Demi Lovato Slammed Online After Calling Gender Reveals Transphobic

The Sorry Not Sorry singer took to Instagram to ask her fans to do better when it comes to gender reveal parties

Gender reveal parties haven’t been cool in a while. Authorities have said gender reveal explosions have caused accidental deaths, while fire safety officials credit a gender reveal party for starting the devastating wildfire in California. When transgender rights activist Alok Vaid-Menon called the practice out as transphobic — Demi Lovato agreed. Lovato shared one of Vaid-Menon’s posts on her own Instagram feed, praising Vaid-Menon for bringing awareness and education to the topic of gender. Unfortunately, fans of the progressive artist did not take the message well, which is — quite honestly — surprising.

Lovato urged fans to read Vaid-Menon’s whole post as she highlighted a few sections about gender reveals: “Gender reveals are based on the illusion that genitals = gender and that there are only two options ‘boy or girl'” and “Gender reveals require not just the invalidation of transness, but the impossibility of transness.”

“This is not about being politically correct, it’s about being correct,” the post continues. “The refusal to acknowledge this stems from a misunderstanding of what transphobia is.”

“It’s’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,” the post continued.

Unfortunately, Lovato was slammed by overly-defensive fans.

“Mind your own business,” one person wrote. “People like you love to try to cause problems because you have problems in your life that you can’t deal with. Focus on fixing yourself first and focusing on actual problems instead of putting your nose into other people’s business. There’s so many things wrong in the world and this ain’t it.”

First of all, yikes.

Some took the opportunity to voice their disagreement by mocking Demi’s struggles with addiction, commenting, “You must be high” and “DEMI GET OFFF THE SPOON”.

“The amount of wrong this is I mean Jesus christ,” another posted. “Just, just I can’t. The stupidity.”

“The trans community is forcing their ideology down everyone’s throats and if you speak against them your [sic] labeled as homophobic and a bigot. You get censored speaking out against an ideology. FASCISM,” another wrote.

One poster appeared to question the concept of trans rights. “This ‘agenda’ has gone WAY to [sic] far! Gender reveal parties are fun for a lot of families expecting a baby,” the poster commented. “I didn’t do one because I didn’t want to know the gender ahead of time, but I know many who did.”

“Just stop,” another post read. “Utterly heartbreaking. Stop taking away things from women to make others feel included. That’s not how we reach the ultimate goal of acceptance for everyone.”

“All this does is create more resentment and more of a divide,” the post continues. “I won’t skip out on a reason to celebrate during pregnancy just because you think I shouldn’t. You are well versed in depression, so imagine feeling your lowest of low but having a life inside you and trying to stay positive for the sake of the baby.”

The poster ends her comment with “don’t you dare tell a woman she isn’t allow [sic] to rejoice over the gender of her child. If said child grows up and realizes they don’t feel like they are the right gender…then we will address it and help them be comfortable in their skin and love them regardless. Get out of here with this nonsense.”

To be honest, the backlash is surprising and disheartening. For such an outspoken and progressive figure like Lovato, her fanbase is surprisingly conservative. As Amber Leventry writes for Scary Mommy, “Biological sex is not the same as gender. In other words, a baby born with a penis does not automatically mean they are male. This is science. This is fact. And if you disagree, you are too insecure to realize that what you thought you knew was wrong.”