LGBTQ6 min(s) read
Published 16:54 27 Feb 2021 GMT
Demi Lovato has taken to social media this week to brand gender-reveal parties as transphobic.
According to The Independent, the 28-year-old actress, singer, and songwriter took to her official Instagram account on Thursday to share a post with her 99.7 million followers on the platform.
The post in question read: "It's both insincere and incorrect to pretend that gender reveal parties are not transphobic. You can't have your proverbial pink-blue binary cake and eat it too."
"This is not about political correctness, it's just... correct. We condemn gender reveals not because of our identity, but because of our reality."
The post continued: "Gender reveals require not just the invalidation of transness, but the impossibility of transness. The assumption is that the baby is cis. Cisness is understood as the default and everyone else is understood as derivative of it.
"The idea goes: while we might 'identify' as trans now, we were 'originally born' cis, and we later 'became' trans. When in truth, everyone is just born. And we all become after the fact.
"Even though we might have grown accustomed to other people gendering us, that doesn't make it right. Only individuals can determine their own gender."
Lovato herself captioned the post: "The refusal to acknowledge this stems from a misunderstanding of what transphobia is.
"Transphobia is not just prejudice or violence against an individual trans person, it is a belief system that presumes non-trans people to be more 'natural' than trans people. Only individual people can self determine their gender."
However, a number of other social media users clearly appeared to disagree with Lovato's opinion, and promptly took to the comments to share their own thoughts on the idea.
For instance, one person wrote: "Gender reveals are about the surprise of having a girl or boy at [the] baby stage. If the child chooses later to change then it's their choice."
A trans commenter wrote: "As a transwoman I really do not care about a color, and baby showers are fun.
"NO ONE is defined by a color so sorry that a baby shower (before I'm even born lol) doesn't hurt me, I promise I did, do not care that when I was in my mother's belly she had a blue themed baby shower for me like truly....this is why people can't stand us."
"If you ask me how a stranger should treat a transperson, like any other person. That's it. Don't stress about colors, parties, politics, or religion. Let me do me, and you do you, and we're all good. [sic]"
Another person added: "No. They are just celebrating their damn baby stop putting restrictions on everything for the sake of being 'woke!'"
Meanwhile, someone else chimed in: "Demi, no! This is incredibly unfair to say to happy expecting parents."
Another person wrote: "You can't condemn how parents decide to well be parents. That is hypocritical to all you extreme liberals. Live and let others live. Stop thinking you know what's best for other people."
Another Instagram user commented: "What's wrong with a baby being the gender they were born though? If in 10 years they feel they are not what they were born, that's different."
Finally, someone else chimed in, writing: "I never comment on posts like this because I feel whatever you say is taken offensively these days but I just cannot agree on this at all... This is just too much."
This post comes not long after Lovato celebrated the US House of Representatives passing the historic Equality Act, which aims at safeguarding the rights of American members of the LGBTQ+ community.
Championing the bill, Lovato wrote to her many followers: "This is an incredible step forward but now we need our Senate to follow suit!!! [sic]"
