To grit my teeth at the phrase, "gender scan"?

[magneticfield55]

For a start, unless you're paying for one which is specifically for that purpose, it's not. It's a medical scan to check organs etc.

But it's also not a, "gender" scan. All it will tell you is whether your baby has a penis or a vagina. That's it. It'll tell you that they're biologically male or female (intersexuality, androgen insensitivity syndrome etc aside). The inaccuracy of it irritates me. That penis or vagina will probably determine their position in the gender hierarchy, but it's still all we know about them at that point.

I'm a feminist and believe gender is socially constructed, with girls and women at the bottom. So I get really irritated by, "team pink!", "gender reveals". I know it can help us to bond with our bumps, but they're not even born yet and we're already basing our preconceived ideas of who they might be around their gender.

I don't begrudge anyone this, it just annoys me. AIBU?

Going against the grain a bit here but I think you're being very weird and over reacting. It's a common phrase to say "gender".
You're sounding like the doctor in "the meaning of life" when he delivers the baby and it's hard to take that seriously.#You need to lighten up or get back on the feminist boards with the other scary people

I assumed it was used by people who were too coy to say 'sex'. As in 'scan where you find out the baby's sex'. In 19 Kids and Counting they always say gender instead so I thought it was a prudish thing.

Well some feminist argue that, given the our knowledge around sex and the biological truth of male and female was constructed and perpetuated with and within language and all its preconceptions and limitations, sex is as socially constructed notion as our ideas around gender.

So, it could be said, a gender scan is as legitimate a phrase as a sex scan, I suppose.

I really don't care what people call it.

It just seems a very petty thing to get het up about.

Christ, will you knock it off with the, "go to the feminist boards with other scary feminists" and calling me, "aggressive" and saying "cheer up love". I'm asking a question for opinions and already told you my own experiences with this which are in no way me being "better than everyone". You sound like men on Twitter saying shit like that.

Also I'm asking a theoretical question. I said I grit my teeth at it- I didn't say I immediately start banging someone over the head with some literature. I would never say this to someone or even post about it on a thread other than this one. It's just a thing I find irritating and have thought about. It's hardly an overreaction.

What has being a feminist got to do with talking about your twenty week scan and calling it a gender scan?

Of all the shit you could get pissed off with, this is the thing that boils your piss?!

I am a feminist. I guess I'm scary because I challenge people on sexist jokes and comments on how women look, on rape apology.

Can't get worked up about this though. YABU.

(I've never heard anyone called it a gender scan btw)

I get a bit annoyed when people use the terms 'gender' and 'sex' as if they were interchangeable.

Personally, I would never have extra scans to ascertain the sex of a baby in utero, but if people want to pay to discover that then it's (probably) harmless (as I don't think there has ever been convincing evidence of scans causing harm).

I did know the sex of my babies before birth; there were issues in first PG which meant detailed NHS scanning at more frequent intervals than standard care, so at one or another it was easy to establish each time.

So now you are using the word 'men' as a derogatory term! I am female but have a son, a dh and a darling father. And you do need to cheer up, imo. Sweating the small stuff is not good for your health.

Also people latch on to the boy / girl thing with unborn or new born babies because they don't have any other distinguishing features, beyond being big or small. The parents want something that helps them to bond with their baby as an individual. Everyone else wants to show an interest, but they need something to say! Its similar to people asking about the baby's weight.

penguin if you're going to quote people then please actually quote rather than paraphrase. I noticed you missed the words aggressively passionate, making what you've paraphrased something every different to what I actually said.

No, I'm not using men as a derogatory term! For god's sake. It IS men on Twitter on say stuff like that. Please go and look at any feminist- or even an outspoken woman- on Twitter and see what responses they get from some men.

'Some men' is fine. 'Men' not so much.

I have to say that I've never personally thought of it as a feminist issue, it annoys me like other misuses of words annoy me. We all have things that annoy us, irrationally or not. I also realise this is my problem and I wish I didn't even notice things like this. And I've never posted in the feminist boards.

Siarie - "penguin if you're going to quote people then please actually quote rather than paraphrase. I noticed you missed the words aggressively passionate, making what you've paraphrased something every different to what I actually said."

I wasn't quoting. Hence why I didn't use double quotation marks. I was paraphrasing a number of posters who said similar things, as was pretty clear from what I wrote. And you weren't the only person you used the word aggression/aggressive.

YANBU - gender and biological sex are two very different things. It really bugs me when people conflate them!

I am also perfectly entitled to paraphrase a number of similar posts and not quote a single post. Why wouldn't I?

I've never heard it be called a gender scan. And I've never heard anyone ask 'What gender is it?'. It's always 'Do you know the sex?' or 'Is it a boy or a girl?'

I think the people who have irritated you have used the word 'gender' incorrectly, because they don't understand the difference between gender and sex.

YANBU to be irritated by something. But, when you know that what they actually mean is 'the scan where I will find out if I am having a boy or a girl', I think you should just let it go! You are overthinking the whole thing a bit.

Gosh, this is really nit picking just for the sake of it!

Let's just do away with all the following words hey?!

Girl
Boy
Woman
Man
Lady

Well you're just proving my aggressive statement with your defensive response. Something that should really be simply just a term that people say suddenly has to be debated.

I'll say it for the last time, this is why I don't visit the feminist forums.

What makes me grit my teeth is when people respond to threads like this with "you're overthinking it"

Which invariably is shorthand for "I don't fully understand and am under thinking it"

OP, yanbu

Why does everything always have to be so mutually exclusive on mumsnet?

People who find out the sex of their baby still care about its health on the scan.

Of course they cheerily say they are finding out the sex at 20 weeks. You don't cheerily say you are finding out if it has any major defects. It doesn't mean it hasn't crossed their minds. It just means they are talking about nice things.

The same as children who do some learning at 2 also jump in bloody puddles.

It's such a sneery, looking down the nose, judgy attitude to take.

Above statement proves my point.

These silly people don't understand like we do. In fact, I don't think we should let them procreate. Is how it come across.

Siarie - I really am not proving your point, and I said I didn't mind the term. Nor am I being aggressive. But all this feminism bashing was tedious a few weeks back and is tedious now. I shall leave you to it.