Yesterday, I was so busy never got a chance to make a post about the opening of “Surprise, it’s a baby!” at UIC's Gender and Sexuality Center in Chicago. This was a 1st for me & it was such a beautiful way to flex my mind & hands in a new way. The message at the core of the installation, like most of my work, was still the same: Keep Calm & Let the Baby Decide. This was a collab effort & I am so grateful to the GSC staff Megan Carney, S. Simmons, Moisés Villada, & Tia Barr for believing in & supporting me. Lastly, TY to all the people who came out last night & enjoyed eating rainbow “gender reveal” cake with me <3 You all made this such a memorable night. The installation will be up at the GSC's Flex Space (1007 W. Harrison St.) until early Dec. Statement: Gender reveal parties shed light on how our cultures’ ideas about gender are often forced upon our children. As an intersex person, meaning one of the 2% of people born with sex traits that do not fit the typical definitions for male or female bodies1, I’m not only interested in the ways that gender roles are learned through socialization but also how they are forced upon individuals. The common practice of subjecting intersex children to unnecessary surgical procedures for the purpose of trying to make our appearance conform to binary sex stereotypes1 highlights this phenomenon. Yet, there are many other ways we prescribe gender on our children that perhaps are not as obvious as intersex genital surgeries. Gender reveal parties claim to reveal a child’s gender, but in actuality are revealing whether the child appears to have a penis or a vulva. These parties are just one example of the myriad of ways in which our society pressures children, even before they are born, to conform to outdated binary gender roles. I hope this installation can encourage us to take a more critical look at the ways in which most of us, myself included, are complicit in the production and maintenance of our society’s antiquated ideas about about binary sex and gender. The future is not only female, but it’s also trans, intersex, femme, non-binary, two-spirit, post-gender, hella black & brown, & all the things we can't yet imagine...
