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?

I had 3 20 week scans and paid for a further one for one of the children to determine the sex

I don't think we or they referred to it as a gender scan, it was just to check the sex and I think that was how it was referred to

Sorry, I understand your problem with it and although I am a bit more educated as a feminist now it probably wouldn't irritate me...but that's because I don't think of these things when I should

Bit more education to go there I think

@ThisLittlePiggie

Gender is the state of being male, female or another gender (typically used with reference to social and cultural differences or choices) whereas sex refers to biological anatomy...although how you define biological sex can be a huge area of debate as well (chromosomes, sexual dimorphism, genitals)!

It's important because sex ? gender. In recent times people in the West tend to have had very fixed concepts that equated sex and gender (apart from some sub cultures), but it hasn't always been so. And in many societies it has been perfectly acceptable & possible for people to change gender.

The Royal Anthropological Institute have a rather nice short introductory page on this that may be of interest.

To go back to the OP - YANBU. Some trusts have a policy not to tell prospective parents the sex at the anomaly scan at all.

Gender isn't being male or female though. It's being a man or woman. They are different things. Someone identify as a man, but their body may be female. It's because they're a female they may be able to get pregnant etc.

Wouldn't the terms be interchangeable to most people though? Like the whole vagina/vulva thing?

grr.

the thing that so many people n this thread seem to have missed the point of is that it is not a gender scan.
It can't be.

Gender is the traits exhibited by a person, not whether they have a penis or vagina.

penis or vagina ownership = SEX

gender is purely based on characteristics. the 20 week scan cannot tell you whether the child like pink or blue, or dolls, or trucks, or trousers or dresses, all of which are "gender" issues.

Thanks for that. How do I get to this age and miss simple things?

My DD1s friend has decided to live as a man. We all thought we were being supportive but I suspect I have been mixing up terms. Hopefully I haven't caused offense or embarrassed DD too much.
I will take a look at those links.

@magneticfield55

There's no inherent or innate truth to either male or man, female or woman. They are cultural constructs with lots of different connotations attached to them.

I thought sex and gender could be used interchangeably - they both describe a state of being as either male or female.

no, they don't - gender describes a state of being as either masculine or feminine.

which I don't think has a place in modern society, anyway.

Most people, when they are told about your 20 week scan, will say "ooh, did you find out what you're having?"
they NEVER ask if everything was alright with the baby's development.

that's bloody annoying. It's also really sad that they care more about whether it's a boy or a girl than they do that it's going to be healthy.

Fuck the "they just want something to talk about" if they really atually cared about the baby, the first thing that would come out of their mouths should be "is everything okay and as it should be?"

And allll the ideas around what is, "masculine" and what is, "feminine". (Is a male child playing with a Barbie feminine? Is being emotional feminine? Is being stoic masculine? Why do we have these associations? etc etc) And how people self-identify based upon what's imposed on them.

It's a massive minefield! I'm just going to raise my child as a cat.

You are whistling in the wind Audeca, everyone is too busy being right to consider there may be another way of thinking about this.

Not saying they're innate truths. I'm saying male/female are biological realities- at least as far as biology is concerned. There's obviously variation, and it's way more complex than penis/vagina but they are. Depends what stock you hold in biology too, I guess, but I'm talking here from the on-a-board-based-in-the-uk perspective.

Of course YANBU. I used to begin a course on women's writing annually by explaining how gender differed from sex, and still get essays that viewed them as synonyms.

Given that you have come across a little sneery about other people's inability to differentiate between the raw truth of sex versus the social construction of gender, it is worth knowing that other people not too stupid to understand your opinion, disagree.

Unless the baby has something wrong with them and dampens the mood, the gender reveal is really the highlight of the 20 week scan for a lot of people.

Also, considering body dysmorphic disorder only affects 2% of people, there's a 98% chance your baby is going to be the same gender as their sex.

But moreover, it's a baby they aren't going to have a gender identity or personality until they're older. You just sort of assign personality traits based on projection until your child reveals their true self as they get older and learn to communicate.

It's a sad reality that gender is a synonym for sex, and a much older usage of the word than the. (The OED has it as sense 3a and 3b), so as annoying as it is to not have a word without ambiguity for gender (as distinct from sex) and as annoying as it is for people using the euphemism for a sex scan. I think it's a bit extreme to be particularly worked up, 80 years ago it would've been entirely correct usage, the use of gender you want didn't exist.

So yes, gender scan sounds horrible to my ears - both because I obviously think you cannot know the gender only the sex, but also because it's just awful. However I've never actually heard it described as such, so I'm not sure you're really being reasonable to get worked up about it.

Bulbasur - that's not true - "gender" does not just mean "feeling like you belong in your body"
You can show (for shorthand the words masculine and feminine how I'm talking about them mean "traditional roles and opinions based on masculine or feminine traits") masculine or feminine traits without having body dismorphia.

for example, i fucking hate cooking and cleaning, which are feminine traits, but I'm still a woman and quite happy being so.
I don't think I would prefer to be a man, nor do I think I would be more suited to being a man, nor do I feel I should be a man but I've been given the wrong body, but, I can reel off the traits I have and preferences I have that would put me firmly in "masculine"
I like bikes and cars and trains and tractors and science and engineering and desconstructing and constructing and woodwork and metal work and making things with my hands. i like to know exactly how my sewing machine works and why it does the things it does (rather than just asking someone else to sort it out), whenever something I don't know about happens, I find out why it happens and what I can do about it (computer stuff is one thing - I'm obsessed with how it works). I prefer beer to wine, i like green rather than pink, I like black and denim. i can change a car tyre, i can put up a shelf, i can tell at a glance whether that's a M6 or M10 bolt. (or M5 or whatever size), i can tell you what's the optimum number of teeth a saw should have to cut that, i can tell you the toughness of diamond (as opposed to "ooh shiny"), i can talk about the graing structures of all sorts of materials, and i know the difference between stars and planets.
Etc.
These are all masculine, which shold tell you that I'm male, if gender and sex are the same.
but they're not. i'm female and have masculine traits, according to tradition and society's views.
but I'd still sooner do it all wearing a skirt, so maybe i'm gender-confused right?

I'm still a woman and quite happy being so.

Then your gender is a female.

Lol@ Im going to raise my child as a cat

Another one here who just calls it the "20 week scan". Finding out the sex is a happy add-on.

Hate "team blue/pink" crap. It's just a load of marketing rubbish. Partly because pink looks cheap and tacky whereas blue looks better quality. So girls get the "can't take it seriously" colour!!

I think the reason some people feel so rabid about it is that gender stereotyping has hit new lows in the past five or so years.

If gender is such a terrible word why is it used for transgender individuals ? Genuine question, my friend is currently transitioning and talks a lot about gender?

Nicklebabe

That is the biggest pile of shit I have ever read.

You honestly believe that people care more about their child's sex than health. Really?

Oh, it has major abnormalities but at least it's a boy. You really think that?

And of course people ask the sex. They are hardly going to say, "any massive genetic problems? Are you keeping it?"

That's hardly normal bloody conversation is it. If they are you friends/family they would probably assume that you would tell them.