While the anticipation of meeting your child makes you desperate to know them – and we see gender as a way to do that – finding out their sex and sharing it on TikTok (which is really what a gender reveal is, since the child hasn’t developed) means loading assumptions, traits and ideas onto them way before they enter the world. We know that prescriptive ideas about manhood pressure boys to perform their gender in ways that impact both them, women and people marginalised for their gender negatively. And if your child doesn’t fit into the two categories you celebrated before they were born – which will be used as a foundation to understand them – it causes very real issues. Intersex, trans, non-binary kids deserve unconditional love, support and understanding, but a parent who is disappointed about who their kid turns out to be, is unlikely to have a child who feels accepted, and though sex reveal parties refuse to recognise the existence of kids who sit outside the binary, an unborn child that seemingly does can still disappoint them.
Too many gender reveals on TikTok show fathers unable to hide their dismay – even anger – at seeing the colour pink. As pink confetti falls from an umbrella, one dad shouts and curses in front of his two daughters, another looks frustrated by pink balloons and throws a ribbon to the ground. Another tosses a flare and exits, leaving his wife celebrating alone. While some videos show parents happy ‘either way’, these don’t. These men aren’t celebrating having a child, they’re eagerly awaiting their preference to be confirmed – and where there’s a preference, there’s disappointment. What’s wild is that not only are they somehow disappointed by their unborn child, but they’re comfortable expressing that… even playing up to it.
The appointment has been described as “appalling” by the British Pregnancy Advisory Service.
These reactions are misogynistic, and while they clearly communicate that these men see girls and femininity as ‘less than’, they also reveal a lot about the men themselves. Take the dad who cursed in front of his daughters; it seems he already has more respect for, and affinity with, an unborn son than his actual daughters, and it’s likely because he imagines a little ‘mini me’, or more specifically, a son that would mirror masculinity as he understands it.
The expectation of a ‘mini me’ is actually just a man ‘passing on’ (or enforcing) his performance of manhood on his son. He wants to create a son in his image, and feels like ‘more of a man’ by becoming a father to – what he sees as – the stronger sex, and all that comes with it: football! Wrestling! Winding up the girls! A man who so desperately wants a son that he will literally shudder at the idea of a daughter is fragile in his masculinity, and fragile masculinity needs validating. Passing it on, or enforcing it, is a way to do that. Seeing himself mirrored in his son playing football or chasing girls may make him feel more of a man. Making sexist jokes as his son laughs along may validate him. But the question becomes – why would having a daughter have made him less of a man? Why would he have felt emasculated by aspects of it? What was he scared of? These questions are what men who curse their unborn daughters at gender reveals should be working on in therapy, with the support of those who love them, because their reaction reveals the fragility of their masculinity and their need to protect it by enforcing it. And ultimately, daughters deserve better, because the misogyny tied to their fragility will affect those them for the rest of their lives.
Because something isn't adding up.
