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"Assigned at birth"

33 replies

LightofaSilveryMoon · 08/04/2018 23:38

This phrase really gets on my tits. It is terribly strange use of language.

"Assigned at birth".

I've given birth three times. No-one "assigned" my children as anything at birth. My various midwives had a quick look and told me a fact: girl or boy. (I am leaving intersex out of this, since I have no experience of it.)

"Assigned at birth" conjures up people employed to go around labour wards with clipboards, saying, "Yes, well, we've had ten births today. We've assigned six of them to be male already. This one just has to be female, in order to fulfil my quotas, there we go."

It is just a weird use of language, to say that babies are "assigned" their sex at birth, rather than just observed to have female genitals or male genitals.

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Original poster
LightofaSilveryMoon · 09/04/2018 23:47

I agree with AncientLights above:
I believe assigned is properly only used of intersex babies: it's not clear so you make a decision. Its use generally seems to be saying that's the common experience, which it clearly is not.

"Assigned at birth" is gobbledegook in the vast majority of cases. Most babies are not "assigned" their sex - they are observed to have either female genitals or male genitals. No guesswork or further tests necessary!

Sex is biological reality, fact. Gender is a social construct.

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LauraRoslin · 09/04/2018 23:09

I use "...assigned at birth" as a term, but I won't stick "coercively" on the front. I find that pointlessly aggressive and hostile.

smithsinarazz · 09/04/2018 22:57

Well, if gender is some sort of ineffable feeling unrelated to sex or sexual orientation, honestly, why bother arguing that it's got anything to do with being a woman or not? It would be so much easier.

AncientLights · 09/04/2018 12:15

As to 'For the GRA the body is irrelevant ...' quoted above ???? Where can that lead us?

AncientLights · 09/04/2018 12:07

I believe assigned is properly only used of intersex babies: it's not clear so you make a decision. Its use generally seems to be saying that's the common experience, which it clearly is not. Therefore maybe someone got it wrong? Feeding into the 'being in the wrong body' scenario. Sex is observed at birth for most. I was once a midwife and sex is usually blindingly obvious, as we all know. The only time I had uncertainty was at 22 weeks gestation or thereabouts: was it an over-developed girl or under-developed boy? But hardly the most pressing concern at such an early birth anyway.

Somethingweird · 09/04/2018 10:38

So as soon as everyone, on the basis of what sex the child is observed at birth, stops assigning sex roles stereotypes to that individual child, gender no longer exists. Problem solved!

ZERF · 09/04/2018 08:59

The harmony is now on the nhs; not sure who qualifies or for if every one. I could choose to know the sex as this then tested for sex linked anomalies. I think some of which are intersex.

So this may highlight the difference between sex and gender a bit more in social consciousness. Especially as the form says "sex" quite clearly.

ZERF · 09/04/2018 08:57

I had the harmony test at 11weeks. The sex of my unborn child is quite clear. I have no idea what gender they'd prefer; given gender doesn't really exist it's irrelevant.

rosy71 · 09/04/2018 08:54

I always find this a completely bizarre thing to say. It does imply babies are randomly given a sex for no reason.

I also hate it when people say "the doctor assigned......at birth." Midwives deliver babies. There is not usually a doctor there.

Ineedacupofteadesperately · 09/04/2018 08:48

Well, for DD2 I had genetic testing done early in pregnancy (harmony test) and I found out she was XX. Scientific fact, thanks very much. If anyone ever tells me her sex was 'assigned' I'm going to explode.

Plus, as these tests become more common, there will be fewer and fewer people finding out anything at birth anyway.

bluescreen · 09/04/2018 02:12

It's an appropriation of what happens to an intersex baby, which is very very rare. When the genitalia are unclear, there is a decision (not always correct) about what sex the baby is. AFAIU, intersex people are fed up to the back teeth with the appropriation of this language to suggest that sex identification at birth for everyone on planet usual is somehow arbitrary.

Original poster
LightofaSilveryMoon · 09/04/2018 01:27

Having said that, may I be allowed to return now to my main point? Which is:
"assigned at birth" is shite.

Thank you!

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Original poster
LightofaSilveryMoon · 09/04/2018 01:19

I had my babies in the 1990s, when scans were quite new, and we had no idea about the grainy clouds we were looking at on that screen! Did not look even vaguely like a baby, my first scan looked liked a bad weather forecast!

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BlackeyedSusan · 09/04/2018 01:13

funny that. could see the sex of mine on the scan.

ijustwannadance · 09/04/2018 01:07

Makes me think of the sorting hat in HP books.
Grin

I knew my DD's sex at 11 weeks pregnant.

flowersonthepiano · 09/04/2018 00:56

thebewilderness

Yes. You can protest all you like. Nothing exists in reality. Only in your mind.

thebewilderness · 09/04/2018 00:53

2+2=5

Original poster
LightofaSilveryMoon · 09/04/2018 00:50

It's a horrible phrase and it needs to be stopped as it's just plain wrong. But I guess that's why people keep using it - on the basis that the more they use it, the more it will become an accepted phrase and people won't think about it, half the battle has already been won if they can get the general population to think in these terms

Yes, that is another way how I look at "assigned at birth" too. Thank you.

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TolchockLovelyInTheLitso · 09/04/2018 00:50

Coercively assigned M/F at birth is even weirder. Who's being coerced, a newborn baby? How?

flowersonthepiano · 09/04/2018 00:50

It emerges from the insistence from the trans lobby that physical sex is less important, socially and in law, than sex as reported by an individual as their innate feeling. Note, this isn't gender reported, but sex. They do not make a distinction. This is what we’re up against. See this paper by Stephen Whittle (thanks to the person that shared it on the ‘where are all the transmen?’ thread) which includes the following:

”Indeed sex is preceded and exceeded by gender by the terms of the Gender Recognition Act. Sex in this sense is determined by gender identity the social role that one chooses to take. This reverses the original gender attribution at birth which as based on the genitals (and strictly speaking not based on other ‘known’ identifiers of biological sex such as chromosomes). For the Gender Recognition Act, the body is irrelevant, as neither bodily modification, nor the presence or lack of a penis is determinative. Moreover, the Gender Recognition Act is performative (see Butler 1990), in that as a form of speech-act, what it does is makes gender into sex in law.”

IamXXHearMeRoar · 09/04/2018 00:36

Makes me think of the sorting hat in HP books.

Emerencealwayshopeful · 09/04/2018 00:32

I just watched a video on my fb feed.

Starts with ‘gender and sex are different things. Sex is what is between your legs’

And then went on to say that sex was/is assigned at birth. And that only makes sense if you believe that babies are born without genitals and midwives/doctors/parents/somebody at the birth looks at the child and decides whether to give them male or female genitals. Doesn’t it?

annandale · 09/04/2018 00:21

It is Westerncentric and probably Americancentric as I have usually heard it said as 'doctor assigned at birth'. No doctor at my birth, none at most births round the world. If you take the 'doctor' bit off and put the phrase into the passive voice, you avoid saying who did this assigning. In my case I would have to say 'my grandmother assigned me female at birth' which would make it completely obvious how nonsensical it is.

I come in and out of how I feel about this whole issue but this bit makes me very upset. My mother gave birth to me, my grandmother caught me, nobody else was there. I wasn't at that point a woman but I was certainly female, and any changes to how I felt about that would not alter that fact.

Original poster
LightofaSilveryMoon · 09/04/2018 00:18

Thank you, all of you. Not just me, then!

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QueenLaBeefah · 09/04/2018 00:17

Sex is fixed at conception.