A huge fire west of Los Angeles was sparked by a celebration

^{Oooops! The beginning of the San Bernadino fire} 

Last year American blogger Jenna Karvunidis apologised for creating the “gender reveal” party craze. Guests assemble and celebrate noisily when the sex of the baby is revealed after an ultrasound. She regretted the gender stereotyping that these parties foster.

“Pink for a girl and blue for a boy? Why is this still happening in 2019, when some of us have realise how reductive and harmful this kind of gender stereotyping is?”

Just to remind readers that craze still hasn’t gone away, here’s the latest news from California. A young couple in the San Bernadino area invited friends to a gender reveal party. A “smoke-generating pyrotechnic device” was to be detonated gushing blue smoke for a boy or pink smoke for a girl.Something went very wrong; tall grass caught fire; a blaze raged across 40 square kilometres; 20,000 people were evacuated from their homes; 600 firefighters were called in; water-dropping helicopters were used.   

#ElDoradoFire (8,600 Acres/7% contained) morning update for Sept. 7:

On Yucaipa Ridge's south slope, it continued to burn throughout the night making a significant push downslope from Wilshire Peak to below Pine Bench Rd., impacting structures.

More: https://t.co/ESgYRDoaX7 pic.twitter.com/KnvwH3Q7d2

— San Bernardino National Forest (@SanBernardinoNF) September 7, 2020

None of the media reports reveal whether the smoke was blue or pink.

“Stop having these stupid parties. For the love of God, stop burning things down to tell everyone about your kid's penis. No one cares but you,” Karvunidis wrote on Facebook after this latest calamity.

The Guardian’s resident columnist about feminism and The Patriarchy, Arwa Mahdawi, wrote a scathing article about the craze. Police “ought to be implementing stop-and-frisk tactics on all heterosexual couples who come within five miles of a heavily wooded area. If the woman’s got a baby bump and the man’s got a dad bod then law enforcement should search them for explosives, stat.”

Michael Cook is editor of BioEdge

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Michael Cook

Michael Cook edits BioEdge, a bioethics newsletter, and MercatorNet, an on-line magazine whose focus is human dignity. He writes from Sydney, Australia.

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