Demi Lovato has sparked a major social media debate after sharing a post claiming that gender reveal parties are transphobic.
“Thank you for sharing your knowledge and educating us always,” the 28-year-old singer wrote on Instagram as she reposted a lengthy message originally shared by Alok Vaid-Menon, an activist who is fighting for transgender rights.
In the original post, Vaid-Menon confronted the idea behind gender reveal parties and blasted them as transphobic for implying that there are only two sexes.
“This is not about being politically correct, it’s about being correct. The refusal to acknowledge this stems from a misunderstanding of what transphobia is,” the post seemingly endorsed by the singer read.
“Transphobia is not just prejudice or violence against an individual trans person, it is a belief system that presumes non-trans people to be more ‘natural’ than trans people. Only individual people can self determine their gender.”
As the activist added in a series of slides accompanying his original post, it would be incorrect and insincere to keep on pretending that gender reveal parties are acceptable.
“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,” Vaid-Menon wrote.
“These ideas, like the gender binary, fuel mistreatment of all people, but especially trans and gender non-conforming people.”
While the activist slammed the idea behind gender reveal parties and insisted that “the idea that sex is based on genitalia is inconsistent with science,” they also went on to provide what they believe is the right way to dealing with the matter when a baby is born.
“The assumption is that the baby is cis. Cisness is positioned as the default and everyone else is understood as derivative of it,” the texts read.
“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.”
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Replaced!