‘Gender assigned at birth’

So went through all this again & sent follow up email. Am more angry than I thought as it is worse than I thought at first glance, breeches the guidance in more ways than I had realised previously.

At the moment, if the response isn’t satisfactory, I def feel like we will put in formal grievance copying ofsted.

From what I read on gov site it says ofsted have updated their criteria for assessing schools to take into account the updated d of e guidance, but I also can’t find the details of how this changes how they assess schools. Does anyone know/have a link?

How exactly is gender assigned at anything?

“Oh Mrs Smith, it’s a beautiful baby girl! Oh - and she loves pink, sparkles and.... my little pony! Congratulations!”

This really winds me up. I've done hundreds of baby checks. I've taught scores of junior doctors how to do baby checks. Assigning a gender is a pile of made up rubbish by people who don't have a clue what we do.

Now that I am home! and not talking shit on a motorway.

This is quite a useful article, but I don't know if it will help you?

www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/232363

Sorry if it's on here and I've missed it - does anyone have a link to the DofE guidance please?

I think you get them to see the issues by continuing to ask for a written response to questions, particularly the tough ones like:

What is the precise definition of 'gender' you will be teaching my child?

How is 'gender' different to sex stereotypes, which have traditionally disadvantaged women and girls - and how will you make this distinction clear to children in Y5/6?

Why are you using this inaccurate word 'assigned' - co-opted from people with DSDs - when we know sex is determined at conception, discernible in the womb and observed and recorded at birth?

Not all people have something called a sexed soul or 'gender identity'. I don't, for example. How will you be making sure that children are aware that they don't have to subscribe to this particular belief system?

It is well documented that social contagion has been a significant factor in the spread of many self-harming behaviours such as anorexia, cutting, suicide etc. How are you planning to protect children in the class from potential iatrogenic harm when introducing the topic of gender dysphoria?
gdworkinggroup.org/2019/09/13/is-gender-dysphoria-socially-contagious/

If a girl in y5 or 6 is starting to think that she may be same sex attracted, would you consider her to be 'transphobic' if she stated that therefore she would not be attracted to boys who identify as girls?

How would you get them to think minefield? How would you walk them through it?

That they are using language that was specifically aimed at gender reassignment and if they use it outside that context they could be (reasonably accused of) messing up children's essential sex education?

Could the NHS answer a FOI as to how they assign a gender ot the birth of a baby?

If they state that this is what they do, it would be interesting what criteria are used, or if it is arbitrary based on number for that day?

'Oh what a tangled web we weave/When first we practice to deceive'

You may not find the magic bullet quote, Drain and instead have to walk the school through the process of how we got to this point. Maybe the best you can do is to get the school to think 'minefield' rather than waltzing into it unthinkingly.

According to the style guide sultana posted, the NHS website makes a special concession when talking about 'sex' to an audience who is looking for information about gender identity and dysphoria, that it will not use elsewhere, eg when talking about sex-specific cancers.

Why they make this linguistic concession and who encouraged them to make it would be very interesting to discover. I would put good money on it being GIRES and/or Stonewall because it is definitely not medical or scientific or actual reality based thinking. I wonder if it is FOIable?

It uses activist language like 'assigned' to appease a group which has not only tried to rewrite the meanings of 'male', 'female', 'men' and 'women', the most fundamental building blocks of society, but also co-opted the language of the intersex community to do so.

"We use the phrase "sex assigned at birth" when we're talking about trans health and gender dysphoria, as this is the language our audience uses.

It reminds me very much of Helen Joyce saying about gender ideology trying to make 0=1 and people not seeing the potential knock on consequences if they give ground in just one area. It's the 'genderist tail wagging the medical dog' territory.

In other cases, we use "the sex someone was registered with at birth" because user research shows that most people understand this better as it refers to an actual event.

I feel your frustration because when my oldest suddenly began to identify as trans a few years ago, they pointed to the NHS page on gender dysphoria, then with assertions such as puberty blockers being reversible, as if it were gospel truth.

A family member is a psychiatrist so was able to challenge it from a medical and scientific point of view but they have found their Royal College to be equally captured, using the activist language and pathologically resistant to change.

I just think it makes the RCPsych look really scientifically dim when they talk in their position statement about being 'assigned' anything at birth.

If it is hard for adults to get to grips with, what chance 10 year olds...

I need an air tight argument to prove this to school because they’ve said it’s from the nhs website as if that ensures it’s medically factual, and therefore complies with the d of e guidance

There might not be an airtight argument. You could say that it comes from NHS guidance that's specifically about gender reassignment and not about sex or gender in general, so they're using it out of context? And using it out of context could cause confusion / misunderstanding / offence?

And it's not just the risk of children wanting to transition. This might not apply at primary school but sex education needs to be about sex and the message that gender matters more than sex puts girls at risk. Who wants young people to believe that if they both identify as women they don't need contraception at all, or for a young girl to be having sex with a male-bodied but female-identified partner who finds it too upsetting to use condoms because condoms are for men?

So either everyone accepts that men and women, male and female, normally refers to sex not gender, or else educators need to do to men what's already been done to women/girls and stop talking about men/boys altogether in favour of people with penises - "people with penises need to put something on the end of it" (ahem , Jezza moment). I know which I'd choose but maybe it's too late and the gender genie can't go back in the bottle.

Sex is not ever 'assigned'. That is rubbish.

There is plenty of evidence that people treat babies differently according to their sex, so there is a kernel of truth in the idea that gender is taught/conditioned/applied from birth. But a baby certainly has no 'gender identity' or concept of gender.

The following sentence from the NHS style guide is worthy of note:
'We use the phrase "sex assigned at birth" when we're talking about trans health and gender dysphoria'
because it is clear that only when talking to a trans audience about trans health do they recommend using this language. It suggests that when talking about the general population, this language should not be used.

I don't know in what context the school are using 'gender assigned at birth', but unless it is being used in the context of talking about the trans population, I would suggest this is not in line with the NHS style guide.

It's this page @DraintheBlood: www.nhs.uk/conditions/gender-dysphoria/pages/introduction.aspx

As @ANewCreation says though, this is an old page written in 2016. It says next review was due 2019.

Yes, the service manual is effectively a style guide. And, just as the BBC's style guide was heavily influenced by Stonewall as we found from the Nolan podcasts, so too is this one activist/'audience' driven.

I would say (sorry if it sounds like "mansplaining") that sex is observed either before birth via scan or at birth, and that gender/gender identity is a social construct, decided by a person themself, depending of course, whether they believe in the concept of gender.

This is the page you need:
service-manual.nhs.uk/content/inclusive-language

Sex

Sex is biological (male or female). It's based not only on the genes we inherit, but also on how our external and internal sex and reproductive organs work and respond to hormones. Sex is the label that's recorded when a baby's birth is registered.

We use "sex" or, better still, the body part associated with biological sex when we're writing about things like screening that is sex specific, for example, breast and cervical screening.

Sex assigned or registered at birth

We use the phrase "sex assigned at birth" when we're talking about trans health and gender dysphoria, as this is the language our audience uses. In other cases, we use "the sex someone was registered with at birth" because user research shows that most people understand this better as it refers to an actual event.