But nobody calls it that, and that's the problem. By calling it a gender reveal party, you're making it about gender. Not to mention the colors, the "it's a boy!" balloons, the whatever else is there-- it's all about gender, not sex. And yeah, obviously, this doesn't impact the baby. But a parent who so early celebrates their child's assumed gender identity, purely on the basis of the child's sex, is a parent who will be less receptive to a child that later identifies in other, "unexpected" ways.You're right, it's more of a "sex reveal party" technically.
I don't think it has anything to do with how the child will later identify, more about their present sex status. I have no doubt that if it was technically possible, people would do "eye/hair colour reveal parties". It's a redhead! And if they grow up and wear lenses/dye their hair purple - that's all good too.
please help me understand the current definition of "gender" vs. "sex". Somewhere along the way, I feel like the definitions have evolved, and have gained some emotional gravity that I'm ignorant about. I don't want to go around offending people by using the wrong term in the wrong way. (and I'm being completely genuine and vulnerable here).
the gist of it is "sex" is what you are from a reproductive-y, chromosome-y perspective and "gender" is the role you play socially - e.g. little XX humans don't pop out the womb as "female", that's the set of behaviors / expectations 'n' all that that get placed on you when society sees you have a vagina people are born as whatever sex they are and get assigned a gender associated with their bits, then later their "gender identity" (their own sense of what set of behaviors / expectations align with them) develops and either matches the gender assigned to them or not people that have a gender identity = assigned gender match are cisgender (although that word isn't well liked sometimes) people that have a gender identity =/= assigned gender mismatch are transgender I personally don't think that "gender reveal parties" matter one iota for reference but if you wanna be finicky then yeah "sex reveal parties" would be a better name - who gives a shit frankly
it's a silly example but it helps me remember: back in the day pink wasn't associated with femininity and it wasn't a gender-related thing, but somewhere along the line pink became associated with one gender and suddenly little girls like pink they aren't born liking pink inherently, they're encouraged to like it by society - in contrast they aren't encouraged to have ovaries and shit like that, they just have it the characteristics of sex are the characteristics of sex; gender is anything you want it to be because it's arbitrary