The sex of the child should not go on the birth certificate

From pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12476264/, J Sex Res. 2002 Aug;39(3):174-8. How common is intersex? a response to Anne Fausto-Sterling, by Leonard Sax. (Note date. 2002. Some people are slow learners.)

The abstract:

"Anne Fausto-Sterling s suggestion that the prevalence of intersex might be as high as 1.7% has attracted wide attention in both the scholarly press and the popular media. Many reviewers are not aware that this figure includes conditions which most clinicians do not recognize as intersex, such as Klinefelter syndrome, Turner syndrome, and late-onset adrenal hyperplasia. If the term intersex is to retain any meaning, the term should be restricted to those conditions in which chromosomal sex is inconsistent with phenotypic sex, or in which the phenotype is not classifiable as either male or female. Applying this more precise definition, the true prevalence of intersex is seen to be about 0.018%, almost 100 times lower than Fausto-Sterling s estimate of 1.7%."

Thanks Catchingbabies.

@BoomBoomsCousin I don’t fully know how’s it’s monitored long term as my role is over by them. From a midwife point of view any pregnant woman that has undergone FGM there is a risk of it being performed on her children. So this woman will be classed as high risk. If she then gives birth to a female infant children’s social care become involved to educate the family and monitor the at risk infant. A male infant and the case would be closed following birth as deemed not at risk.

@Catchingbabies (love the name for a midwife!) is that monitoring currently done off medical records or birth registries (or something else)?

As a midwife recording sex is vital for some safeguards issues. E.g female genital mutilation. No recorded sex means girls at risk are not being monitored.

And where does the sex on the medical record come from? The birth cert, originally, when your parents registered you with a GP after your birth.

Not normally, no. At least, not anymore. The child's medical record is started by the HCPs involved in their care, you get the Red Book and NHS number before you have to go and register the birth.

[quote KatVonlabonk]What really annoys me is that the outright lie that 1.7 % of the population has a DSD condition is perpetuated by organisations such as the BBC and Amnesty. The BBC know its a lie as they did their own fact check on it!!!

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000222z[/quote]
For fucks sake, the BBC are a bloody joke these days but this takes the piss. Have seen the 1.7% thing so many times in various BBC things, yet they fact checked and know its bollocks..I assumed they just..were being a bit dim.

Doctors don’t look at the birth certificate when deciding whether a child is developing appropriately, they look at the sex on the medical records (or ask the patient).

And where does the sex on the medical record come from? The birth cert, originally, when your parents registered you with a GP after your birth.

Asking the patient assumes that the patient will be honest, we know that some won't.

A birth certificate can sometimes be used as a proof of ID, but it’s very limited as a form of ID. It doesn’t have a photo or an address.

Part of the point of a birth certificate is to identify an individual, no?

The data is important, but that doesn't mean it has to be on the birth certificate.

it's a stupid fucking idea for about a million... reasons

Exactly that.

Because the data is important for about a million reasons.

bd67thSaysReinstateLangCleg those are strong arguments for sex being accurately recorded on medical records but not birth certificates.

Doctors don’t look at the birth certificate when deciding whether a child is developing appropriately, they look at the sex on the medical records (or ask the patient).

I get sick of disorders of sexual development (DSD) being abused to argue for removal of sex marker from birth certs. Removal of the sex marker from birth certs would actually harm people with DSDs.

There are some DSDs that are fatal if untreated. There's one that causes kidney failure prior to adulthood even if treated. A baby with a suspected DSD is considered a medical emergency because of the need to diagnose and give appropriate (and yes, what is "appropriate" is rightly up for debate) treatment. The difference between expected development and actual development of the child is part of the diagnostic criteria for DSDs, and the expected development is based on sex as observed at birth or in utero. Someone gave an example upthread of lack of menarche being the first detected symptom of a DSD in a girl. Menarche is a female expected development. (If a boy started bleeding from his crotch, I would dial 999!)

The birth certificate constitutes a record of the sex observed at birth, with the exceptions being where the sex was honestly misobserved (usually because of a DSD) and a corrected birth cert has been issued once the sex was correctly determined, or where a GRC has been issued. If a person's body behaves in ways that don't match the sex marker on the (pre-GRC) birth cert, that's an indication that the person may have a DSD. An indication that Caster Semenya has a DSD is that Semenya was observed female at birth but then didn't get periods.

As PPs have said, recording sex is important for other purposes:

• evaluating risk for sex-linked conditions such as haemophilia.
• planning services that are used by one sex, such as female-specific contraceptive provision and "red box" sanpro provision in schools.
• evaluating risks for sex-based crimes such as female infanticide, rape, FGM, "honour" killings, and forced marriage.
• determining cause of infertility: men jack off into a sample container as part of investigating infertility, women don't.
• detecting changes in the birth rate of boys and girls, which may be a red flag for environmental or other factors affecting sperm production in fathers or may be a red flag for sex-selective abortion.
• monitoring trends in criminal offending, poverty, education, you name it, by sex.

Or, in my case, "You must be glad to finally have a boy after all those girls!" Yes, somebody actually said that to me.

I think people assume everyone wants one of each, so I was told "you've got one of each now, no need for anymore". It's just slightly odd small talk.

Sounds a twat.... the sad thing is people listen to them now

As mentioned upthread, a birth certificate is a copy of the information held on public record.

If sex is not recorded, it would be easier to hide the girls who are never born. The ones who didn’t have an opportunity to identify out of being the wrong sex.

I don’t know how important it is to record sex on a birth certificate. I think there’s a reasonable argument that it’s not really something that is necessary any more than race is. And I’d prefer birth certificates to be factual than to have the situation where they get changed to something non-factual 25 years later.

But it is important to be clear about what sex a baby is, especially in health care settings. There are several rare conditions where sex is a critical factor. While DSDs do exist, as others have said, it is vanishingly rare for a DSD to result in the incorrect sex being recorded at birth any more. We use sex in health care of babies and children all the time. For instance, we have separate growth charts to ensure babies are growing healthily and help pick up on problems.

And the number of girls born is a critical number for public policy and government planning.

I would be concerned, however, about the issue of how we work against sexism that is based on physical differences between men and women. It seems in many ways like a stealth way to make it harder to have sex segregated services or to look at the prejudice against women as a sex class separately from prejudice against the female gender.

Which of us 2nd or 3rd timers didn't hear "Bet you're looking forward to a nice, quiet little girl after those tearaway boys of yours"?
Or, in my case, "You must be glad to finally have a boy after all those girls!" Yes, somebody actually said that to me.

The description of "trans" usually seems to be "someone with a gender identity that is different from the gender they were assigned at birth", where "gender" in the first case is usually a synonym for "stereotype preference" and "gender" in the second case is usually a synonym for "biological sex" or at least "visible genitalia". This "assigned" nonsense is usually added to avoid saying things like "someone who is male but identifies at female" to try and frame it that they have always been female but we're just incorrectly identified at birth. So going by this definition, if we stopped "assigning" people as male or female at birth, and stopped recording sex on birth certificates, then transgender people would stop existing. There would be no one with a "gender" that matched or did not match their "assigned sex" because "assigned sex" would not be a thing. No one would be trans or "cis" anymore. And whilst this may in fact be the outcome TRAs are angling towards, I wonder how they would cope in practise without being able to claim special stunning and brave trans status. No trans or "cis" means no ability to construct false power asymmetries which position women as the oppressors of men. They may gain the right to obliterate the legal distinction between men and women, but they will never obliterate the social distinction because people have eyes. When I see a male it doesn't matter to me if he has F or M on his birth certificate, I still know he's male. So people will still identify TW as men socially, but without the legal sex marker at birth TW would have no way of describing themselves as trans in a way that didn't rely on acknowledging they are actually male rather than just "assigned male". Do they really want to lose all those delicious victim points? How will they be the most oppressedest people ever if they don't exist as a group anymore? Don't get me wrong, it's a stupid fucking idea for about a million other reasons, but I'm not sure it'd end up being quite the victory TRAs we're hoping for.

I’d reply:

People who are truly progressive don’t abide to ‘gender’, they believe gender(sexist stereotypes) are meaningless and should be fought against. A persons sex, especially girls and women’s, is hugely significant in terms of oppression, including physical and sexual violence and harassment and of course it’s scientifically accurate. Stereotypes don’t change biology. I thought you were more progressive than this.

So was meant to be ‘do’

So people get to choose what to put on death certificates? It is important for govt to know how many of each sex are born each year so that they can identify patterns and plan (males and females statistically have different risks of conditions). Govt may use this to plan how many care homes or hospitals are required in 50 years time. It can identify if sex selective abortion is happening also.

Remind me again, what is the actual advantage of recording M or F on the birth certificate? What practical effect does it have on the baby's life now that pension ages are being equalised and gay marriage is legal?