American singer Demi Lovato shared a lengthy social media post over the weekend where she discouraged people from participating in or romanticizing gender reveal parties.
Lovato, in a 9-slide post on her Instagram, claimed there were more than two genders and that “it’s both insincere and incorrect to pretend that gender reveal parties are not transphobic.”
“You can’t have your proverbial pink-blue binary cake and eat it, too,” she continued.
Those of you who have children probably remember the different means and methods that you used to surprise loved ones and friends with the final gender reveal—the party, the celebration, balloons, and cake—but Lovato argues the gender reveal parties “fuel mistreatment of all people” as “there are boys with vaginas and girls with penises.”
“This is not about political correctness; it’s just … correct,” the post continued. “We condemn gender reveals not because of our identity, but because of reality.”
“Transphobia is not just about prejudice against individual trans people, it’s also a way of thinking that understands non-trans people as more natural/organic and erases everyone else,” she added.
“These ideas, like the gender binary, fuel mistreatment of all people, but especially trans and gender non-conforming people,” Lovato said.
The post continued:
Gender reveals are based on the illusion that genitals = gender and that there are only two options, “boy or girl.” This definition erases the fact that there are boys with vaginas and girls with penises and that there are people who are neither boys nor girls.
— Advertisement — Gender reveals require not just the invalidation of transness, but the impossibility of transness. The assumption is that the baby is cis. Cisness is positioned as the default and everyone else is understood as derivative of it.
The idea goes: while we might “identify” as trans now, we were “originally” “born” cis and we later “became” trans. When in truth, everyone is just born. And we all become after the fact.
“Only individuals can determine their own gender,” the post added.
As Faith Wire reports, the content of the slides was written by Alok Vaid-Menon, a pro-LGBT activist, and that Lovato simply reposted them to her nearly 100 million followers.
See the post below:
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