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"Assigned female at birth"

94 replies

Lyonesse2020 · 11/11/2021 23:06

I have just realised that I was not "assigned female at birth". I was born in the 1970s, so my parents would just have been told "It's a girl!".

When did people start being assigned a sex at birth? And if it was only in the last ten years or so, doesn't that mean that the vast majority of people who have sought transition were never assigned to the wrong sex?

OP posts:
ISpyCobraKai · 12/11/2021 00:41

Sex and gender are assigned at birth.
Fucking hell.

CheeseMmmm · 12/11/2021 00:41

I thought the phrase was gender assigned at birth.

Is it sex now? I'm not surprised. After all taking issues from other groups and turning to different unrelated purpose is standard. In this case it's people with DSDs. Prob bolstered by idea sex is very very hard to determine and on a spectrum and etc.

The fact that loads of people do, and have through history. Given birth without any HCPs and known perfectly well if it's a girl or a boy is generally not considered.

Personwithrage · 12/11/2021 00:36

Check out the Brook website. It states both sex and gender are assigned at birth.

Didn't happen to me or any of my dc...

TableFlowerss · 11/11/2021 23:49

@Kendodd

Well I wonder what happens in the delivery room now? "Is it a boy or a girl?" "Err...?"
‘Sorry we’re not allowed to use that sort of language in here’ 🙄
ErrolTheDragon · 11/11/2021 23:41

@fallfallfall

well the hospital forms would have assigned you as male or female or ambiguous based on your external genitalia. the little name card would have said f/c for female child or m/c for male child and all supporting documentation on your mothers and your records would say female or male so yes an educated person has assigned you something at your time of birth. statistics are kept. go on ancestry check out as many birth certificates as you please and all will say male or female. even those baptized and recorded in the church register will say boy or girl.
No, they observed what sex you were and recorded it.

'Assigned' has a distinctly different meaning.

MaryAndGerryLivingInDerry · 11/11/2021 23:41

so yes an educated person has assigned you something at your time of birth

No, they have simply recorded your sex.

fallfallfall · 11/11/2021 23:39

well the hospital forms would have assigned you as male or female or ambiguous based on your external genitalia.
the little name card would have said f/c for female child or m/c for male child and all supporting documentation on your mothers and your records would say female or male so yes an educated person has assigned you something at your time of birth. statistics are kept.
go on ancestry check out as many birth certificates as you please and all will say male or female. even those baptized and recorded in the church register will say boy or girl.

MaryAndGerryLivingInDerry · 11/11/2021 23:37

It comes from the minds of people who refuse to accept that words mean actual things and not just what they feel they should mean.

MaryAndGerryLivingInDerry · 11/11/2021 23:35

Of course that makes no sense at all! Grin I mean, they’re to be girls!

BraveBananaBadge · 11/11/2021 23:35

If the people who threw this stupid phrase around just stopped and thought about it for even a teeny tiny second.

Realising it's widespread adoption was complete and utter nonsense was one of the big 'scales falling from the eyes' moments for me.

MaryAndGerryLivingInDerry · 11/11/2021 23:35

“Midwife Jane, we’re running short on girl babies this quarter, the next 5 babies you deliver are to be boys, ok?”

ErrolTheDragon · 11/11/2021 23:34

@Bonnealle

What? I don’t really understand what you are saying? If the midwife said ‘it’s a girl’, then surely that assigns a sex? Your post makes no sense.
'Assign' means 'allocate', not 'recognise'.
ISpyCobraKai · 11/11/2021 23:33

I wonder if they have a quota?
I mean if they're assigning then that's possible right?

MaryAndGerryLivingInDerry · 11/11/2021 23:32

In over 40 years of being a midwife my mother said she only came across 1 baby that they couldn’t identify the sex of at birth.

nocoolnamesleft · 11/11/2021 23:31

That is not assigning a sex. That is recognising the sex that nature has already decided.

Bonnealle · 11/11/2021 23:30

What? I don’t really understand what you are saying? If the midwife said ‘it’s a girl’, then surely that assigns a sex? Your post makes no sense.

nocoolnamesleft · 11/11/2021 23:27

It's not a thing. I have done literally thousands of baby checks. I can only think of a couple of occasions where there was any doubt as to the baby's sex, and in those cases ultrasounds for gonads, and blood tests for chromosomes (and some other bloods looking for possible health problems) rapidly revealed the babies' sex. It really winds me up, misappropriating the pain of people with differences in sexual differentiation, and their families.

Melroses · 11/11/2021 23:20

It is not a thing. It was only done for a vanishingly small number of children born with indeterminate sexual characteristics in the days before DNA testing. Now we know much more about foetal development so can determine sex pretty accurately and have better knowledge and understanding of any differences of development. So it is now very, very vanishingly rare.

However, it is a convenient expression to be repurposed by anyone who believes that how one expresses oneself now overrides one's sex.

If everyone is 'assigned a sex' at birth it is logically easier to 'change' it or claim it as wrong. This is all a belief system as sex cannot be changed. Only appearance.

Kendodd · 11/11/2021 23:18

Well I wonder what happens in the delivery room now?
"Is it a boy or a girl?"
"Err...?"