Sex 'assigned' at birth

[catelina]

Surely it's 'observed' and 'recorded'?

Sorry I can't help myself. I'm China or India, why don't pregnant women just take loads of oestrogen instead of aborting unwanted female babies?! Has it just never occurred to them?

There‘s so much misinformation in this thread: if you give a man oestrogen, he will grow breasts – what further information do you need that sex is clearly not binary and we’re all just a bunch of cells?

Errrr yeah it's really not guesswork. And these days very very simple to test. Sperm is either X or Y. Nothing else.

Whether the embryo goes on to develop as normal is a separate matter, but sex is binary, and determined by the sperm. And easily tested. Defaults in the way sex is expressed does not contradict that.

Please use a bit of critical thinking here. All women have oestrogen, especially during pregnancy. By your logic all babies would be female?

Yeah if you give people powerful drugs, changes to the body happen.

I could staple a pair of wings to my back, I still won’t be able to fly.

Lol. You said yourself - if you give a MAN oestrogen. He gets breasts. But keeps that pesky Y chromosome that means he remains male.

Exactly this. It's not about triggering, it's about misinformation.

So you’re saying that hormones do affect the sex?

Assign - to allocate

Observe - to take note of

Sex - either of the two main categories (male and female) into which humans and most other living things are divided on the basis of their reproductive function

Gender - either of the two sexes (male and female) when considered with reference to social and cultural differences rather than biological ones

As far as I remember, there wasn't magic 'gender fairy' in attendance at the birth, waving a wand and allocating my baby to a group.

So you’re saying that hormones do affect the sex?

Hormones affect the body. They don't affect the sex.

Okay so if you give a man who has XX chromosomes oestrogen? He’s now female?

@France123 There absolutely are women with XY chromosomes - look up Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (CAIS) (www.nhs.uk/conditions/androgen-insensitivity-syndrome/). These women are genetically male, but their bodies don't respond to the testosterone that is produced, so they develop as females. This is because it is testosterone that would normally stimulate the development of external male genitalia. In their case it doesn't, so they develop female genitalia. They 'look like girls' as babies and young children generally, but then don't have periods at puberty. Typically, the condition is identified at this point, and these women discover that they don't have a uterus and often have internal testes too.

They are women and 'look like women' - completely indistinguishable from any other woman in external appearance. Partial androgen insensitivity (PAIS) is more complex.

Sex is more complex than simple 'XX female' and 'XY male', although this simple binary is true for the huge majority of people. People born with conditions that make external genitalia ambiguous used to be 'assigned' a sex - these days, much more is known about such conditions, so the sex can usually be determined at a young age based on analysis of genetics/genitalia/hormones etc. The term 'assigned' has been hijacked by by the transgender community (imo).

But if the only way we determine sex is by body parts, then the hormones decide the body parts, which means that the sex is decided by the hormones?

Well they have a womb, and a uterus, and a vulva, and they had breast cancer which is why they found out they had XY

If a girl is XY then she would find that out during teenage years when she fails to go through a female puberty.

They are 100% accurate. What you are confused about is the development of sex characteristics, and the fact that in a very small number of individuals issues occur that interfere with the usual development of sex characteristics. Each known VSD/DSD applies to either male or female, and has a known issue or issues that have occurred during development. An XX embryo doesn't just randomly and without warning develop into a child with male appearing external genitalia. That is caused by an issue that causes hormonal changes and an increase in androgens that has a virilising effect on the developing baby, resulting in male appearing external genitalia. CAH is the most common cause of this happening. If you test an embryo, discover it has XX chromosomes, but it develops CAH and is born with external genitalia that appear male, then it is still a female baby with a DSD.

Are you being wilfully ingenuous or are you in fact a bit thick?

Men with drug induced moobs are still men.

Yes.

It's not everyone using 'assigned', it's a determined and vocal cohort of gender identity activists who would like everyone to be compelled into using incorrect and obfuscated language.

It's Sex, not gender. Observed and recorded at birth.

But if the only way we determine sex is by body parts, then the hormones decide the body parts, which means that the sex is decided by the hormones?

Other way round. The sex (ie chromosomes) determine which hormones are expressed and that in turn leads to development of sex characteristics (body parts) which enable accurate identification in the vast majority of cases.

Occasionally things go wrong. Doesn't mean sex is not binary or determined by the flavour of successful sperm.

I think @DinosaurTime is having a bit of fun here...

The idea that IVF clinics just have a bit of a guess as to the sex of an embryo in order to do sex selection is just laughable. They do tests which are almost 100% accurate in determining sex.

Sperm has a sex. It is either male or female sperm. Male sperm swims faster, female sperm lives longer.

Some IVF clinics offer a service whereby the prospective parents can pay to have the sperm ‘washed’ so that only one sex sperm remains and, in this way, the parents are able to choose the sex of their baby. It’s ethically controversial, but the science is simple. It can also be done pre-implantation by genetic testing of the blastocyst.

How dare you accuse others of not knowing basic biology, when you’re either deliberately lying, or completely ignorant and haven’t even bothered to google it?

I knew my child's sex from around 12th week of pregnancy (did NIPT), so it definitely was not "assigned" at birth.

Haha no but you’ve just got the point: it’s almost 100%. And when you start IVF they make this clear.

Friends that have had IVF have said that they were warned it’s not 100% accurate, so I don’t know what else to tell you? That all the IVF clinics lied to my friends?

99.8% is pretty accurate. It's not a guess, nor is it infallible. But you're not going to get a much higher accuracy rate than that for a test like this.

Why would they tell you anything about sex selection at the start of the IVF process, when sex selection is only used for medical reasons where there is a known risk of a serious genetic disease?