The Unending Irony Of Gender Reveal Parties
As a gender-reveal stunt gone wrong ravages California’s San Bernardino National Forest, damaging countless acres of land and endangering wildlife and the lives of citizens, the conversation on the over-the-top absurdity of gender reveals has, naturally, evolved into something else.
While many are understandably decrying how ostentatious — and now even life-threatening — gender reveal gatherings have become in recent years, others are pinpointing an apparently deeper issue: the need for “assigned” biological sex at birth. But if we’re really intent on uncovering the true irony behind gender reveals, that’s not the only issue we should be discussing.
The Parties are the Problem (Obviously)
While our parents and grandparents might have waited until the moment of birth to discover a baby’s gender, the element of grandiosity surrounding gender reveals has increased in recent years.
We’ve seen all manner of potentially dangerous methods, including accidental pipe bombs, that new parents are undertaking to celebrate the impending arrival of their little one. But for what? Certainly not for the close friends and family who will actually be in the child’s life. More often than not, it looks like these stunts are specifically designed around the idea of being a marketable post on social media.
It looks like these stunts are specifically designed to be a marketable post on social media.
The California gender reveal party in question has now destroyed more than 13,000 acres so far.
When our celebrations of life somehow place life in danger, we’ve entered a new echelon of absurdity only 2020 (and human arrogance) could conceive.
Not the Only Issue
While the tragic accident currently decimating a national forest is obviously a topic of criticism and concern, for some it’s not the only problem.
An op-ed published by CNN asserts that the fire isn’t even the most destructive result of the gender reveal, but rather the human need to remove the child in question’s “agency to develop their own gender identities and to control that identity online,” furthermore “erasing the spectrum of social and biological diversity when it comes to gender.”
It was only a matter of time before the woke mob came for gender reveals, but the amount of claims to unpack here is overwhelming.
Our woke society’s conversation around gender now has no scientific basis in biology at all.
What’s evident, however, is that the acknowledgment of biological sex is now being erased in favor of quote-unquote “biological diversity.” Dr. Debra Soh, an academic, journalist, and author of The End of Gender, has critiqued the idea of the politicization of science and what it means for genuine discussions about gender identity — i.e., if you adhere to the fundamental two-gender binary, you’re called bigoted and discriminatory.
Soh argues that our woke society’s conversation around gender now has no scientific basis in biology at all, but rather is subscribed to according to individual feeling (I feel like a woman, so I must be a woman, etc.). “The fact that science denial and misinformation about gender is so prominent now is really poorly affecting our ability to understand gender, and that’s leading to the demise of our understanding of it in an accurate way,” Soh says.
Woke culture, with its “gender diversity” agenda, can’t reconcile with the biological facts about human gender, so it only makes sense that woke culture would criticize and reject gender reveal parties.
What These Narratives Are Lacking
But is this really the most ironic part of the entire conversation on gender reveals?
A more nuanced — and indeed less evident point — the conversation is lacking is that this discussion around gender reveals comes in the midst of an election season where both a presidential and vice-presidential candidates are abortion absolutists.
The children we want can be celebrated, while the ones we don’t can be disposed of.
Perhaps the inherent irony in this discussion is the overt, grandiose, and indeed over-the-top celebrations parents have for their babies — at or around 15-20 weeks gestation when gender can be determined — while a potential vice-president’s record on abortion would permit abortion even up until birth.
Our culture is two-faced on this topic. We celebrate the humanity of a boy or girl developing in the womb in the families who are happy to bring that child into the world, yet we deny the humanity of another child in the womb and abort him or her if the mother doesn’t want her child.
Closing Thoughts
At the heart of the conversation on celebrating gender and birth is the intersection of a few things. One, that such a celebration needs to garner as much attention as possible; two, the concept that sex is indeed biological and concretely developed in the womb; and three, that the children we want can be celebrated, while the ones we don’t can be disposed of.