i always say that a Gender Reveal Party can't really happen until the kid is like 16 years old. the thing people are currently doing would more accurately be called a Baby Sex Party.
Second anthropology professor appears, chastising the first one for being so ethnocentric.
Gender reveal party is a social construct.
This is my people. By that, I mean "nerdy leftists who are pretty self-aware in their absurdity, but it can be very hard to tell from the outside, so they are often very cringe to people who aren't of the same story". It's silly, and I love it
Have more gender repeal parties. You're all free of gender. Now let's fuck.
Then technically these should be renamed to "Genital Reveal Parties" but that would imply a different type of party...
"Child genital information session."
"Sex reveal party". No, that sounds bad, too. "Assigned sex at birth reveal party". You know what? Maybe we shouldn't make such a big deal about what sex someone is born as and let them tell us who they are as they figure it out.
We should just have a 2nd trimester party or something so the parents get to celebrate at around the same time
amen
Only if the professor comes out of the cake like a stripper
gender reveal parties, but a pendant shows up and explains it's meant to be a sex reveal party, but due to the more risque use of the word sex, and the ambigious uses of the word gender, communication about the motive of such things are difficult, and a feeding ground for pendants, people who have been marginalised, and oppressors.
I also don't know where I'm going with this. I'm not sure what my next task should be and I'm letting my mind percolate.
Genital reveal party
It really is a genital reveal party... Never thought about it that way. Thanks!
Was it an opal pendant, or perhaps a cameo?
Also, I prefer French press over percolate.
Pedant here, use an Oxford comma.
oxford deez nuts.
fixed it anyway.
Ambiguous usage of the word is one of the reasons oppressors have such outdated and undereducated views. The less ambiguity the easier it can be explained to the common folk.
Do people feel like you can't say if it's a girl or a boy before they're old enough to express some preference? That seems to be the thing people pick on with gender reveal parties but that doesn't really make sense to me if you're cool with "It's a girl. We're going to name her Alice." without the party. It's not like the party is usually hyper fixated on gender roles. You cut some cake or pop some balloons during a pretty normal family party. Sex chromosomes/genitals are one of the only unique things you really learn about the baby before they're here that isn't generally considered bad news. I guess we could have height percentile parties?
The problem is that if you do away with gender roles, then a gender reveal party turns into a baby vagina/penis reveal party. It's a creepy concept that is only normalized because of society's hyper fixation on gender roles and we should just get rid of it.
Very often at this point, expectant parents are basing it on the presence of a Y chromosome or not, not on genitals. Does that take the creepiness out for you?
Do you have a problem with them disclosing the gender of their children at all?
They're not disclosing the gender of their children. They also don't take a blood test to find out the chromoses, they literally have a doctor look at the baby's crotch with an ultrasound and throw a party based on what they see.
People do often take a blood test on Mom which will include some fraction of fetal DNA. They can do a blood test where they just check if there's any Y chromosome (sneak peek) or they can take a blood test which is to check for chromosomal abnormalities which also happens to tell you the sex chromosomes (NIPT). These happen much earlier than you can tell via looking at genitals on ultrasound and is increasingly becoming how people find out the sex of their baby.
People very often say they are having a girl or a boy and give them a gendered name. Do you have an issue with that?
I might guess with such a party you really reinforce everyone's image of the baby's sex and they might be less accepting if the person comes out as a different gender further down the line? Idk
Doesn't really matter. The moment the people hear it's male or female, determines how people will treat the baby. Put a baby boy in pink and don't tell people, and people will talk to him like they would to a girl.
Whether or not people accept the small chance that the kid turns out transgender, depends on their personal views. I doubt a gebder reveal party is significant. Besides, it's a party for the parents to be. Not the baby.
Saying gender is binary is like saying there are only two types of apples, red and green.
There are two types of apples: Red Delicious and edible
Perfect, case closed.
There are two types of apples, red apples and non-red apples. D'ya see? Everything in the universe either is a banana or it is not, all is binary.
Quantum physics would like a word
Quantum physics doesn't exist, it is invented by physics professors to sell you more quants
Something is in a quantum superposition state or it isn't, absolute binariness.
You know what it'll be yet?
Yes, they'll be a wage slave.
i don't see the point they are trying to make, of course it's a social concept, that's why it's a social gathering. that's like going to a party for a doctoral degree and tell them its a social construct, like yeah so?
If you understand that it's a social construct then you must understand that gender reveal parties are crepy af.
Exactly, just have a single celebration on the birthday and be done with it. Why so obsessed about the genitals of an unborn child.
I'm pretty sure op was just trying to be funny
Successfully failed
Gender identity is biological, and gender is not only a social construct:
https://www.advocate.com/politics/transgender/2013/10/07/book-excerpt-gender-more-performance
EDIT: this is clarified in the walls of text in my responses below, but to be clear here, I do not endorse a biological essentialist account of gender, by saying gender is not only a social construct and has biological components, I am disagreeing with a view that gender is just socialization / performance / etc., but this does not mean I endorse the view that gender is just your chromosomes / genitals / etc. Neither of these views work.
Please read the article I linked to, and for additional reading see Whipping Girl by Julia Serano, esp. relevant to this discussion is chapter 6, some of which I quoted in my responses below.
When I say gender identity is biological, I am talking about what Julia Serano calls "subconscious sex" which she also sometimes interchanges with "gender identity", which is basically that innate and unchanging sense of your sex / gender. What I don't mean by gender identity is the label you choose to identify with (or the concept that label represents).
From Whipping Girl:
the phrase “gender identity” is problematic because it seems to describe two potentially different things: the gender we consciously choose to identify as, and the gender we subconsciously feel ourselves to be. To make things clearer, I will refer to the latter as subconscious sex.
Results: Evidence that there is a biologic basis for gender identity primarily involves (1) data on gender identity in patients with disorders of sex development (DSDs, also known as differences of sex development) along with (2) neuroanatomical differences associated with gender identity.
Conclusions: Although the mechanisms remain to be determined, there is strong support in the literature for a biologic basis of gender identity.
That's not saying what you seem to be implying, and it's not contrary to what people mean when they say gender is a social construct.
Saying gender expression is not only performance is not really related to gender being a social construct.
What we define the genders to be is what is a social construct. The masculine gender encompasses a wide array of behaviours and expressions, as does the feminine. The behaviours and attitudes we assign to each gender is what's socially constructed. People tend to have a gender identity that matches their biological sex, and through acculturation we teach them the behaviors associated with each gender in our culture. Some people later realize that they're most comfortable conforming to a different gender than what matches their sex.
I agree with you that the "gender is a social construct" is ultimately an ontological claim, about what gender is. When I hear "gender is just a social construct", especially from an anthropologist, I am entirely expecting a social constructionist account of gender, that's what they are communicating - what gender is.
Clearly there are social elements to gender, like the color we associate with a gender, which has changed over time and is arbitrary. There is nothing intrinsic about gender-color associations, no reason "blue" means "boy" and "pink" means "girl".
Regarding gender expression not only being performance: some people use Butler's performative theory of gender as a social constructionist account of gender. It's not really a coincidence in my mind that Butler shares some intellectual roots with the psychoanalytical sexologists who popularized social constructionist views in the 1960s, so while I'm sure you could parse several social constructionist accounts I don't think it's unfair to lump them together as a broad camp. The Julia Serano article I linked even does this:
Look, I know that many contemporary queer folks and feminists embrace mantras like "all gender is performance," "all gender is drag," and "gender is just a construct." They seem empowered by the way these sayings give the impression that gender is merely a fiction. A facade. A figment of our imaginations.
Notice how she lumps together views like "all gender is performance" and "gender is just a construct". I think this article is a relevant response to "gender is a social construct".
And yes, it depends somewhat on what people actually mean when they say "gender is a social construct", but I generally take them to mean that they believe in a social constructionist account of gender, i.e. that gender is entirely arbitrary, the result of how we are raised, and the result of socialization. If you are raised a boy, you are a boy because of how you were raised.
The idea that gender identity is biological, which is what that Safer meta-analysis concludes, contradicts the social constructionist account because it claims that a person's gender is intrinsic to them in some way, for example you can't just take a boy and raise them as a girl without problems (as the case of David Reimer illustrates, when the sexologist, John Money, who believed gender was just a construct and tested that theory by trying to have a boy raised as a girl).
Be sure to follow the rule before you head out.
Rule: You must post before you leave.
