Gender reveal parties
Recently, I’ve been thinking that gender reveal parties need to be updated or stopped. Gender and sex assigned at birth are not the same thing. Yes, this is my main message in all my posts. Just because a child is called a girl when she is born (sex assigned at birth) doesn’t mean that that is the correct gender. Just because a child is called a boy doesn’t mean that this will be a boy when they grow up. Doctors can be wrong about sex assigned at birth. My child’s doctor was wrong.
The doctor sees the baby’s genitals in utero and tells the parents if it’s a boy or a girl. I guess that the doctor is right most of the time. However, there are intersex babies that are given a gender based on their genital’s appearance but can be incorrect once the child grows up. (IE the doctor thinks that the child’s genitals looks more like a girl’s and says it’s a girl but they may be wrong.) Given this information, parents can throw a gender reveal party for their unborn child based on their sex assigned at birth or before birth. At that party, the parents choose pink or blue to decorate the room and everyone gets excited about a boy or a girl who will be born. They start thinking about the baby in a gendered way. Oh, my son can be a baseball star or my daughter can be a ballerina. They paint the baby’s room in that color and the expectations start for this child.
However, after going through my experience of parenting a transgender child, I think the parties should be postponed until the child figures out their gender. As my child grew up, I would dress her in boy clothes and a baseball cap because I thought she was a boy and wanted him to look cute. When she told me she was a girl, I had to adjust my expectations for her. This gendered way of looking at a baby does the baby a disservice. This pigeon holes this child into a gendered path in life. This child is socialized to like blue or pink and wear dresses or pants.
When we told our family and friends that my child told us that she is a girl, there was an adjustment with family and friends, schools and medical establishments. They had to get used to this new information. This child can be discriminated against when they apply for private school or jobs. What about those nonbinary children that feel like both genders or neither? What about how the parents are treated in their community or by the medical establishment? What about the children who are intersex? I have had plenty of discrimination against me and my child based on this doctor’s mistake of choosing her gender based on genitals.
I have a solution. I think that we can do one of two things.
My first idea is to abolish this gender reveal party. At this party, this is just about your child’s genitals and not about gender. Why is there this obsession about a child’s body? Just something to think about. Who cares what is inside a child’s pants. Since sex assigned at birth is not the same as gender, this gets disturbing if you think too much about this like I have.
Second idea is that this gender reveal party could be done after a child’s gender actually is figured out. Until then the baby should be called a baby. This way, their private genitals are not revealed and there’s no change that has to be made in society. By about 2-5 years old, a child can know their gender. Usually we don’t think about cisgender children as having a problem because they know that their gender aligns with their sex assigned at birth. A child who is transgender should be believed just as easily. However, sometimes, they have a bigger obstacle to convince their parent. But, you wouldn’t think twice if a boy was playing with cars or a girl was playing with dolls. You could say that they were doing what kids their gender naturally like to do. All of this is not true but we don’t notice unless our child is veering from the “typical.”
I think that all babies should be called babies until they get older and figure it out. With my youngest in a baby stroller, I would keep getting asked if the baby was a boy or a girl. But, an older woman kept wanting me to tell her the gender and wouldn’t quit till I told her. Then, she felt comfortable now that she knew this information and the conversation stopped. But, she was really asking about my child’s genitals, not the gender because my child was too young to share their gender at that moment.
Whether you will have a gender reveal party for your child or for someone else’s child, I hope my thoughts might help you think about gender in a different way. I know that being a mother with a transgender child has forever changed my view about gender and its impact on society.