Gender assigned at birth

[Ketchup100]

Just applied for dd’s 11+ and the online form asked what was my child’s “gender assigned at birth”. AIBU to find this insulting both to my intelligence and to my daughter? She was not assigned a gender at birth. She is biologically female whether or not she chooses to currently follow any particular gender stereotype. Nobody said at her birth “congratulations, your child will like pink and wear makeup”. They simply looked at her genitals and declared that she was (biologically) female, which she is and will always be.

yanbu. I was asked if id ever had prostate cancer when on the phone to AXA. My OH was asked if he'd ever been pregnant by a gym receptionist. We're clearly a man and a woman!

I'm really surprised that you have so many transmen in prison. Isn't the female estate far smaller than the men's? And assuming around 0.1% of the female population identify as transmen, the numbers should surely be tiny. Are they overrepresented in the prison population, or are my numbers way off?

@MissScarletInTheBallroom I think the answer is transmen are over represented but the numbers are too small to be definite.

It would not be surprising as woman prisoners have much higher rates of poor mental health, neurodiversity, history of sexual abuse than the general public, so all the things that make gender identity issues more likely.

I am also wondering whether use of testosterone increases the risk of developing a more typically male pattern of criminality.

“Sex” would be better.

It would, were it not for the fact that there is so much confusion over sex and gender now.

We have adults whose legal sex is different from their birth sex, and people like India Willoughby describing themselves as female.

Generally speaking the only phrase they seem to accept for biological sex is "sex assigned at birth", which many of us loathe for being anti-scientific and ideologically loaded, as well as appearing to refer to a completely imaginary event.

"Birth registered sex" has the advantage of being both factually accurate and difficult for gender ideologues to wriggle out of. Even India Willoughby can't claim to be a birth registered female.

Ooh I’ll suggest this in my email re wording in the 11+ application. They could easily change it to birth registered sex, I am sure.

That doesn’t work either. Birth registered sex can change at a later date if intersex etc. it needs to be sex.

They are vastly over represented. Yes there are only 17 female estates in England and none in Wales. In a few hundred inmates there are around 10 transgender females at any given time.

More transgender females than women who claim to be ‘butch lesbians’. Make of that what you will.

I am sure even 20 years ago the same women would have identified differently. And yes, as AnnaMagani states, the number of women with trauma / poor mental health is vastly higher than gen pop.

My gender and sex are straightforward. They match and are the same now as when I was born.

The question is phrased for people whose identity is more complex than mine or still TBC.

I would happily tick the box and move on to the next question. Being asked if I am male or female is inconsequential to me, but for some it is a BIG question and this helps just a little bit when there is a grey area.

What is a gender and in what way does yours match your sex?

I am biologically female (my sex) and culturally/stereotypically feminine (my gender) albeit a bit of a tomboy.

i have no problems reconciling my identity to the sex I was born.

I blame it on the old sex.... yes please answer on forms, beloved of giggling teenagers

How I long for those days

Yeah I received a letter this week inviting me to my smear test which is offered to "all women and people who have a cervix" 🤨

Yeah, I still don't have a clue what this means.

Your biological sex is female, yep, fine, got that part.

Your gender is "culturally/stereotypically feminine albeit a bit of a tomboy". So you...what? Wear dresses? Sometimes? But not when you're being a tomboy? Makeup? But not the same kind of makeup as David Bowie or Marilyn Manson? Or maybe no makeup? Are you shit at parking? Unable to read a map? Do you get overemotional? Are you kind?

And more importantly, how on earth does any of that "match" having a vagina, ovaries, a uterus and breasts, which is essentially what being female means?

I’m not confused about my gender identity. I don’t feel anything other than female. Never have and don’t expect I ever will.

my point (which ironically was not about me) is that if you can answer the male or female question easily, don’t get your knickers in a twist over it. Let people who are affected by it decide how they need it phrased.

I think maybe I'm not the one missing the point here.

We can all answer the male or female question easily in terms of there being a definite answer. Even if you find the answer upsetting, that doesn't mean the question is complicated.

But the rest of it...gender? Gender identity? I'm going to go out on a limb here and say this is something only trans people think they have.

I don't have a gender identity. I know I'm female because the last time I checked (and every other time) I had a vagina and not a penis. I don't share any kind of identity with male people who may or may not have gender dysphoria or may or may not wear dresses. Because even if we could pinpoint what they are identifying with, it is still an identity that only they have, not something they share with women.

I'd be happy to live and let live if we weren't all being told we need to share our single sex spaces and sports with these members of the opposite sex on the grounds that they have a gender identity. But as you say, their gender identity has nothing to do with me, or any other woman.

With the complete lack of evidence that there is anything that is even consistently definable, let alone provable to having a gender identity, it can only be considered a philosophical belief. ie gender identity is a philosophical belief.

Why have organisations therefore made such changes to data and to processes based on a philosophical belief when that belief effects nothing to do with the remit for that organisation?

They don’t collect information on any other philosophical belief except if it directly influences the service or product offered. Why are so many organisations making choices to align with this philosophical belief?

Not one person on this earth can change sex. If a person cannot choose their correct sex on a form and reply with honesty, there is a significant issue that that group of people need to address. That is a message that needs to be coming from trans support groups. And if marking down the correct sex is uncomfortable, then mental health support is needed to overcome this discomfort with material reality. It does not improve the life of any person to infantilise a group by ignoring material reality and shaping society to fit their personal philosophical belief. That is harmful. It is not respectful.

If it is needed, the form can ask for sex (and not using false and ideologically driven wording) and then simply ask for gender identity. And if it is not needed, dont ask.

Why should anyone’s personal philosophical belief be prioritised though? Why should those ‘getting their knickers in a twist’ about acknowledging the material reality that is their sex be prioritised over others? By the way, see how fucked up that misogynistic phrase is when applied the other way around? Yet, here you are using it for people expressing reasoned and reasonable opinions

By your own logic though, the question causes plenty of people distress seeing it worded in a way that doesn’t reflect that material reality. Therefore, since it causes many people distress, their opinion should also be considered.

oh. That’s right. Anyone else’s opinion should be dismissed apparently, because it is just them ‘getting their knickers in a twist’ and nothing more in the judgement of some.

That's all well and good, @Helleofabore, but unfortunately it's going to take some time to row back from where we now are.

I said in my previous reply to @StormingNorman that I don't believe a gender identity is something most people have. I guess without defining it, it's difficult to say whether most people have it or not. If I'm honest, I do feel that my biological sex is an identity of sorts. Certainly, I feel that having a body designed for pregnancy and childbirth has affected my identity, and did so well before I ever had children. But it is so inextricably linked to my sex, and not to clothes or hobbies or anything stereotypically feminine, that I don't see what it has to do with trans people. If I share any kind of identity with trans people, I'd be more likely to say I have that in common with Freddy McConnell than India Willoughby. So for me it is sexed, not gendered, even if Freddy McConnell doesn't agree that he shares any kind of identity with me.

I've focused so far on the impact of this on women. Even if dysphoria or lack thereof were an identity in itself, which I don't agree it is, a male person with dysphoria does not have the same identity as a female person without dysphoria. Or at least, not from the female person's point of view. And you cannot have a shared identity without the agreement of all the people concerned.

Where I think the concept of gender identity is really damaging is in terms of how it affects trans identifying people themselves, particularly this new demographic of adolescent females identifying as men or non binary.

I would say that as an adolescent girl (I have no experience of being an adolescent boy), feeling some sort of dysphoria in your developing body is more common than not. I certainly felt it as a teenager, and I was not autistic, did not have an eating disorder, had a happy home life etc. I was self conscious about my breasts and hips, wore baggy jeans and hoodies to hide my body, and would much rather have been one of the whippet thin skater girls who adopted a more androgynous style which just didn't suit my body at all. Who knows what might have happened if I'd grown up in an era where if you express discomfort with your female body and the expectations placed on you by a patriarchal, gendered society, people start suggesting you might be trans or non binary?

The whole idea that we all have a gender identity and that if you as a teenager feel uncomfortable with your body it might be because your gender identity doesn't match your sex strikes me as incredibly damaging and we really need to be moving away from this narrative. I will certainly be teaching my kids that a gender identity is something some people feel they have, like a religion, nothing more than that.

I suspect sometimes it was the unwillingness to write the word sex on a form! ... So they just assumed gender was a synonym for sex...

At least at my school a billion years ago... A very small c conservative woman ran school..

It will take time, but it has already taken time. But we have been working at it already for years and each year brings change back to clear language. And obviously, the prioritisation of female people’s and children’s rights.

You can feel that your biological sex is part of your identity. It is part of every person’s identity. Biological sex is even part of a trans person’s whole identity. Because that biological sex shapes our everyday decisions and how we navigate the world. For instance, most female people have to deal with the reality of their body every time they have a period, or every time they go to the doctor, or go to the toilet. Female people cannot use a urinal without a brutal surgery or a device like a she-wee if that even works.

Of course it shapes our identities in some degree.

However, it is very different to gender idenitity though. Once it became clear that gender identity, which is based on postmodernist and queer theory, is only philosophical and has no diagnosible component based on physical science, the ideological base was exposed. Should we accept people may feel they have a gender identity? Sure. But it should be treated just like every other philosophical belief, and not given the priority it has been.

I fully agree that a great deal of damage has been done when you consider the concept that now people believe they should permanently change their bodies to suit a philosophical beliefs. Particularly when those changes may be life limiting and life shortening.

Will there be people who believe they have gender identity? Most likely there will always be. However, that identity should not shape how we communicate to the general public as you and I and so many posters have been saying.

Plus, how many of these forms are limited to the binary gender identities? There are over 100 gender identities. It is something that those declaring we should be prioritising gender identity needs always seem to forget. If we are going to accommodate gender identity, then we must do this fully and accommodate all the identities because otherwise we are invalidating the other gender identities.

There will always be people saying that it is a ‘kindness’ to subvert the needs of the general population to suit a small number who will have mental health issues with the use of particular language. Ie. Feel ‘uncomfortable’ noting done a basic and abiding objective fact about themselves.