rather than “gender reveals are sexist because they start to impose harmful expectations of gender norms and stereotypes on babies before they’re even born whereas it’s fine for boys to prefer e.g. pink ballerinas or girls to like blue dinosaurs, doesn’t make them any less of a boy or girl respectively”.

One side is saying “don’t have a gender reveal as you might get it completely wrong and have to change your child’s body later with drugs and surgery” and the other is saying “don’t have a gender reveal as you might make it slightly harder for your child to realise they can be whatever they want to be regardless of their preferences for clothes or colours”. Which of those messages is less harmful for children?