Social media users were disturbed by TikTok user @kirramahaley_’s viral gender reveal clip. Photo: Screenshots
A disturbingly violent gender reveal video that recently went viral has social media users calling out “red flags” and wondering whether the straights are ok.
As the Daily Dot reported recently, the clip was originally posted on TikTok by user @kirramahaley_ in April, but has since resurfaced on X. It shows a pregnant woman in a white dress wearing strike pads on her hands as the father of her unborn child repeatedly pummels one of the pads while wearing boxing gloves. Apparently unable to release the cloud of smoke that would reveal the sex of their baby, the dad eventually tosses aside one of his gloves and delivers a bareknuckle blow to the pad releasing a puff of pink smoke.
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But the guy doesn’t stop there. Seconds after the pink cloud dissipates, he delivers another seemingly violent jab in the woman’s direction that appears to land perilously close to her baby bump.
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The original TikTok post appears to have been removed, but according to the Daily Dot, @kirramahaley_ noted in the caption that her partner’s punches were “harddddd.”
The clip has since gone viral, with TikTok users like Madison Humphrey (@madison.humphreyy) reposting and noting that it was full of “the redest [sic] of red flags,” while user @mojustbetalkin wondered if “the men are well.”
X user @TheArtOfWar6 reposted the clip in late June, commenting that it was “the worst thing I’ve ever seen.”
Many commenters agreed. “That last shot was almost an abortion,” one wrote.
“Would have turned into a miscarriage reveal party if his aim was slightly worse,” another user wrote.
“I am incredibly uncomfortable watching this untrained armpuncher throwing at a pregnant lady,” another commented.
As the Daily Dot notes, these boxing gender reveal stunts aren’t uncommon. However, it’s generally the pregnant person throwing the punches while their partner wears the strike pads.
Reactions to the viral clip were perhaps best summed up in a post by X user @ItsLithaAfter9: “Heterosexuality and gender essentialism are so scary.”
The video is just the latest indication of the toxicity simmering beneath the now-ubiquitous gender reveal trend — sometimes literally. In 2021, a New Hampshire man set off 80 pounds of explosives during a gender reveal stunt. The resulting explosion shook homes in the area and left local residents’ tap water contaminated.
In recent years, viral videos of gender reveal stunts have resulted in something of an arms race, with some expectant parent going to extreme lengths to get their events noticed on social media — sometimes resulting in devastating consequences. Family membershave been killed, multipleplane have crashed, and sprawling wildfires have been sparked in Arizona and California.
But for queer, trans, and nonbinary people and their allies, even the most innocuous gender reveal events expose the troubling persistence of the gender binary, and the fierceness with which cisgender and heterosexual parents cling to the notion that knowing the biological sex of their unborn child can tell them anything about who that child will be and how they will identify.
In 2021, no less an authority than pop star Demi Lovato, who has frequently discussed the fluidity of her own gender identity, posted a clarifying critique of gender reveal events.
“Gender reveals are based on the illusion that genitals = gender and that there are only two options ‘boy or girl’,” one slide in a post on her Instagram account read. “This definition erases the fact that there are boys with vaginas and girls with penises and that there are people who are neither boys nor girls.”
“The irony is that trans and gender non-conforming people are accused of advancing a ‘gender ideology’, when in fact we are trying to escape it,” the post continued.
Even Jenna Karvunidis, the woman credited with popularizing the trend, has been critical of gender reveal stunts. In July 2019, 11 years after she first wrote about her own gender reveal party on her blog, Karvunidis wrote on Facebook that she had “mixed feelings” about her “contribution to the culture.”
“Who cares what gender the baby is?” she wrote. “I did at the time because we didn’t live in 2019 and didn’t know what we know now — 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.”
“PLOT TWIST,” she added, “the world’s first gender-reveal party baby is a girl who wears suits!”
