Let’s burn stuff to celebrate!
This in the Atlantic is from last November:
At least one human life has already been lost as a direct result of the widespread obsession with turning the sex of one’s unborn child into an explosive (often literally) spectacle. In October, an Iowa woman was killed when her family inadvertently built a pipe bomb as part of their gender-reveal party—a gathering at which expectant parents dramatically and colorfully announce the sex of their baby.
The methods for doing so seem to have started out as benign, if stereotypical—cutting into a cake to reveal either blue or pink frosting, say. But in the past couple of years, some kind of communal madness has taken hold, and many of these feats of gender performance have gotten more elaborate, more public, and more dangerous—putting lives and entire ecosystems at risk. Last year, a father-to-be started a 47,000-acre wildfire in Arizona when he shot a rifle at an explosive target full of blue powder (It’s a boy!), causing $8.2 million of damage, according to the Arizona Daily Star.
Causing $8.2 million in damage and god only knows how many animals their lives, not to mention the general damage to the environment. But hey, I guess it seemed well worth it to those self-absorbed idiots who started the El Dorado fire last weekend. It’s now burned more than 10,000 acres.
And why in the world do people assume the sex of their baby is so important that they have to announce it to everyone? This is on a par with all those who must announce their pronouns to everyone. It is so narcissistic…and now, dangerous. (I think it was dangerous to begin with, as we spend more and more effort on creating more rigid gender stereotypes than ever).
Amanda Marcotte was theorizing on Twitter that gender reveal parties came about because they were something that women could get their husbands to participate in, either in lieu of or (if you’re really starving for attention) in addition to the traditional baby shower. But then, since men were involved, the parties started to take on aspects of performative masculinity, with fireworks or guns or whatever would sufficiently reassure everyone that the father-to-be is still a man.
That seems sort of plausible to me. I certainly remember hearing discussions about whether men should go to baby showers, and certainly my inclination as a man was AVOID AVOID AVOID. (I went to one that I remember, which was held at the office for a colleague. Fortunately I was able to use work as an excuse to slip out after enduring 20 minutes or so of watching her open gifts and listening to everyone else coo over how “cute” the baby pajamas or whatever it was were. I can’t imagine sitting through an entire one, and I’ve heard there were worse parts, like the candy bar game, which I won’t elaborate on in case anybody is planning to eat lunch or dinner today.) But if anyone in my circle has held a gender reveal party, I was kept out of the loop, so I don’t know if they’ve really caught on or not.
And that is a luxury you get as a man. Not meaning to be mean or rude or anything, just, that’s reality. As a woman, I had to sit through something like 6 when I was pregnant, not to mention having 3 sisters, 2 sisters-in-law, and numerous friends/colleagues that had babies. It is much harder for a woman to beg off, and I would have given nearly anything for my husband to have considered attending even one of them in my place, or even to go with me to unwrap some of the gifts and do some of the cooing and oohing (I absolutely LOATHE that sort of thing). Not to mention the endless talk about babies this, babies that, what color is the nursery, have you picked out a name, what are they going to be when they grow up…it’s nauseating. And as a woman, I had very few ways to get out of it. In fact, I ‘volunteered’ to host one for a sister-in-law, and found out about my unique volunteer opportunity when my sister called to tell me I was chosen as the house to hold it, and did I need her to come early to help set up.
Just another way in which men have privileges women don’t get to enjoy. We’re stuck…unless we want to lose all our friends.
Well, I’ve never been to a shower. I don’t think they’re mandatory or ubiquitous everywhere.
Male privilege is excellent. I highly recommend it!
If you haven’t already heard it, look up the song “Pregnant Women Are Smug” on YouTube by Garfunkel and Oates. (I’d post a link, but I think they auto-embed.)
Seriously, though, baby showers are not something that the patriarchy is imposing on women. You all do that shit to yourselves! If you just all… stopped doing it, or changed how you do it, then the customs would change. I have noticed a definite change in bachelor parties, which might be just a difference between early 20s and 40-ish grooms, but I think it’s a broader trend. The old shtick about strippers and possibly hookers and getting the groom droolingly drunk and in compromising situations seems to be thankfully fading. I see more and more guys just wanting to have a steak dinner and cigars, or a weekend of golf or a cabin in the woods or whatever, than some desperate effort at a “last hurrah.”
Now maybe you’re just out of luck because you’re surrounded by non-like-minded women. Can’t help you with that!
Yes, what I’m saying. They’re not a thing everywhere. But we know iknklast would get the hell out of
DodgeNebraska if she could!Screechy, to some extent women do it to themselves, but I think it’s fair to say they do it to each other more. In some situations, you simply cannot comply. Don’t go to the baby shower at work? Your next performance evaluation reflects that you don’t support your co-workers. Don’t go to your own baby shower? Yeah, I suppose you could say no…but that really isn’t an option for most of us. Only those who are willing to throw their entire support system out the window and go it alone forever.
I managed to avoid most of the worst of the gender expected behaviors. I never took baby pictures to show people at work, or at school. I didn’t bring my son by and insist that every woman in the office had to hold him (that is not overt insistence, by the way, there are subtle tricks they do that expose you as baby hating if you avoid the baby). I did not impose perfectly ordinary childhood milestones my son passed at a normal time and in a normal way on others…in short, when he took his first step, his father called grandma, but the people at the work didn’t have to pretend to give a damn. Thing is, I am seen as peculiar, and by some, untrustworthy, because of such “unfeminine” and “weird” behaviors. That has cost me in the workplace. I pay the cost, because I would rather not play the gender expectations game and contribute to still more data points for people who say “see? look at how women act around babies. buncha goofs, you ask me.” Yeah, I’ve heard that…just never about me.
And yes, Ophelia, if I were younger, and not a few years from retirement, I would definitely be out of Nebraska. My therapist is encouraging me to leave at the earliest possible moment…while there’s still something left of me is how she puts it.
Screechy Monkey #2 has the right of it: “But then, since men were involved, the parties started to take on aspects of performative masculinity, with fireworks or guns or whatever would sufficiently reassure everyone that the father-to-be is still a man.”
The all female parties/showers have always been pretty dull but there is cake and I just considered all the silliness and gift-giving to be social bonding stuff.
A friend posted a meme suggesting gender reveal parties are proof that “cis” people are hypocritical about gender, that they chastise trans people for caring so much about gender but then have these parties.
So much to unpack. “Cis” people as the enemy. Assuming that the same people who might ask “why do you care so much about gender” are also the ones who hold gender reveal parties. Conflation of sex and gender.
(turns into Homer Simpson) Mmmm. Did someone say ‘cake’?
I remembered later that actually I have been to one shower. It was way back in my Zoo days: a keeper (who was a friend of mine) had her first baby and a vet tech organized a shower for her. I did feel quite “Ugh do I have to?” but I think it was not too awful. They were a pretty hip bunch, the Zoo women. We didn’t burn anything down.
I’d never even heard of a baby shower before I moved to the US. I was invited to one quite soon after I arrived and went along mostly out of curiosity. Ugh. I can’t decide what I hated the most; the constant talk of pregnancy and babies (OK, I should have seen that coming), the questions about my plans for having kids or the horrifying cake in the shape of a pregnant woman’s torso with a piece cut out so you could see the baby in utero. From a skill point of view, it was extremely well done but I really could not eat that cake. I gave some excuse, I don’t remember what.
The questions about my future childbearing were excruciating. I explained that I am childless by choice. I got pitying looks and then one woman told me I was being selfish, which was a bit baffling. A friend very skillfully directed the conversation away to safer waters, for which I was very grateful.
I have never been to one since. I started out inventing pretend appointments, meetings etc. Now I just say sorry, I can’t and leave it at that. I have nothing useful to add other than talk about my work in disorders of pregnancy, causes of maternal and neonatal death, etc. That probably wouldn’t go down well.
That sounds horrendous. The one I went to – which I’m not even sure was actually called a shower, it could have been just a “let’s have a party to celebrate Rachel’s new baby” – was basically just a gathering.
God that cake. Wtf.
Re #12
I’ve heard of such cakes, but thankfully none has appeared at any of the small number of baby showers I’ve attended. I think I’d be traumatized.
I don’t care for baby showers. Fortunately, males are excused from some of them, so only my wife needs endure. I’m not fond of most collective gift-giving events, but baby showers are particularly difficult.
Claire, that cake is worse than anything I ever endured, but the “when are you” questions are awful. I had one child, never wanted a second, probably wouldn’t have a first if I were doing it again, but my sisters all reproduced themselves in large numbers, and I got real sick of the pointed reminders that it was time…my mother had something like 23 grandchildren, and wanted more. Fine. Let someone else have them.
I do think the pressure from work probably depends a lot on where you work. Every job I had is a job that deals so heavily with people, everyone assumes you should go to every shower, every party, every endless round of nonsense and horror they can dream up, or you are too antisocial for your job. I think I probably actually am too asocial for my job, but I manage to do it, and do it well, so go away, okay? Only it isn’t okay, because I am woman, must be caring, must nurture, must constantly talk babies and more babies.
I went to a conference on women in higher education leadership roles, sharing a vehicle with several women who were highly educated and in high level positions. What did they talk about? Their children. Babies. More of their children. More babies. I sat in the back seat and pretended to be asleep, though I have never been able to sleep in a car (they didn’t know that, though). Some would say I should have taken the opportunity to network. For what? A nanny position?
One other thing here, sackbut, is that the appear to be treating “cis” people as monolithic, assuming that the radical feminists are those having the gender reveal parties, because otherwise, why would it be hypocritical? If people who believe gender is real, and comes in pink and blue, have gender reveal parties, that is not hypocritical. If radical feminists disdain gender reveal parties, we are not hypocritical. Women (and I use this term only to include those who are actually women) are a diverse group of people, and don’t all share the same ideas, opinions, fetishes, or obsessions.