I've had a reply from the ONS regarding their piece on 'What's the difference between sex and gender?' has any one else?

[barelove]

I wrote to the ONS a month ago, using their online complaints procedure, prompted by a thread posted on here regarding their wording around sex and gender. Here's the original thread:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3568620-ONS-definition-of-sex

In 'What is the difference between sex and gender?' The ONS write:
The UK government define sex as something which is assigned at birth

My feedback on this was to say that the word assigned implies an arbitrary decision is made by medical staff when deciding the sex of a new born, when in fact sex is recognised and confirmed by the presenting genitalia of the infant. Of course I realise now that should've said 'in most cases' as I wasn't being inclusive of rare intersex conditions. My mistake

I also addressed the bit that said: Essentially, nearly all people are born with physical characteristics that are labelled male or female. However, through learned behaviour people become boys and girls, then men and women, or have a non-binary gender.

To this I replied: This statement is both inaccurate and misleading. Boy/girl/man/women are nouns used to identify the two sexes as defined in the Equalities Act 2010:

man: a male of any age
woman: a female of any age

www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/section/212

We do not become a women through learned behaviour, we are women because we are human females.

It is our society's current gender stereotypes of boy/girl/man/women that are adopted through learned behaviour.

I got a nice personal email to acknowledging my feedback and was kept informed regarding a meeting they were having to address the points I raised.

Their final response was to say that they're sticking with the word assigned as it is intended to be inclusive of the intersex bodied babies where sex is not easily observed.

However, they've decided to remove the paragraph about people becoming men and women through learned behaviour altogether as my comments has highlighted to them 'the difficulties in explaining the process unambiguously'. They have instead just highlighted that 'sex and gender can be different'.

They also let me know, for my interest, that as the ONS does not currently collect data on gender, they have proposed voluntary questions on sexual orientation and gender identity for the 2021 Census.

Their whole correspondence was very open, kind and respectful.

A few people responded to the original thread with intentions to write to the ONS. If they managed to do so, I'm wondering what other responses were had?

Apologies, i'm groggy. What is ONS?

Office for national statistics

That sounds like you've got a major bit of change there, barelove. Well done for writing.

It's a shame they've stuck with the use of the word "assigned" and not gone for observed, or at least said assigned on the basis of observed genitalia or similar, but it's fantastic that you got them to step back from saying that we "become" men and women.

Well done!

What relevance is ‘assigned’ to somebody with an intersex condition anyway? Say that somebody is born with ambiguous genitalia and they are ‘assigned’ female at birth but further investigation reveals they are male. This result may be just hours after birth. They are just male, then, aren’t they? They have always been male even though they were misidentified for a few hours. What use is it to anyone to know that they were incorrectly identified at birth? Instead of simply correcting their records this mistake will now follow them through life every time they have to fill in a form.

Oh well done.

Always Intersex conditions were not always quickly identified and a few aren't, even now. So from their perspective, I can see that "assigned" might feel truer than "identified" or "recorded". Especially since there is currently no way for someone with an intersex condition to have their birth certificate corrected if a mistake comes to light down the line.

I suspect intersex people are being used here as a shield to protect language that was really chosen under pressure from TRA groups, not intersex groups, but the argument may still be true even if it isn't the primary reason.

What relevance is ‘assigned’ to somebody with an intersex condition anyway?

My understanding is that the term 'assigned female/male at birth' was coined by intersex activists to describe the experiences of intersex people who had their genitalia surgically altered as infants in order to make their bodies better conform to a given sex category.

The term makes no sense outside of that particular experience, and certainly not when applied to the vast majority of people who are unambiguously male or female.

It was appropriated by trans activists to push their ideology that sex can be altered at will, and it is really alarming how so many official bodies, including medical ones, have taken it up so enthusiastically.

I think this goes beyond misguided attempts at sensitivity/political correctness. I think there is an unacknowledged longing in Western societies to obscure the immutable reality of our sexed biology, and to transmute it into something that is fully under human control. The widespread preference for 'gender' as a synonym for 'sex' is also evidence of the deep nature of this desire.

Partly it's about embarrassment over acknowledging sex and genitalia, but I also think it is rooted in fear of the body and our animal nature, since both remind us that we are mortal. Either way, official erasure of the sexed body in language points us inevitably towards transhumanism.

Oh i forgot about that. I wrote as well. No reply as yet though

Interesting explanation for the origins of 'assigned at birth', Donkeyskin. The difficulty is that it would be impossible to find a phrase that would offend nobody. I think the important thing is that sex is recorded as well as gender and if that means using 'assigned' then it seems the best compromise.

Good work barelove!

Excellent! I work for ONS and they really, really strive to get all wording spot on. It's incredibly important.

Brilliant work!

To expand on DonkeySkin’s post, in the past babies with genuine ambiguous genitalia were “assigned” a sex based on what the surgeon thought they could make out of the tissue present, regardless of what chromosome results were returned. If they didn’t think there was enough phallic tissue to make a functioning penis, then it was decided they would make it into a vulva/clitoris instead and testes were removed. It was usually this way round. It would have been unusual for even the most virilised female to have enough clitoromegaly to make a penis. This was surgery with the aim of “normalising” things, making things functional enough from a urinary perspective but not considering the implications for sexual function or identity. Other “assigned” problems are usually related to it going undiagnosed eg Caster Semenya.

As a result of this type of approach, many intersex advocates have successfully and quite rightly campaigned for this to stop: the child should be allowed to reach full maturity ie 18 before any decision on cosmetic corrective surgery is considered. It’s the complete opposite of the trans ideology which wants to undertake hormone treatments and surgery on children and teenagers, on perfectly normal healthy tissue with no ambiguity whatsoever. That’s why intersex advocates are so pissed off; they’ve campaigned for years to try and get doctors and surgeons to leave kids alone until they’re adults, and the TRAs come along saying “We are just like you! But give us surgery now!”

It’s worth noting that the majority of intersex/DSD conditions do NOT result in ambiguity and it’s not even an issue to record their sex as M or F, rather than I.

I don't understand, if they want to be inclusive of the tiny number of intersex people that they can't just write 'observed or assigned' at birth. Because for the overwhelming majority it's observed based on physical reality. In a tiny minority of cases this observation does not actually match the genetic sex.

Also, increasingly the genetic sex is known, for my DD2 we knew she was XX quite early on (I was an old second time mum so we did the harmony test). So that should be recognised too. Sex can be absolutely known due to testing during pregnancy now and I think that these tests will become ever more common.

Good work barelove.

I was late off the mark as I was ill at the time and wanted to be fully coherent before I wrote so have not heard back yet.

I am aware that at least one UK intersex group told the TRAs to fuck off with their appropriation of their genuine, measurable medical condition. I think the ONS needs to consult with them how to be inclusive of that group of people without leaving the door wide open for others to exploit. I wonder whether they have approached them or just made decisions on their behalf.

Good one. Of course we don't learn to be our sex. We are our sex.

This confusion of terms is being pushed deliberately. This isn't to do with the ONS but I'm sure is similar to what's happening to lots of institutions

twitter.com/Scottish_Women/status/1132958234376048641

Well done

Good work OP and you've spurred me on to use some of my BH filing a similar complaint with ONS. As PP who works there said, accuracy is very important to their work. The verb to assign is just plain wrong for 99.9% of us (figure taken from emeritus professor Steve Jones' recent comment). How can it make sense to use it of the entire population?

Also, as a former midwife who observed & recorded the sex of many babies, will all this use of 'assigned', with its connotations of human choice, come back and bite me and colleagues when someone decides we got it wrong and are to blame? That would once have sounded ridiculous but now it seems perfectly possible.

"The UK government define sex as something which is assigned at birth".

I cannot give them the benefit of the doubt that their phrase is just their lazy and clumsy way of saying "sex is biologically determined at conception". I think their view is rooted in identity politics and surrender to unscientific transgender ideology.

Assuming they probably mean that birth is when the baby leaves the mother's body (but we can't be sure because biology doesn't seem to be the ONS/UK Government's strong point), they give the impression that all people are sexless until they leave their mother's body, and therefore that all people are infertile with no hope of reproduction unless a doctor or nurse declares "girl" or "boy" at their birth. But people sexually reproduce with or without the opinions or observations of doctors, nurses or civil servants. It is as if any baby born in e.g. a field in China or Africa with no doctor or nurse present (typical for births in many rural communities throughout history) would never be able to have children. But there is plenty of evidence that lack of medical professionals assigning such people has not actually prevented such people sexually reproducing. Millions of people were born, lived, sexually reproduced and died before the first doctors and nurses observed sex at the earliest opportunity after the baby left the mother's body. Sex is not a social construct, sex is a biological reality.

As far as I'm aware, every human has a set of sex chromosomes. They can be XX, XY or some other limited combination of X and/or Y, but whatever arrangement a person has, sex does not start at birth, even if the person has a disorder of sexual development.

So, what is ONS/UK Government's name for the biological process that gives cells in every human body a particular set of chromosomes, even before birth? Do the government statisticians deny this occurs? If they don't know biology then I think their opinions about sex are worthless.

I'm amazed that a governnment agency is spouting such sexist lies. TRAs must literally be planted at every level in every gov department for this kind of blatant bullshit to go unquestioned. Well done OP

One of the reasons for IVF is so that the parents can chose the sex of the child if they are carrying diseases that affect one sex or the other. The sex of the embryo can be determined when it is too small to see with the human eye.

The idea that the child is in quantum superposition of male and female until a doctor collapses the wavefunction is woo.

So no more replies from the ONS yet but plenty from the ever articulate women on mumsnet.

Thanks for inspiring me yet again. Their complaints manager considerately added that if I wasn't satisfied with the response I received I could contact the ONS Director of Communications.

If none of you mind, I'll use some of your common sense reasoning against continuing to use the word 'assigned' and be doing just that