they’re supportive of trans people until its their own kid. matching the furniture is a pretty apt comparison, because time and time again ive seen parents who were “progressive” be absolutely destroyed over their kid being trans, because somehow that makes the kid they raised “gone” in their eyes. its very dumb and stupid and also why im not out to my “progressive” parents bc im completely sure they’ll react like that too
This shit sucks so hard and my friend I think is going through it with her mom who she expected to be totally fine. My dad is just reactionary and transphobic. Mom… idk. We’ll see what happens but I’m not coming out until necessary
yea i have a friend going through it right now too. really sucks to see, she thought it’d be fine and it ruined her entire relationship.
Yeah, it really does suck to see. Gonna CW this cause it’s some of my fears around it
Cw: Transphobia
spoiler
My own dad made a joke to me (I’m not out yet) about a trans woman we know being “half a woman” and then kept calling her a transvestite. I explained the difference and he just scoffed… idk how he’s gonna react to me coming out lol. But with my friend -
Really, what’s happening with my friend is that she’s pretty sure that her mom basically just sees my friend as “playing pretend” at being a girl. These are my friends words. Like, her mom still acts like she’s the only woman in a family of men, constantly misgenders (accidentally and corrects herself), and just gives off the vibe that she just doesn’t see at all.
This is definitely my biggest fear and why I generally, at this moment, stay away from cishet women. At least for me, being perceived as a man in women’s clothing or some kind of imposter is really my biggest fear. Because like I don’t want to be perceived as some kind of moster or predator or something. I just want to live my life and be seen as who I am.
Someone else mentioned some indigenous cultures having basically gender neutral childhoods and then coming of age “coming out” as your gender at a certain age. I dont know if that’s real or anything, I’ve never heard of it, but it sounds so much better. So much easier. And so much more free. Hell I maybe would have realized I was trans so much longer ago if I had to really examine it and if it was actually encouraged.
Stay safe comrade
Thankfully we live on opposite sides of the country, I’m independent at this point
The fact that gender reveal parties aren’t a trans thing is a failure on the part of trans and cis alike
it’s cause trans people are generally terrified when they’re coming out and ready to pull a deer and bolt out of the room at the first sign of trouble. now that I’ve been out for years, coming out is whatever and I could handle a party, but I couldn’t have handled it was fresh.
Would you be less terrified of possible transphobic pushback if you had rigged all your interlocutors up to explosives with an explosion in the trans colors
hmm, I think I’d be terrified of accidentally setting them off if it turned out they weren’t transphobic but I got too fidgety or excited at their response. can I leave the trigger in the hands of a trusted trans mentor?
I think that would be fine. But I think you’re socially obligated to help others rig up their explosives at that point.
ofc, at this point I’m the trans mentor more than the baby trans anyway
Still safer than a cis gender reveal party.
That means you must make more explosives.
Okay so we have a group of people building improvised explosives to send up pink and cyan smoke into the air, to reveal a gender identity and it’s not trans people
I’m cis but if I was trans and came out you bet your sweet ass we’d have a reveal party with cake and cocktails.
I’m always down for cake and cocktails whatever the occasion
At this point in my life, they’d probably be vegan pot brownies instead of cake. Unless someone can find me a solid German Choc vegan recipe. There’s still be pot tho. And Yellow Tail cab because I’m poor.
Edibles just make me cold and anxious
They will be totally optional :)
Cool I’ll just get blasted then
Don’t get me wrong, I think gender reveal parties are ridiculous as well, but what would your guys opinion be on how gender assignment should be handled at birth?
I have a (cis) daughter and would be fully supportive if she came out as non-binary or trans, but as a parent I still want her to be able to socialise with other kids and that means that there just are some societal standards we have to conform to in order for her to be accepted by her peers. It’s not like I can raise her as this gender neutral entity until she is old enough to grasp the “gender is a social construct” thing, especially not if I would take things away from her she enjoys or might enjoy.
Reshaping how society thinks is a slow burn matter, and getting mad at people for conforming to current standards or for being happy that they are having a child won’t help them see your point of view.
i’m not advocating for people to not know what gender a kid was assigned at birth or anything (in the short term, it would be nice to live in that world someday), just be chill about it. don’t make it a big deal, don’t go have a party to celebrate it, and when you tell people don’t frame it as you being incredibly excited to have a baby of the gender they’ve been assigned. don’t say “my partner and i are having a baby!” and then later go “oh my god i’m so happy it’s a boy!” or anything like that
i mean, i might still get a little grumpy if you feel the need to tell me about how you got the ultrasound and saw your kids genitals but i recognize that that’s not actually that big a deal if you’re chill about the other stuff and i probably won’t think less of you
i know some people that raised their kids degendered (re: not referring to them as she/her or w.e., only by name, until the kid ‘picks a side’). its been a bit now and the kids are pretty well adjusted and seem to have a better understanding of how gender works and the ridiculousness of how we assign certain things to certain genders. honestly not sure if thats specifically how id raise a kid, but its interesting i guess
I wish we lived in the kind of society many North Americans had - you know, before the settlers wiped them out. kids weren’t gendered and their names were neutral and temporary until they announced their adult names and genders at a coming out ceremony. literally broke down sobbing in public when I read about it in an anthropology book because of how much kinder and humane such a system is. obviously that’s not something you can implement on your own but you can deemphasize a kid’s assigned sex at birth and give leave them space to tell you who they are when they know it for themselves.
You can still see that in some indigenous communities today. The one near me does that. It varies with others. Some are much more rigid with gender roles while others aren’t.
My personal opinion? Keep it relatively gender neutral but raise your kids as their assigned gender until further notice and maybe talk to them about how GNC and trans identities are OK and stuff.
“Gender reveal parties” are the worst cracker suburbanite attempt at manufacturing culture.
Cracker holidays:
S tier: Halloween
A tier:
B tier:
C tier: Christmas
D tier:
E tier:
F tier: Gender reveal partySt Patrick’s Day gotta be B tier at least
The Catholic university near my home town always had drunken riots in the streets on St. Patrick’s Day.
That’s S Tier in my book
Christmas is not C tier
Thanksgiving?
It’s hard to rank thanksgiving because it pretty much depends on how racist your uncle’s are. Take away the uncles and the holiday is pretty much just " eat a big meal yum yum 😋" which makes it the best
" eat a big meal yum yum 😋"
This is most holidays in most cultures, hence I found it weird when a bunch of posters on here around Thanksgiving time was like “DISGUSTING kkkrackkers can only celebrate by GORGING themselves on food like little piggies”.
Yeah dude, no POC cultures have feasting days, non-white people fucking hate eating food.
iirc the lady who invented them has disavowed after all the death and wildfires
gender assignment parties were always dumb but she didn’t want that heat
She’s also changed her mind after her daughter came out as GNC. To quote the original gender-revealed child: “Mom, there are many genders. Mom, there’s many different sexualities and all different types”.
Yeah I’ve always found it so weird when cishet coworkers would talk about this stuff as if there’s no reason I could find it weird. One coworker in particular, in between telling me about her gender reveal for her then-current pregnancy, would also tell me about how effeminate one of her sons is in a lightly mocking tone. And it’s like, how do you expect me to react to that?
Ive never been to a gender reveal party or ever heard of anyone doing this irl. Who the fuck does shit?
Cishet people.
Idk, I rarely see someone disappointed at a gender reveal party. “Aw? Pink smoke? Sucks to you be you, shitbag” is not the standard response to someone hosting a big party in celebration of their next kid.
Admittedly, I don’t typically associate with families that think they are the next House of Windsor and needed a suitable number of male heirs to maintain the dynasty. So maybe you really do get people throwing little temper tantrums because they didn’t get the gender of child they wanted. But it has mostly seemed like an excuse to make a loud bang noise, release some colored smoke and confetti, and clap without any real consideration for what the gender will be.
oh i definitely hear people being disappointed. a coworker was ranting about his niece’s gender disappointing him! not even for like, rich person reasons. just gender essentialism, like pure “i wanted to be a cool uncle to a boy and that’s been stolen from me” type entitlement
like i cannot emphasize enough this is just because many people view children as basically accessories whose gender is only important as an aesthetic they want. they want to raise a boy because they’d like to paint their kids room blue and play baseball or a girl because they want to paint a room pink and watch disney princess movies. zero actual consideration for children as beings that could have any thoughts on things
It is impossible to be a cool uncle to your niece
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…i mean even a baby has thoughts, and it’s not good to just treat them like a dressup doll. and it only takes a few years for them to talk and at that point it’s even more fucked up to treat them like that, which is what’s being discussed here
like, i don’t think we should just let a 5 year old kid do literally anything they want, but coming into a conversation about how oppressive gender roles and other things we dump on kids can be when parents don’t treat them with any amount of respect and going “i totally get why the parents do that, i do that to my kid!” is maybe not the best. like, if you watched a movie with your kid and they said they hated it would you just go “no you don’t, let’s watch more like it,” or would you believe them when they tell you what they do and don’t enjoy? or if you made your kid do ballet or some shit. kids have agency, even at incredibly young ages. you need to respect it
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one of my coworkers talks constantly about how he wishes one of his daughters was a son and how he’s always cajoling his wife into bearing him another child so he can get his matching set
he wishes one of his daughters was a son
We can make it happen. We have the technology.
he’s always cajoling his wife into bearing him another child so he can get his matching set
I’ve heard this sentiment before. I’ve even heard of folks doing IVF just to guarantee gender.
But that tends to be a separate phenomena from the Gender Reveal Party, which is more about making a spectacle of the reveal than being invested in the outcome.
definitely a different angle but i see it all as broadly related phenomena, like it’s all rooted in a weird and very disconcerting obsession with one’s child-accessory embodying all the things one associates with that gender rather than letting the child be their own person. the gender reveal is just announcing all of that to the world in a super obnoxious way and i do think if you’re motivated to do that then at least one of the parents is invested in that outcome
like it’s all rooted in a weird and very disconcerting obsession with one’s child-accessory embodying all the things one associates with that gender rather than letting the child be their own person
I mean, pre-natal they absolutely aren’t their own person. There’s an umbilical cord to prove it.
I agree that investing someone with gender from day one is this bad seed that’ll threaten to bare poisoned fruit. But also… idk. Objecting to people throwing a gender themed baby shower just has the energy of those conservatives who freaked out at Starbucks for saying “Happy Holidays” or the MRAs who will throw a fit over a Bris.
The kids are going to experiment with gender regardless of what color smoke their parents use in their thermite explosives. Other than injecting a checky “and if they don’t like it, they can always change it later” remark after the colors show, it seems a rough place to take a stand.
i do think if you’re motivated to do that then at least one of the parents is invested in that outcome
Some folks just want to celebrate everything. Some folks just want to fit in. It’s a trend and it’s an excuse to eat tacky themed cakes, so people will go for it regardless.
I definitely think there’s a desire to bond with a kid who shares your gender. But that’s not something the presence or absence of an ostentatious display decides.
a gender reveal party for a baby may not determine all of these things in some yes/no binary fashion but i think it’s a little weird to imply that people explosively celebrating their new infant’s baby bits are not in any way invested in it. gender reveal parties are obviously not the genesis of gendered expectations in society but it’s certainly building on those foundations. i’m not pretending to have all the answers and maybe i, a trans woman, am just being identical to a men’s rights activist, idk. in any event, im a person on the internet so you don’t have to worry about me criminalizing the practice any time soon.
I have seen some VERY disappointed fathers on tiktok, but I don’t think they’re common at all.
Wow… I don’t have many close friends with kids so I’ve never really considered this since starting to transition. But yeah, can we just go gender neutral and have a normal baby shower to celebrate the baby is healthy and not an Lovecraftian horror?
Gender reveal parties are cool because people blow stuff up.
Trans people should have gender reveal parties too.
Why turn down a chance to celebrate a person weather it’s because of a label assigned to them by everyone else or their own recognition and revelation?
Plus who’s gonna fuck with you while you’re shooting 50bmg into a rusted out s-10 filled with tannerite and colored powder?
Wasn’t there like a serious wild fire some time ago due to a gender reveal party?
Yeah, Several.
Gender reveal parties are even good for the rejuvenation of prairies!
I’ll be honest. I never knew gender reveal parties were even a thing until a couple years ago. The idea sounds so ridiculous. Is this a recently American thing? I don’t even remember it ever happening when I lived there.
The parties and elaborate displays really took off in the mid-2010s, but it was often a big deal to announce it.
ETA: also, the original reveal party was done by a “mommyblogger” who held it because she and her partner were excited about their pregnancy after dealing with infertility issues. Slightly more understandable, but then people ran off with the concept. As others mentioned down thread, she has disavowed the concept since then and also hans a gnc child fwiw.
That makes sense. I left the US in 2011.
It’s definitely a new thing. I remember first seeing these around 2015ish.
My sister and I were discussing how to refer to our cousin’s child a while ago - my sister said we needed to use “she”, because that’s what our cousin uses, while I said we should use “they” because they’re too young to understand gender, or “it” because the baby is entirely dependent on its parents for everything, making it a mildly animate object, like a furby or tamagotchi.
My sister said I was absolutely not allowed to use “it”.“it” because the baby is entirely dependent on its parents for everything, making it a mildly animate object, like a furby or tamagotchi. My sister said I was absolutely not allowed to use “it”.
Wtf, don’t use it…
Both times I’ve met the baby they’ve been passed from person to person to hold, and eventually got hungry and cried. Like a tamagotchi.
Babies are objects until they start crawling.
I always try my best to recognize babies and young children as very intelligent and internally thorough and complete.
I’ve found that as I’ve gotten older, my internal world and emotions and what I want to say really hasn’t changed. The biggest thing that’s changed is that I’m more articulate, able to better say what I need or how I’m feeling. Meanwhile, when I was young, I lacked the vocabulary or social know-how to articulate what I was feeling, and that adults would just about never sit down and try to work with me to figure out what I’m feeling, and they’d try to invalidate how I’m feeling because they’re better at using words, or just generally don’t take me very seriously.
When I work with kids, especially ones that can’t speak, I’ve found a little bit of respect and empathy goes a very long way. They almost always want to communicate something to me and express autonomy. A toddler whose parents insisted was very ill-behaved was very, very nice to me because I recognized that what they wanted was to handle their food on their own, go to the bathroom without being escorted, stuff like that.
I get that you’re not talking about toddlers or young children, and I recognize that functionally they’re essentially on a permanent escort mission and can’t do anything on their own, and that’s what I believe you mean by “object”. I find that line of thinking to be, I dunno, maybe a bit disrespectful? Like, certainly I can see why it’s “correct” from some definitions, but it’s not something that I’d let enter my heart. To me, babies have deeply complicated and involved inner worlds. They’ve spent their entire life in this strange, alien world with massive people and brand new, unpleasant sensations. They can’t do anything on their own, but they think, and they want to communicate, and they’re so overjoyed when they can do something and get recognition from it.
This was actually a joke I didn’t make obvious enough - I largely agree with your point but from an opposite perspective: children’s lack of knowledge and experiences does make them incomplete, but the same applies to adults. There is always room for new growth and understanding towards the platonic ideal of completeness, and that means children’s thoughts and feelings are just as inherently valuable and worthy of respect as any adults. Neither has every perspective and understanding, but they both know how they feel better than anyone else.
You are completely right about respect and empathy though. I used to work with 5-11 year olds and volunteer with 11-18 year olds, and a lot of the time difficult children just needed someone to listen to them, particularly the neurodivergent ones. They know full well when you’re being patronising or not really listening, so talking to them in much the same way as you would an adult works wonders.
YOU CAN SAY THAT IN HEXBEAR, AND LEAVE THAT TOPIC FOR YOUR STRUGGLE SECESSIONS, BUT YOU SHALL NOT CALL THE BABY AN “IT” IN REAL LIFE… THAT IS A REDDITORISM AND A LIBERALISM OF THE HIGHEST OFFENSE AND I’M SURE THAT MAO WOULD’VE PERSONALLY STRUGGLE SECESSION-D YOU TO DEATH
Sorry, I didn’t mean to make you think I’m actually calling the baby “it” - I was/am joking, it’s more obvious when I’m adding tone and body language to the spurious logic so I sometimes miss the mark online.
IRL I don’t think young children should be gendered (let kids just be kids), but I’m not actually campaigning for babies to be considered objects.I’m sorry if I upset you a bit… I was kinda half-joking with my remarks (you’re not gonna get struggle-session’d to death) , but yeah, “it” sounds like type of pronoun transphobes use instead of “they”, out of spite… let alone as a term for babies…
It’s also a term that has been used historically to dehumanize oppressed groups and rob them of their humanity.
If someone wants to take “it” as their pronoun, that’s fine for them but it should never be applied by others onto someone as it’s dehumanizing.
No they are not, they have functioning inner minds and are learning at extremely fast rates. They are sentient humans
Please do not go around labeling children “it” unless you are playing tag
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Idk, this seems like something no one should really be upset with. It’s the same as misgendering a cat. It doesn’t really matter, the cat has no concept of gender.
Yes, ignoring your child’s gender identity or trying to reinforce societal norms that run counter to how they present themselves can be harmful. But until a human starts forming their conceptual idea of gender, I don’t really think it’s insulting or harmful to utilize gendered language simply out of convenience. That’s unless you want every single conversation to be about the gender identity of someone who hasn’t developed a gender identity.
