This is my people. By that, I mean "nerdy leftists who are pretty self-aware in their absurdity, but it can be very hard to tell from the outside, so they are often very cringe to people who aren't of the same story". It's silly, and I love it
"Sex reveal party". No, that sounds bad, too. "Assigned sex at birth reveal party". You know what? Maybe we shouldn't make such a big deal about what sex someone is born as and let them tell us who they are as they figure it out.
Do people feel like you can't say if it's a girl or a boy before they're old enough to express some preference? That seems to be the thing people pick on with gender reveal parties but that doesn't really make sense to me if you're cool with "It's a girl. We're going to name her Alice." without the party. It's not like the party is usually hyper fixated on gender roles. You cut some cake or pop some balloons during a pretty normal family party. Sex chromosomes/genitals are one of the only unique things you really learn about the baby before they're here that isn't generally considered bad news. I guess we could have height percentile parties?
I might guess with such a party you really reinforce everyone's image of the baby's sex and they might be less accepting if the person comes out as a different gender further down the line? Idk
Doesn't really matter. The moment the people hear it's male or female, determines how people will treat the baby. Put a baby boy in pink and don't tell people, and people will talk to him like they would to a girl.
Whether or not people accept the small chance that the kid turns out transgender, depends on their personal views. I doubt a gebder reveal party is significant. Besides, it's a party for the parents to be. Not the baby.
gender reveal parties, but a pendant shows up and explains it's meant to be a sex reveal party, but due to the more risque use of the word sex, and the ambigious uses of the word gender, communication about the motive of such things are difficult, and a feeding ground for pendants, people who have been marginalised, and oppressors.
I also don't know where I'm going with this. I'm not sure what my next task should be and I'm letting my mind percolate.
Ambiguous usage of the word is one of the reasons oppressors have such outdated and undereducated views. The less ambiguity the easier it can be explained to the common folk.
The fun bit is that the word gender was pulled from linguistics into sociology exactly to try to make a less ambiguous situation.
It literally went "what if we talked about people having gender like the French talk about objects?”
Much like people, a table is feminine in French regardless of if it has a penis or not.
Later, people decided to use gender as a synonym for sex and complain about using the word gender in a way that's ambiguous with sex.
i don't see the point they are trying to make, of course it's a social concept, that's why it's a social gathering.
that's like going to a party for a doctoral degree and tell them its a social construct, like yeah so?
What's the point of a gender reveal party if not an excuse to use high explosives? There's no fun if something isn't being blown up in some way or form.
Results: Evidence that there is a biologic basis for gender identity primarily involves (1) data on gender identity in patients with disorders of sex development (DSDs, also known as differences of sex development) along with (2) neuroanatomical differences associated with gender identity.
Conclusions: Although the mechanisms remain to be determined, there is strong support in the literature for a biologic basis of gender identity.
That's not saying what you seem to be implying, and it's not contrary to what people mean when they say gender is a social construct.
Saying gender expression is not only performance is not really related to gender being a social construct.
What we define the genders to be is what is a social construct. The masculine gender encompasses a wide array of behaviours and expressions, as does the feminine. The behaviours and attitudes we assign to each gender is what's socially constructed. People tend to have a gender identity that matches their biological sex, and through acculturation we teach them the behaviors associated with each gender in our culture. Some people later realize that they're most comfortable conforming to a different gender than what matches their sex.
I agree with you that the "gender is a social construct" is ultimately an ontological claim, about what gender is. When I hear "gender is just a social construct", especially from an anthropologist, I am entirely expecting a social constructionist account of gender, that's what they are communicating - what gender is.
Clearly there are social elements to gender, like the color we associate with a gender, which has changed over time and is arbitrary. There is nothing intrinsic about gender-color associations, no reason "blue" means "boy" and "pink" means "girl".
Regarding gender expression not only being performance: some people use Butler's performative theory of gender as a social constructionist account of gender. It's not really a coincidence in my mind that Butler shares some intellectual roots with the psychoanalytical sexologists who popularized social constructionist views in the 1960s, so while I'm sure you could parse several social constructionist accounts I don't think it's unfair to lump them together as a broad camp. The Julia Serano article I linked even does this:
Look, I know that many contemporary queer folks and feminists embrace mantras like "all gender is performance," "all gender is drag," and "gender is just a construct." They seem empowered by the way these sayings give the impression that gender is merely a fiction. A facade. A figment of our imaginations.
Notice how she lumps together views like "all gender is performance" and "gender is just a construct". I think this article is a relevant response to "gender is a social construct".
And yes, it depends somewhat on what people actually mean when they say "gender is a social construct", but I generally take them to mean that they believe in a social constructionist account of gender, i.e. that gender is entirely arbitrary, the result of how we are raised, and the result of socialization. If you are raised a boy, you are a boy because of how you were raised.
The idea that gender identity is biological, which is what that Safer meta-analysis concludes, contradicts the social constructionist account because it claims that a person's gender is intrinsic to them in some way, for example you can't just take a boy and raise them as a girl without problems (as the case of David Reimer illustrates, when the sexologist, John Money, who believed gender was just a construct and tested that theory by trying to have a boy raised as a girl).