Gender Reveal Party Disaster

We’ve covered some mind numbingly stupid parenting issues here at Grounded Parents. From antivax nonsense  to spanking defenders and even the Scourge of the Man-Bun, we have skeptically dissected and/or viciously mocked parenting trends and myths for almost seven years now. But this one, gender reveal parties, is the first to parenting trend to lead to a bona fide natural fucking disaster.

A fire sparked by a pyrotechnic device used during a gender reveal party has grown to nearly 10,000 acres since Saturday.

The El Dorado Fire in Southern California’s San Bernardino County has scorched 9,671 acres and was only 7% contained as of late Monday night, according to fire officials, who say it’s “one of the most dangerous fires” they’ve seen in the area.

The fire was caused by a “smoke-generating pyrotechnic device” used at a party on Saturday morning in El Dorado Ranch Park in Yucaipa, about 70 miles east of Los Angeles, Cal Fire investigators determined.

Sarah Moon and Hollie Silverman, CNN

t’s not the first time a gender reveal has started a fire. In 2017, an off-duty US Border Patrol agent shot a high powered rifle at a target packed with an explosive as part of a gender reveal, igniting a fire in Arizona that grew to nearly 47,000 acres and caused more than $8 million in damage.

He pleaded guilty in 2018 to a misdemeanor and was sentenced to five years’ probation and ordered to pay almost $8.2 million in restitution.

Sarah Moon and Hollie Silverman, CNN

Danger aside, there’s also overwhelming criticism of the parties as a system that upholds the gender binary — that is, it’s either a boy, or a girl.

Karvunidis herself has hinted at this criticism as well.

In 2019, she wrote that “assigning focus on gender at birth leaves out so much of their potential and talents that have nothing to do with what’s between their legs.”

Studies have backed up this same notion.

One such study, published in 2017 by Carly Gieseler in the Journal of Gender Studies, characterized the harms of the gender reveal party like this: “It allows adults to recuperate what they have learned from their own gendered constructions, reinscribing expectations and assumptions onto the unwritten body of the unborn and propelling these ideals into the digital, social, public world.”

As for Karvunidis’s daughter, the focus of that pinnacle pink cake in 2008, she’s “a girl who wears suits!” Karvunidis wrote — meaning to highlight the futility of celebrating these gender norms.

Leah Asmelash, CNN

Hi, I’m Sean. I was identified female 6 months before birth and my parents celebrated by burning down California.