Gender reveal... or stereotype?

Question

Gender reveals have become increasingly common across millennials (I'd attribute much of their popularity to social media), but how do we feel about them? Do we think they impose gender roles and stereotypes on children at an early age (classifying female and male children with hyper-feminine/masculine identities), or are they a harmless and fun way to celebrate the baby and their parents?

Anonymous · Answer

I'm expecting soon, and we found out our baby's sex. We did not do any kind of gender reveal. We just told people. My feeling is that the majority of people identify with the sex they were born with, so while she's little, I'll treat her as a girl. If, as she gets older, her identity shifts, then we can adjust as a family. I'm open to whoever she develops into, but I think it's okay to identify your baby's gender. It's fun to celebrate and think of names.

Courtney Klein · Answer

Personally, I think gender reveals are silly (though, I don't fault people who have them, so long as it makes them happy), but not necessarily because of gender role issues. It just seems like a lot of work and a kind of attention that I, personally, am not keen on (I don't even announce things like getting a new job or moving to a new state on social media... I just tell the people who I want to know).

That said, I do think that your point is interesting - particularly because we, as a society, severely misunderstand the difference between 'sex' and 'gender.' Sex is, typically speaking, in reference to our reproductive organs (phenotypic sex) and/or the configuration of our 46 chromosomes (genotypic sex) - the best way to explain it is a spectrum or continuum with female on one end and male on the other, as there are more biological realities that XX and XY. Gender, on the other hand, is a social or cultural construct that is far more complex than sex, and can't quite so accurately be demonstrated on a straight-line continuum. Gender is defined by the person. Sex is defined by their genes/genitalia. You can be a biological male but identify with a gender other than 'male.' This all being the case (here's me being super pedantic), these aren't 'gender reveals.' They're sex reveals - specifically simplified phenotypic ones at that. IF someone is considering doing a 'gender reveal' but they're worried about pigeonholing their child into a gender they may not later identify with, I think a super easy way to combat that is to just use the right terminology! It's a (phenoypic) sex reveal! A fetus isn't genotyped, just identified based on the external genitalia that the OB sees on the screen, so in reality you're not ACTUALLY misrepresenting anything, knowingly anyway. Of course, 'Join us for our Phenotypic Sex Reveal Party' has  a much less charming ring to it...

Thank you, by the way, for bringing this up. I've wanted to go on about my thoughts on the topic for quite a while, but have never been given the platform :D

Gender reveal... or stereotype?

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