How to respond: been asked what sex I was assigned at birth

Of course I did.

The question was rhetorical.

The Gender Dysphoria Alliance objects to 'assigned':

https://www.bmj.com/content/373/bmj.n1261/rr-2

'...we believe that the alteration of language and the falsified understanding of biological sex, applied to all people, is the result of extreme activism which is increasing societal hostility towards trans people. We do not wish to participate in that, and we don’t think it’s necessary in order for us to have rights and be integrated into society.'

I think I now understand that DSDs are sex specific. So, if the patient provides information about their DSD, it doesn't matter what goes in the M/F box.

DSDs are rare to extremely rare. Most HCP will not know them or understand them. It is certainly information that should be provided, but in addition to telling them your basic information - sex.

You are born male or female. If healthcare practitioners validating your gender identity is more important to you than accuracy about biological facts which could affect your physical health and/or any treatment, that is a choice you make and you reap whatever consequences arise from that choice.

The sooner this absolute, health-and-life-risking madness of so-called 'gender markers' being allowed to be adapted on medical records and thus obscure sex, which in that arena is the fact which actually matters, comes to an end the better.

'Women and girls with complete androgen insensitivity syndrome (CAIS) invariably have a female typical core gender identity'

Looks like having a DSD and being trans are two completely different and unrelated things.

I think you knew that 😉

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20358272/

This thread is fascinating, but I'm no closer to working out what the perfect wording would be for the question.

@LaughingCat has raised questions about how to allow for DSDs. But, thanks to pp like @SaffronSpice I think I now understand that DSDs are sex specific. So, if the patient provides information about their DSD, it doesn't matter what goes in the M/F box.

Lots of people are offended by 'assigned', although I am not. If it's offensive to people with DSDs though, I don't think it should be used.

So the remaining question is how to make sure that patients are truthful about their sex even if they have some weird metaphysical ideas about their gender. The current wording does the job, with the added benefit that trans people already buy into it.

Of course a really determined genderist could find a way to misinterpret it, but really there's no hope for such people.

I'd be interested to know what proportion of the trans community these form, as opposed to their prevalence in the population at large.

Theoretically it should be a considerably higher proportion than there is in the general population. There should also be (theoretically) similar numbers of transwomen and transmen.

However in practice it appears that by far the greatest number of transppl; are genitally unambiguous males who claim to be women. Can anyone think of a scientifically valid explanation for this apparent anomaly?

My preference would be for the question to simply say ‘what is your sex?’ or ‘are you male or female?’ But we all know that some trans people believe that they have become the opposite sex. They will point out the sex marker on their passport for example (their ‘legal’ sex). It’s a shame that this legal fiction ever came to be. Maybe passports should state sex and gender.

So for clarity, ‘sex at birth’ would be best. They could then also ask ‘Do you have a DSD?’ so as to clear up any confusion.

I see @Peasandsweetcorns has brought their ‘essences’ to another thread. Testes, ovaries, chromosomes etc are not ‘essences’, they are physical, observable things.

From my earlier link:

In your example, the girl still has male biology and will need hormone treatment to maintain adult health following failed puberty. That's because she has no functional gonads

This is incorrect for CAIS individuals. At puberty, they convert testosterone from their internal testes to oestrogen, which then drives female puberty to create the standard female body type.

Obviously they are infertile and may need plastic surgery in order to be able to have penetrative sex. But I doubt they would be able to inherit a dukedom, use the men's changing room, or avoid anti-female sexism.

I feel reassured that I wasn't over-reacting in thinking it was an incredibly badly worded question

That's the problem with echo chambers....

I can't recall anything that happened at my birth, unsurprisingly, so I have no idea if I was assigned a sex at that time, or indeed anything else.

The question is phrased so badly.

People who are chromosomally male, but look externally female, are generally assigned to the female category at birth.

They find out when puberty doesn't happen, unless it was revealed in earlier medical treatment. Same as various other congenital defects - I discovered one of mine in my thirties, and another one last year! There are loads of abnormalities that only become evident in childhood, and others don't manifest until adulthood.

In no case do we decide it's unsafe to make assumptions based on the average.

In your example, the girl still has male biology and will need hormone treatment to maintain adult health following failed puberty. That's because she has no functional gonads.

No one assigns sex.
**
Sex is determined by your chromosomes at conception as is observed later on in the womb or at birth.

It’s not as simple as that. People who are chromosomally male, but look externally female, are generally assigned to the female category at birth.

@LaughingCat

"I’m so sorry, I’m not up to date with the movement in this language - no offence was meant at all. I just thought cis meant that you identified as the same gender as your sex at birth, not that you ascribed to a specific gender role within that. What does gc stand for? And your last sentence…can you unpack that for me? How is gender identity and women’s oppression linked? Genuine questions!"
Do you live in a pineapple under the sea?

Was it really Queen Mary's influence that swapped the pink/blue colour affiliation with sex?

The one influence that I was aware of was Victoria popularising white wedding dresses with black being customary prior to that.

No one assigns sex.

Sex is determined by your chromosomes at conception as is observed later on in the womb or at birth. Any statement otherwise counts, scientifically, as bollocks.

EVERYONE knows what sex they are, including the dysphoric or how else can they say that they're in the wrong body?

Sex and gender, despite being conflated, are two separate and distinct things. Sex is a biological reality - whether you like it or not - while gender is a social construct evaluating things - purely arbitrarily - as masculine or feminine. E.g. pink is currently a feminine colour while blue is considered masculine. That shit. Colours are the ultimate example because up to 1920-ish blue was considered feminine and pink masculine - then Queen Mary prefered the pink nursey.

Raise hell, OP.

No - they record the sex. They don't "assign" it.

Very rarely it is wrong. Even more rarely nowadays when any ambiguity can be cleared up by a generic test.

It's a medical process.

Looks like you’re conflating sex and gender, which is transphobic.

Be fair @BreatheAndFocus - everything is transphobic.

Still not right really though. "Sex at birth" suggests that your sex later on in your life could be different.

Of course you may have trans people who are insistent that they have changed sex, or that their current gender identity is what is asked for in a question "Sex: M/F?" It's hard to feel sympathy though with anyone who refuses to accept that their biological sex, not their gender identity, is medically important.

God forbid that they.ask the bleedin' obvious.

If there's one thing the gender woo-ists DON'T want it is simplicity or clarity.

It's obfuscation all the way.

I'd leave it blank but with a comment beside it -along the lines of " I refuse to answer such wilfully nonsensical questions"

That's the reason for the language tricks, isn't it. Genderists have decoupled the words woman, man, boy & girl from the two reproductive categories. They're well on the way to removing the sense from female & male, as well.

Those words are now not supposed to mean anything that can be observed or tested: only a 'feeling' or a sex-role stereotype (without being linked to sex!)

School children are taught about 'people with ovaries', 'people who menstruate', 'pregnant people', and 'sperm producers'. Those phrases are less accurate than the ones linked to reproductive categories, but kids are discouraged from understanding that there are, in fact, two basic categories.

Brighter students might wonder if we shouldn't use a more economical word to group these 'people' as categories - after all, we have sows & boars; cows & bulls, etc. Wouldn't it be convenient to use similar terms for humans?

Well, yes, it would - but, in order to use them correctly, the ideology could only be sustained by teaching that people can change sex if desired. We can't. Some teachers, though, are telling children their sex can be changed.

If you’ve been on the threads covering the Roz Adams case you’ll have seen one of the captured numpties from the Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre saying (under oath) “some people believe humans are mammals”. Quite what she thinks the rest believe she didn’t say, but this is level of stupidity and blinkered thinking we’re dealing with.