Assigned Female at Birth - AFAB

[ShugarTits]

AIBU to get the actual rage every time I see this written down? Often in reputable sources.

Obviously this has come about due to people differentiating between gender and sex - I understand needing clarity between those two when talking to or questioning people.

but every single bloody time I read it I can only think of the horrific female infanticide statistics. AIBU to think ‘assigned female at birth’ is fucking offensive to women, as so many of us are killed at birth ONLY because we are female. Nobody assigned those infants a female sex, they didn’t just randomly pick half of the babies and murder them.

can’t we agree as a society to call out AFAB and AMAB as being horrific and change it? Happy to hear alternatives. Observed female/male at birth sounds reasonable to me if you need to specify birth sex vs gender.

It's all a load of regressive nonsense.

No one is assigned anything at birth, the sex of the baby is noted and can normally be observed prior to birth on scans.

Boy and girl will do, as it has throughout the ages.

Its beyond stupid.

Honestly I just read the title and thought 'you mean observed female at birth'.
Just another attempt to muddy bits of water to try and lay claim to biology not being biology.

Oh give over

Do you actually think about female infanticide every time you see 4 little letters written down?

If so I’d ask yourself why. Especially since in the countries where it’s an issue, they don’t tend to align with the AFAB movement either

It's a term used to emphasise that for many intersex individuals in the past, doctors who were unsure about what sex the baby was would pick one. Hence 'assigned'. It emphasises that the sex was assigned rather than inherent. You only have to read stores of people who grew up intersex and very much felt they were male when they'd been assigned female or vice versa. Couldn't get worked up over something like this.

It just a clear record of the baby being male or female. Nothing offensive.

Did you read my post? You don’t think it’s offensive to the millions of babies who you must believe had their sex ‘assigned’ and died because of it?

It's being misused though. For intersex people it's accurate but it's being used to refer to trans people who are just pretending to be the opposite sex. Their sex wasn't assigned, it's was observed.

There is no such condition as intersex. So much misinformation being deliberately promulgated.
There are genetic disorders of sexual development which are very rare and are specific to either males or females.
I was a midwife and never assigned a sex to a baby. I observed and recorded the sex.

This is interesting because it sounds reasonable, but I’d never considered it originated only within intersex infants.

I have a family member who is under the intersex umbrella but they do not have confusing/misleading genitalia- their sex was also not assigned but observed. The number of genuine AFAB/AMAB people must be astonishingly small.

Assigned at birth is a lie, that’s why I find it so offensive. Nobody is assigned a sex, they are observed to be one sex or the other, and in very rare cases further observation is carried out to determine sex, but that’s very very rare indeed. Nobody is bloody assigned a sex, like there’s any arbitrariness about it. It’s offensive bullshit.

Does your back hurt after that stretch?

Then why use this term at all? No one is ‘assigned’ a sex at birth but we seem to have changed the language to stop a tiny section of society from being offended over reality. Why is their offence valid but womens isnt?

Gives me the rage. Sex is not assigned like a Harry Potter Hogwarts house via the sorting hat.

Sex is observed

but why are you offended?

The amount of ‘pregnant people’, ‘birthing person’ in the prenatal literature these days is disturbing.

I do, truly.

It’s an odd phrase, so every time I read it or hear it, it sticks out like a sore thumb. Then the physical reaction comes because it’s repugnant to pretend we get to choose who is a girl or who is a boy considering the horrendous violence against women and girls globally.

people don’t get their clitoris removed because someone decided at birth they were a girl. They don’t get abandoned at birth on the whim of a doctors decision over whether he assigned them one sex or another. Women don’t get raped because someone chose us to be women.

i can’t get past it - so yes it distresses me. Like it does when I hear many slurs.

I can't answer for Naunet but I'll answer why I'm offended. This creep in language is part of an ideology that causes harms to women and children.

It is also inaccurate because sex is observed not assigned.

The sex of a baby can be observed by scans even before birth.

That’s not a stretch, it’s exactly what this language suggests. It’s interesting that you only think some special people are allowed to be offended by wording though.

Honestly with issues like this you need both sides to sit down and have a calm and respectful discussion and reach a consensus. The issue is that people (on both sides) just can’t and start throwing around insults. You can already see the disrespect in this thread (eg “nonsense”, “stupid”). We will never get over this issue if people can’t be respectful on both sides.

Do you want to answer my question first?

What does it suggest?

if you don’t believe babies are assigned at birth how can you then be offended that babies are killed due to it?

Especially since in the countries where it is sadly common for girls to be killed they don’t tend to be the countries that are AFAB friendly

That's not how it's being used in the vast majority of cases though.
It's mostly used about people who have no difference in sexual development.

(The figures often quoted about the numbers of people who do have differences in sexual development are also misleading. As a pp said for most of these people there is no ambiguity at birth anyway.
In a small number of cases there is.)

No, we just need to stick with facts, sex is not assigned at birth. There is zero reason to pretend it is.