“Why do you dress her like a boy?”
This is a bit of gender-enforcement that I hadn’t heard of before – “gender reveal” ceremonies. Say what?
Slate writer Jessica Winter has a toddler, and stranger’s get worked up about her Gender Status.
“Why do you dress her like a boy?” demanded a man in the jewelry section of H&M while my kid—in a red sweatshirt, jeans, and gray-and-purple sneakers—rummaged through a pile of tassled earrings. The man was trying to be polite, but he also seemed affronted by his own confusion—and affronted by me, I suppose, for causing his confusion. “She looks like a boy!” he insisted, repeatedly. The only response I could think of was the shrugging one I gave: “She looks like herself.”
Girls and women have been routinely wearing jeans and sweatshirts for decades, yet still some people think those are clothes for males only?
I offer this anecdote partly as a disclosure that I’m not the intended audience for gender-reveal announcements. This is a genre of prenatal celebration that reached a spectacular apotheosis last week when a Florida couple went viral for firing a rifle at a target packed with explosives and colored chalk, sending up a plume of powder intended to reveal the baby’s sex—blue for boy, in this case. The phenomenon more typically takes form as a gender-reveal party, where the festive theme might be Guns or Glitter? or Rifles or Ruffles? or, because big sticks can take many forms, Baseball or Bows?
On the one hand, decades of feminism; on the other hand, a level of frantic anxiety about Female or Male that is rising to panic levels.
The centerpiece of a gender-reveal party is, of course, a gender-reveal cake, which involves slipping a piece of paper to a trusted baker who will then drop the right food coloring in the batter; at the appointed moment, celebrants cut the cake to find out if it’s blue or pink, i.e., Pistols or Pearls? Gender-reveal cakes can be cute, imaginative, even beautiful, as this PopSugar slideshow attests. Another parenting site, the Stir,has a slideshow of “15 Outrageously Inappropriate Gender-Reveal Cakes,” although if you spend enough time in the gender-reveal universe, these creations might strike you not as outrageous so much as just aggressively direct about the zero-sum nature of the gender binary. Stick or No Stick is the exemplum of the bunch, making barely submerged subtext into carrot-shaped text: A boy has a something, and a girl has a nothing. A boy has a gun, and a girl has a hole. A boy does, and a girl is done to. A boy is an active actor with useful equipment, and a girl is a void with embellishments. It would sound so tiresomely gender studies 101 if these weren’t actual people having actual children right here on my Pinterest boards in 2016.
Ah well that explains it; I don’t do Pinterest so that’s why I’m not aware of this bizarro trend.
A gender reveal will tell a future baby’s loved ones precisely nothing about what is actually important about her first months and years on Earth: her temperament, her response to food, the ease with which she sleeps and self-soothes and explores her expanding world.
And also about her later months and years on earth. Gender is not personality. Sex is not personality. “Gender” just isn’t all that interesting.
When I was pregnant, people couldn’t believe I didn’t bother to get the test to find out the sex in advance. What does it matter, I would ask. Most of them would say they didn’t care if they had a boy or a girl, they were fine with either, but then had to know the gender months in advance. “I have to know how to do the room – what colors – and what color clothes and diapers to buy.” Excuse me, what color diapers? What’s wrong with white?
We gender our children in advance of their birth, and then continue gendering them for their entire life. “Oh, look, he’s such a little boy, isn’t he?” “My, what a sweet, polite little girl”. “Oh, my god, is that your daughter up the tree?” – “Oh, yes, she’s such a tomboy. I can’t get her interested in dolls no matter how hard I try”.
The sad thing is, most people don’t seem to realize what they’re doing. My friends are almost all liberal, highly educated college instructors, and I still catch them at it – and they don’t see it at all. It’s so ubiquitous, it’s almost invisible.
I still do it…but when anyone catches me at it, I see it. (I catch myself at it all the time.) Not doing it is apparently just about impossible at this point in history, but seeing it is both possible and crucial.
Wow, this is a thing? I’ve never witnessed it or seen it on television.
Me neither. I believe it though.
I’ve only heard of it because there was a plot point involving a gender-reveal party on “Shameless” last season. I wasn’t convinced it was a real thing.
I’ve heard of gender-reveal cakes so I assumed there were parties to go with, but I had no idea they were so:
1. MERIKA! I mean wtf, shooting a gun at a target to make a big explosion of colored powder? Really?
2. So unapologetically sexist. I mean, sure there’s innate sexism in announcing it in advance so people can buy gendered clothes and things for the baby instead of a cute yellow onesie and a stuffed puppy dog toy. But that’s as far as it used to go, not “Pistols or Pearls”. :(
I got shit from friends and family years ago for giving my newly born niece a bright blue pterodactyl mobile. Apparently it wasn’t anywhere nearly girly enough.
It seems to be an US thing. There’s no word for it in German or Hungarian (just like there’s none for “baby shower”) and I haven’t heard of anyone doing it here in Australia despite having been in the crosshairs of the pregnant-and-new-parents industry for the last year, so I got bombarded with offers for a lot of weird fetus/baby related stuff.
But people freak out over my son having fluoro pink dummies (practical: just try to find the see-through or powder blue ones) and get confused by his cute orange, green and red outfits.
And I got shit from friends and family for painting my son’s room a neutral tan and decorating in Winnie-the-Pooh. They had no problem with Pooh; they just wanted things blue. Because I guess he wouldn’t know he was a boy if his room wasn’t blue?
Facepalms. Shrugs. Mutters about even progressive liberal types still being fucked up by all this gender nonsense.
On a more serious note. For the last 20 years I have made a point of being the subversive uncle/family friend who has quietly encouraged girls to be non-traditional in their outlook (where it suited them) and boys to be more sensitive.
On the few occasions I’ve been challenged I’ve said “Do you want you kid growing up believing they have to behave like a stereotypical boy/girl?” That’s always been the end of the conversation.
Of course my close friends and family are all (nearly all) educated, liberal, and progressive so they couldn’t really take issue with that. I do feel like a butterfly fighting the hurricane though.
@Rob
Funny, I read this article as reflecting a trend among conservative-minded folk. The progressive, “trans-friendly” mindset with which I am familiar is typically considers gender-assignment-at-birth to be eye-roll-worthy (at best). I’ve long made it a point to refrain from the common inquiry, “Oh, you’re pregnant? Do you know if it’s going to be a boy or girl?”. In fact, at my neighbor’s recent pronouncement, “We did the ultrasound today… we’re having a girl!”, I almost had to bite my tongue from saying, “Well… probably. Time will tell.”
To me, a progressive “gender-reveal party” would probably occur between the age of 4 and 8, for kids with parents who chose to refrain from revealing information about the child’s genitals, and simply referred to the child in a gender-neutral manner from birth; unless/until the child expressed a preference otherwise. And the “reveal” would simply amount to, “Our child has informed us that he/she/they is a boy/girl (or neither boy or girl) and would like to go by a boy/girl/neutral-name of Patrick/Patricia/Pat from here on” (with any “crucial” information about the child’s genitals remaining none of anybody’s business).
The “gender party” in the OP, IMO, would be better termed “genital party”. “Yay, let’s eat cake to celebrate that my baby has a penis!”… blech.
I’m certain it wasn’t as bad as this when I was a kid in the ’70s–I know I don’t have to link to the Legos ads to convince anyone of this. I guess it just demonstrates the power of advertising, motivated by increasing sales, that we’ve so strongly re-adopted this kind of gender binary (though of course I guess it wouldn’t have been such a powerful message if a lot of people weren’t already predisposed to accept it).
A long time back someone posted a comment on one of Ophelia’s posts about gender to the effect of ‘someone who up to then had been raised as a girl might determine she’s trans/really a boy, and adults will tell her ‘girls can do or be anything boys can do or be, you don’t have to be a boy to be yourself,’ and he’ll still be sure he’s a boy–so there must be something inside him telling him he’s a boy, even though he was AFAB.’ I don’t think I responded, but that comment is still bothering me. That’s not really true, is it? Parents and progressive adults can tell girls that all they want, but kids aren’t stupid. They watch TV, they see where the toys and clothes are in the store, they see adults interacting with each other, and they can tell where they’re supposed to fit into the world. The ‘girls and boys are equal, and have equal access to all the things’ message is superficial.
While I’m getting my angst out here I have another bone to pick–that ‘little kids understand gender perfectly well’, and can know what gender they are at an early age. As someone who used to substitute teach early grades, and who occasionally interacts with children, I’m baffled by this assertion. A couple of years ago when volunteering at a community event I overheard two children arguing about whether I was male or female because, despite having a G cup and a very obviously hourglass figure, I have short hair. This was enough to confuse them, and concern them. So I don’t know why anyone thinks little kids know more about gender than what they’re told or pick up from their cultural surroundings.
Kevin, I was referring more to the fact that many of the commentariate here, myself included, speak of the struggles we have with the general soaking we get in gender roles. Even when we are well aware of gender and patriarchy we can’t be or break free from it completely.
It was also an immediate response to iknklast having such a similar experience to mine. Mind you, on reflection I don’t know that the friends and family she mentioned were liberal progressives or not.
Rob – my friends and family are a mix – a very conservative, fundamentalist family on my side, a moderately progressive family on my exes side, and friends who were very progressive. Most of the time, there was discomfort from all sides with my failure to appropriately soak my son in gender-specific colors and toys, but I think the discomfort came stronger from my liberal friends, which I found weird. Keep in mind, though, this was Oklahoma.
A “progressive” gender-reveal party?
Godalmighty.
guest @ 13 –
Quoting for emphasis.
A “progressive” gender-reveal party?
To be a bit more clear, what I meant was “If ‘gender-reveal’ means anything at all, it would be something along those lines”. There are parents who raise their children in a gender-neutral manner; refusing to share with the world information about their children’s genitals, and whose children go on to declare for themselves whether they are boys or girls. In that sense, a “gender reveal” might be the point in time where the parents “reveal” that the child has indicated a preference for a female or male name, pronouns, etc.
While a “party” to celebrate a revelation of this nature is probably not-a-thing; and most things that are current not-a-things do tend to strike a “how ridiculous!” or “Godalmighty” chord in our psyche, I could see solid reasoning behind it, even if we’re talking straight female-to-male or male-to-female transition.
1) Major social changes like going by a new name, however appealing, may still be scary to some children; it would seem like a creative way to ease some of that anxiety.
2) Seems a good way to get word out to the child’s friends (and their family)
3) Seems a good way to show the child’s friends how not-shameful gender transitioning is.
Not altogether different from some people in the gay community who decide to come out in creative and festive ways; even going so far as to throw “coming out of the closet parties” (or, what one might call, “Sexual orientation reveal parties”).
guest @ 13 –
Young male chimpanzees preferentially mimic and model the behaviors they see in adult male chimps; while young female chimps are more prone to mimic and model the behavior they see in adult female chimps. I’d be interested in hearing you propose a hypothesis of “how do young chimps know which adults they should be modeling?”
Could it be that young chimpanzees “can know what gender they are at an early age”? Obviously not with human words, but in a sense of “there’re two different kinds of chimps, and they behave very differently; I’m this kind, I should behave like they do” . But, how can that possible, while simultaneously, laughingly impossible that a 4 year-old human child could have any comprehension or sense of their gender, of them being this-kind-not-that-kind, (without smarty-smart parents figuring it out for them by examining their private parts)? Scoffingly impossible that as their language skills develop, they might realize everyone is talking about them like they’re “that kind”? Utterly impossible that they’d be deeply driven to correct the smarty-smarts who just can’t (or won’t) comprehend that their brilliant “let’s look at their junk” test isn’t as reliable as they believe it to be?
Or parents could just realize that sex doesn’t determine personality and let it go at that.
@guest #13
As a little kid I thought the differences between men and women, boys and girls, mostly came down to hair and clothing. (I noticed that men had to shave and that ladies had bumps on their chests, but I guess clothing and ways they wore their hair seemed a bigger difference.)
Has anybody here read Flannery O’Connor’s story, A Temple of the Holy Ghost? In it a young girl is baffled by a sideshow “freak” (an intersex person) as described by her older friends:
Maybe they know what sex they are at an early age–by looking. Chimps don’t wear clothes, the physical distinctions between the sexes are obvious.
Every single damn thing about the US pregnancy/birth/baby industry gives me the fucking creeps. People I love to absolute death had babies and I was dutiful and went to showers but they were mortifying (this would have been in the 80s) enough. But “gender reveal” parties? Yuck for so many reasons.
@Lady Mondegreen The whole hair thing continues to confuse me. While anecdotally it seems having short hair isn’t as fashionable or as common where I live now as it was where I used to live 30 years ago, it’s not completely unknown for women to wear their hair short; Western women have been wearing short hair since the 1920s. And men wearing their hair long is historically flexible, though unfortunately not as common as short hair for women.
I remember writing somewhere on some blog how surprised I was when I realised what a burden not having the correct ‘woman hair’ actually was, when I was suddenly relieved of it by living in central Africa, where short hair on women was the default. Though now that I think of it the skirt/pants thing was a much bigger deal there; short hair + skirt=woman but long hair + pants=man. I guess you have to pick something.