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Quicksilver wrote

Have gender reveal parties always had so much death tied up in it? Like, is this a recent thing, or are we just hearing about it more?

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emma OP wrote

Gender reveal parties themselves are a quite recent thing, but it's only been in the last few years we've heard all the reports about accidents tied to them.

Personally i feel the correlation between the increased visibility of transgender people and the increased outlandishness of these parties are connected, like making this ruckus about your baby's genitals is going to set your child's gender in stone or something. The sad thing is, the woman credited with inventing the gender reveal party only held one because she had previously had multiple miscarriages, and was only happy to get to the point where they could assign the baby's sex via ultrasound.

See: https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2019/jul/26/gender-reveal-party-pioneer-regrets-trend

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Quicksilver wrote

Huh, never realized they were such a recent thing! Seemed like gender reveals have always been a thing...but I was really young in 08, so probably why.

Didn't know the history of it either, and is sad what it's come to today. And I definitely agree the increased visibility of transgender/non-binary folks has definitely led to some of the more extreme variants of the party form.

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GlangSnorrisson wrote

Yeah the origin of it is sad, but it didn’t start out as this ludicrous display of poor judgment.

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