Genuinely like to know has anyone who has actually given birth think ' gender is assigned' at birth?

[Foxy333]

I am very confused about this whole issue. Of course anyone can live whatever life they want to live. But keep seeing this phrase everywhere. Is it only believed by those who've never had a child? I was very careful to bring my children up without sex stereotypes. Though not easy with toys and clothes available (!). I bought a big mix of stuff for my DSs and DDs. Told them they be whatever they want to be.
Interested to know others views..

@LadyWhistledownsQuill

Sex is observed at birth - the bit where someone spots the genitals

Gender is assigned at birth too - the bit where they announce "it's a girl!" or "it's a boy!" and society as a whole (not just parents) raise that child as a girl / boy.

For most people, their sex and gender correspond, but for a minority of people their sex and gender they later identify with don't match up, which is where such terminology usually comes into play.

Like most, I was assigned female at birth and continue to identify as female.

But you weren't "assigned" female. You were observed to be female. Female is the biological word right?

Anyway. Aside from that. We just have to do the best we can to give our children a range of toys and experiences. Let them wear what they want. There are dolls which use boys for advertising (Baby Born boy had a boy on the box when I bought one for DS2 12 years ago). Its hard though. Especially when most of society have bought into gender roles.

It's a bit snappier than "female assigned at the 20 week scan, or earlier with a blood test, or at birth if the mum wanted a surprise"

But the doctors/parents/whoever did not assign the sex at any stage, they just found out what it was and said "it's a boy" or "it's a girl". The sex was recorded/observed/noted.

Sex is assigned at birth - willy = boy, vulva = girl

Gender is fluid - that’s something we can choose in this day and age.

If speaking purely about gender - if a male and female child were raised in the same environment, gender neutral without any interference or influence from the outside world - MOST OF THE TIME the boy would gravitate towards the toy guns, the hoody and trousers, the colour blue and the girl would gravitate towards the Barbies, dresses and the colour pink.

Male and female biological make up is different, so of course they will be into different things and be attracted to different things. It's just nature.

Like most, I was assigned female at birth and continue to identify as female.

@LadyWhistledownsQuill, you weren't assigned female at birth, as much as your weren't assinged human. Being female is a simple fact of your existence, not changeable by any belief of opposing gendered beliefs over your lifetime.

How does someone identify as female, rather than be one? Why do you need to qualify your unchanging sex with further gendered identification - what is the difference?

You are not assigned a gender. Your sex is a medical fact and will never change no matter what gender you want to identify as.
I would like to see all use of the word gender irradiated from any medical recordings and the use of the word sex only.
Sex is a medical fact. Gender is a social constructed idea.

@wildwildsouth

If speaking purely about gender - if a male and female child were raised in the same environment, gender neutral without any interference or influence from the outside world - MOST OF THE TIME the boy would gravitate towards the toy guns, the hoody and trousers, the colour blue and the girl would gravitate towards the Barbies, dresses and the colour pink.

Male and female biological make up is different, so of course they will be into different things and be attracted to different things. It's just nature.

Is there any proof of this?

Assigning a gender was never discussed or recorded at the birth of my children. I assume that's something they'll do for themselves in the future if they feel the need.

Their sex at birth was observed and recorded however.

I have 2 sons and a daughter. If they realise those terms aren't correct, I shall refer to them accordingly. It's not a big enough deal for so many TERFs and transphobes to be so upset about! We as humans are mere atoms, nothing matters!

@wildwildsouth

If speaking purely about gender - if a male and female child were raised in the same environment, gender neutral without any interference or influence from the outside world - MOST OF THE TIME the boy would gravitate towards the toy guns, the hoody and trousers, the colour blue and the girl would gravitate towards the Barbies, dresses and the colour pink.

Male and female biological make up is different, so of course they will be into different things and be attracted to different things. It's just nature.

Haha this is just not true which I suspect you know full well 🤣🤣🤣

Sex is observed.
Some parents assign a gender and prevent their kids from playing with some toys and wearing some clothes. Children learn through play so miss out on that development when they can't access all themes of toy. Children dressed in a restrictive way miss out on running, jumping and climbing opportunities.

@candycane57 so what is being male and female outside of biological sex then? If your son says he's female, what attributes would they have to be female instead of male for you to believe that to be the case? Don't call 'TERF' without backing yourself up, you just sound a bit uneducated.

People really confuse gender and sex.

Gender is a sociological construct, for defining cultural/social attributes (eg masculinity/femininity) allocated to
people, usually on the basis on biological sex but occasionally with extra groups behind the binary men & women. A newborn baby doesn't really have a gender as it's just been born, what it has is a sex, the factual nature of being either XX or XY chromosomes, which is observed by reference to external genitalia. Yes there are intersex conditions but those are really very rare.

@wildwildsouth

If speaking purely about gender - if a male and female child were raised in the same environment, gender neutral without any interference or influence from the outside world - MOST OF THE TIME the boy would gravitate towards the toy guns, the hoody and trousers, the colour blue and the girl would gravitate towards the Barbies, dresses and the colour pink.

Male and female biological make up is different, so of course they will be into different things and be attracted to different things. It's just nature.

Here's me in my black jeans and blue hoodie, waiting behind the door with a nerf gun for my grown up son, wearing his pink T-shirt.

@wildwildsouth

If speaking purely about gender - if a male and female child were raised in the same environment, gender neutral without any interference or influence from the outside world - MOST OF THE TIME the boy would gravitate towards the toy guns, the hoody and trousers, the colour blue and the girl would gravitate towards the Barbies, dresses and the colour pink.

Male and female biological make up is different, so of course they will be into different things and be attracted to different things. It's just nature.

I just don't buy this at all. I know too many children and adults who were raised in a fully gendered environment (ie. the culture we're all in now) who don't gravitate towards stereotypically gendered toys or clothes. And that was WITH interference and influence from the outside world.

Yes, biological makeup is different. But that doesn't mean that it's deterministic in terms of stereotyped toys or clothes. You only have to look back through history to see that pink/blue or skirts for young boys have been the norm at various times, even relatively recently. I've just been reading 5 children and it to my DCs, set in Edwardian times, and the youngest sibling who is male is always described as wearing a frock which was the standard garment for toddler boys at that time until they went into short trousers. It's cultural, not biological.

My gender is often assigned by Mumsnet posters calling me a MRA infiltrator

The older I get, the more grateful I am that my parents didn't seem to socialise me as female at all. I got to be myself, who is somewhat neutral in personality between the stereotypes. Besides which the stereotypes are formulated from a very Victorian model of masculinity and femininity. (my sister also got to be herself - a much more feminine character than me)

*wildwildsouth

If speaking purely about gender - if a male and female child were raised in the same environment, gender neutral without any interference or influence from the outside world - MOST OF THE TIME the boy would gravitate towards the toy guns, the hoody and trousers, the colour blue and the girl would gravitate towards the Barbies, dresses and the colour pink.*

Gosh. This seems awfully like bollocks.

Given that loads of cultures through history haven't worn trousers at all, men or women. Instead tunics, wraps, robes etc have been commonplace for both sexes.

The association of blue and pink to boys and girls respectively is very recent, its marketing driven and largely dates to the 20th century in the west. Blue actually has a long depiction of association with women - the virgin mary is often depicted wearing blue, historically women often wore blue to get married in. Many cultures revere red colours, especially for males.

Guns also are a recent invention. Male children often fight etc but much of this is likely to be driven by social imitation of adult males, depictions in books and tv of male characters fighting/displaying physical aggression.

If speaking purely about gender - if a male and female child were raised in the same environment, gender neutral without any interference or influence from the outside world - MOST OF THE TIME the boy would gravitate towards the toy guns, the hoody and trousers, the colour blue and the girl would gravitate towards the Barbies, dresses and the colour pink.

Quite apart from the fact that there is no way to test your theory and therefore no reason to state it as fact, Roman soldiers were quite well known for wearing pink feathery galeas on their helmets and skirts, and they were considered pretty manly by the standards of the day.

I’m supportive of peoples decisions on how they want to live. But sex is a biological fact. Gender is more of a decision. I’m what you’d call a tomboy years ago. I love wearing men’s clothes but I’m 100% straight.i wear what I’m comfortable in and that’s that. I don’t like certain colours so I won’t wear them. I don’t care what people look like, what race, what sexual orientation they are. I make my opinions based on wether they are assholes. You could be purple and identify as a frying pan, if your a nice person then we are cool. Non of that changes the sex you were biologically born as.

Sex is observed, not assigned. Gender is whatever socialised bollocks is forced on to our children, by society as a whole. So I suppose gender is assigned, directly related to the sex, but sex and gender are different things. When I was younger the social push was to separate sex and gender (eg. You can be a boy and like stereotypically girly things) so it’s depressing that the two are now being conflated again.

I find it quite amusing that the people who say “sex is assigned at birth” are often the same people who are (rightly, IMO) offended by cultural appropriation. Yet the phrase “sex assigned at birth” has been appropriated from a very vulnerable community - the intersex community.

In the past, those born with ambiguous genitalia actually were assigned a sex at birth, and raised as a child of that sex regardless of whether they were genetically male or female. This caused significant harm when they eventually found out that they weren’t female / male.

For everyone else, your sex is accurately observed, not assigned.

Using it in the way it’s used now is massively offensive to intersex people, and that community have repeatedly asked that their existence not to be used as collateral in an argument that has nothing to do with them, or as proof that sex isn’t binary.

The rest of us are ripped to shreds if we don’t capitulate to the demands of a vulnerable community, yet the intersex community is being treated absolutely appallingly by this appropriation of their medical terminology and their existence being used as ammunition.

Where is the outrage about this?

If speaking purely about gender - if a male and female child were raised in the same environment, gender neutral without any interference or influence from the outside world - MOST OF THE TIME the boy would gravitate towards the toy guns, the hoody and trousers, the colour blue and the girl would gravitate towards the Barbies, dresses and the colour pink.

Even if it were true and culture and society played no part at all - even though it clearly does - a girl who disliked pink would still be no less of a girl and a boy who disliked blue would be no less of a boy, because biology trumps colour and toy preferences when it comes to sex.

As many people have said, sex is observed at birth. I don't think 'assigned' is the right word for gender, but I do think that most children are raised according to some degree of societal convention, which includes gender conventions.

So however much we may try to raise our child as gender-neutral, we have to make decisions about names, haircuts, clothes, until they can make their own decisions, and even if we make nonconformist decisions, our child will probably watch some TV and go to nursery and then school and be exposed to masses of societal gender expectation. So they will feel (subconsciously for the most part) that they have to align themselves or not align themselves to that. Boys and girls do frequently behave differently early on, but we treat them differently from the start, and even if we try not to, other people do.

'Assigned at birth' is an appropriation of the experience of a tiny number of people who have DSD and whose genitals at birth could not easily be categorised as male or female. Those people have their sex 'assigned' by doctors and this assignation often goes hand in hand with brutal genital surgery to which, of course, they have not consented.

Outside of that very specific context I think everyone should stop using this language (even for gender). We were not all 'assigned' anything at birth. People with DSDs need that language to describe what was done to them.

I've given birth and my view is simply that I gave birth to 2 girls. I don't give it much more thought than that. It's part of their identity, along with their ethnicity.

Assigning, in this context is a relatively new thing, due to the changing nature of society and people living their lives the opposite to the sex they were born.

It's a way to differentiate a female/male born as such and those who see themselves and live their lives other than that.

I think you are kidding yourself if you think you brought your dc up without gender stereotyping. We are all products of the semester society we live in.