Greetings expectant parents, eccentric aunts and guncles, grandparents currently watching reboots of every show you watched as parents, and various well-intentioned coworkers of pregnant people who are just here for the free cake! Once again, gender reveal parties are in the news and I—a childless person with a lot of opinions—am here to answer all of your questions about parties, gender, revelations, and easily avoidable disasters. This weekend, news spread of a gender reveal party in Arizona at which an off-duty border patrol agent fired a highly combustible substance from a gun, meant to produce a colorful explosion: blue if it's a boy, pink if it's a girl. Instead, the explosion triggered a wildfire that burned 47,000 acres of forest. In the grand scheme of gender reveal parties, this was both a highly unusual and yet a totally expected result.

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Now, I should be clear, there's nothing fun or funny about forest fires. And, as we learned as children, only you can prevent gender reveal parties. But, this couple, who just wanted to cause an explosion about their kid's chromosomes, accidentally exposed the deeper truth about this very strange cultural institution: sometimes your child's gender identity is actually fire and, like Scar in The Lion King, honey you'd better be prepared.

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Listen up cool moms, DILFS, Golden Girls, and Auntie Mames: gender is a spectrum and it's something that only an individual can define for themselves. It is different from sex, which is related to biological characteristics. Gender is a social construct meant to create a relationship between anatomy, external perception, and structures that inherently reinforce power. If you've watched any of the news for the last, I don't know, ever, you know that the latter is not going so well. So, keep that in mind when you load pink or blue powder into a rifle and shoot it up into the air at a party. You may get a face full of celebratory colored dust. Or you may get an urgent message from the womb: "MY GENDER IS FLAMES."

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So, what does this mean? All good things! For one, a gender identity of fire is a wonderful antidote to toxic masculinity; Brett Kavanaugh's crocodile tears cannot douse these flames. Another positive attribute of fire as a gender identity: you can paint the child's room any color you want. So, two good things.

(I don't want to blow your hair back, but you can actually paint any child's room any color you want. Color doesn't have a gender. But, experts suggest that the best way to decorate a child's bedroom is to cover it with mirrored sequins. This is also known as the My Gender Is Beyoncé decorative pattern.)

But back to your child! Many influential people have had fire genders, for instance:

Jean Grey/Phoenix

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Joe Manganiello in Magic Mike

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Mrs. White in Clue

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Flame Princess

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All icons.

Fire, of course, isn't the only element on the gender spectrum. Check out these people with water genders:

Aquaman

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WOW

Also this aquaman, of sorts

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Is... is this an improved version of the "Distracted Boyfriend" meme pic.twitter.com/VihmJGDnx6 — SKYLXRK (@skylxrksays) October 1, 2018

Rihanna in "Umbrella"

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Tom Holland as Rihanna in "Umbrella"

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So many wonderful options!

You child's gender identity could even be space, like Jodie Foster in Contact or Neil DeGrasse Tyson!

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(The above is what birth is like, I presume.)

The possibilities are beautiful and infinite.

What can we learn from this? One, always let your child tell you what their gender is. Sometimes you will be pleasantly surprised! Two, if you're having a gender reveal party, might I suggest you fill a piñata with slips of paper that with the words "a construct" on them and then have a long educational conversation with your relatives. Three, you should still have a cake. I mean, we travelled all this way. We deserve to have a cake.

Flame on, gender warriors!

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R. Eric Thomas R Eric Thomas is a Senior Staff Writer at ELLE.com, home of his daily humor column "Eric Reads the News," which skewers politics, pop culture, celebrity shade, and schadenfreude.

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