Gender, schmender. The chromosomes have it.

I see the gender-fluid brigade is at it again.

The issue with gender-reveal parties in particular is: Aren't they potentially damaging to said tiny humans?

For starters, gender-reveal parties don't actually reveal gender—they reveal anatomy. Gender is a wholly different thing, inextricably tied to the social constructs around it ... A gender reveal conflates the two.

. . .

Projecting gender perceptions onto a fetus becomes especially thorny when you take into consideration that, globally, one in every 1000 to 1500 children is born with a visible form of Difference of Sex Development (DSD), which means being neither entirely male nor female, since the chromosomal/genital makeup falls somewhere in between—an enlarged clitoris capable of erections, for instance. (Broader definitions of DSD put this number closer to 1 in 100 children.) Then there are the millions of kids assigned a sex at birth with which they don't align: 150,000 American teenagers identify as transgender. In a ritual that celebrates only a binary way of thinking about identity, we're leaving a cross-section of the population out, adding to a culture of trans and intersex shame.

There's more at the link (although why anyone in his or her right mind would want to read it, I can't say).

I disagree emphatically that gender, as a concept, is distinct from sex.  That's a modern construct that was never, repeat, NEVER a major issue until the rise of the feminist and LGBTBBQWTF brigades.  In order to be precise, let's look at a dictionary definition (the Free Dictionary, in this case) of the term 'gender'.  (Click the image for a larger view.  See, in particular, the 'Usage Note' provided.)

Contrast that with the Free Dictionary's definition of 'sex'.

On the basis of those definitions, about the only thing I have against gender-reveal parties is that they should more accurately be called sex-reveal parties . . . but I can understand the potential confusion that might engender (you should pardon the expression).

The author tries to assert, in the excerpt shown above, that the condition known as intersex is more common than scientifically accepted.  It's a real condition, and I have the greatest sympathy for those born with that handicap;  but it's vanishingly rare - less than one-tenth of one per cent of the human race, according to every authentic, objective, medical-evidence-based, non-politically-correct study of which I'm aware.  Intersex can't be used as an excuse by those who have some sort of psychological or psychiatric hangup about their sexuality (as distinct from the reality of their physical sex), and want to project that onto the rest of us, and force us to play-act accordingly.  The overwhelming majority of them are not intersex.

As far as I'm aware, from the perspective of medical science, with the sole exception of those afflicted with one or other form of intersex syndrome, one's sex is determined by one's chromosomes.  If you're XX, you're female.  If you're XY, you're male.  That's it.  You may feel you're a different gender, such as a man trapped in a woman's body, or vice versa;  you may believe that you're not what your sex organs say you are;  you may want to identify as any one (or more) of the 58 gender options offered by Facebook;  but you are, inescapably, a man or a woman, according to your chromosomes.  End of story.

So-called 'gender reassignment' treatment, even including lifelong medication, can't change that fundamental reality.  Stop taking the medication and, hey presto!  Your natural chromosomes will reassert themselves.  (Of course, if you've undergone surgery as part of gender reassignment treatment, that's pretty much irreversible, so your chromosomes will be S.O.L.)

For gender-reveal parties to operate on the basis of medical and scientific reality, rather than wishful thinking, seems to me to be no more than a recognition of the real facts of life.

Peter