To start a campaign to prevent clinics from offering "gender scans"

[NNChangeAgain]

I've been following the trans debate, both here and in RL and it strikes me that most of the disagreement and arguments stem from the language and words used.

One of the biggest misunderstandings is the way in which the word "gender" has become interchangable with the word "sex". And no one is more guilty of that than the clinics which offer "gender scans" during pregnancy.

They are not gender scans though, are they? They are scans to determine the external sexual organs of the foetus. Even a foetal blood test identifies the genetic sex of the baby, not the gender.

Is this misrepresentation? Telling a pregnant woman the "gender" of the baby they are carrying is impossible - surely it should stop? And just maybe, it would begin to resolve some of the conflict over the trans debate at the same time ?

I'm confused do you think if generally people understood gender then transgender people would no longer want to be perceived as the opposite sex?
Trans people don't want to be masculine or feminine. They on the whole want to have to body of and look like the opposite sex not gender. That includes access to single sex places.

But surely it is the case that when a sex is determined at a scan, for 99.999% of people, that will correspond with their gender.

Current trends in society place doubt on that statistic.

Well, whatever the number is. The point stand though.

Trans people don't want to be masculine or feminine. They on the whole want to have to body of and look like the opposite sex not gender. That includes access to single sex places.

Currently the word trans includes people who identify as the opposite gender to their sex, but who choose not to change their appearance or body.

There's a trans debate? Wow, who knew.

NNChangeAgain, socially constructing something does not mean claiming the biologically impossible, which is plainly ridiculous. A constructivist perspectives says that things/features/characteristics are never just things/features/characteristics but are always endowed by the society with particular meanings. So the process of birth is never just about mechanically popping out a baby. We are not robots, but social creatures. Our bodies do not exist separately from society that endows them with particular meanings. Hence sex may not be as clearly separate from gender as you claim is to be.

How can you identify as the opposite gender to your sex and not want to address that in anyway?

Current trends in society place doubt on that statistic.

How many people are trans? As a % of UK population?

A totally pointless idea that could, if it ever came to pass, have a real risk of stopping people finding out about abnormalities. I'd vigorously oppose such a campaign.

How is that going to prevent people from finding out about anomalies?

How is that going to prevent people from finding out about anomalies?

Presumably they would be too squeamish to ask for a sex scan?

... which would have absolutely no impact, because the scan for abnormalities is part of the standard procedure and women don't have to ask for it.

I am not sure I'd have enough time to start a campaign to enforce correct language use in hospitals, but I am all for it. Whom can we trust to use medical language correctly if not the medical profession?

Hannah I think you've misunderstood

I'm building a time machine so I can escape this nonsense.

They don't have to ask for anything.
They just go to the anomaly scan.

Not a gender scan anyway, no one in the Health service cares what sex your baby is.

The op is referring to private "gender" scans, not the NHS 20 week anomaly scan

I'm totally on your side, OP. The muddling up of the words "sex" and "gender" causes no end of sloppy thinking and this cascades into policy making, into the media and so on. Further than that, some activists seem to deliberately confuse or conflate the two to create a misleading impression.

We sex newborn babies, although we know people start gendering children almost as soon as they arrive by, for example, talking and handling boys differently to girls. Gender is stereotypes: masculine/feminine.

In that case it won't stop people finding out if there's anything wrong with the baby, as a PP suggested because they will go to the NHS one and find out.
Drama averted.

...clinics which offer gender scans should be subject to the same Trading Standards rules as everyone else

Hm, my Health Visitor didn't visit often, and she didn't bring health. I had to go see her, especially when ill.

I actually really don't fully understand the difference between sex and gender.

Somebody upthread said that asking for a gender scan would be like asking to find out whether your baby (sorry - foetus) is masculine or feminine rather than male or female. But surely 'masculine' and 'feminine' mean 'having the characteristics of a male' or 'having the characteristics of a female'. Some male/female characteristics are physical, the ones which aren't physical are probably entirely socially created. So, depending on how you define it, gender is either synonymous with sex or is something unhelpful and made-up which we shouldn't be using as a label anyway.

This post illustrates how stupid this whole trans thing has gotten and it's highly likey op will be one of the people on the phone yo mermaids the minute her daughter picks up a car or son wants to play with a doll

Eolian I agree with your later description of gender and I think that's what the issue is.

Not more trans threads. Ffs! Enough already. This is MN not trans net.

The pooh-poohing of the issue on this thread by some posters is really quite staggering. Even though it may not directly impact you and the way you live your life and/or bring up your children, it doesn't make it irrelevant or pointless.

If we turn a blind eye on the gender issue, we'll wake up one day to find female-only spaces eroded completely, and women's rights thrown on the scrap-heap. It is something that needs to be taken seriously. It isn't something we can shout down or disregard.

Eolian sex is biology, male/female. Unchangeable. Objective.

Gender is an artificial social construct that is subjective and changes depending on time in history, culture etc.

A female is the same whether in the 15th century or in Timbuktu. What is feminine isn't.

Basically gender is negative, damaging and very often designed to keep women (females) in their place.

Yanbu