"Assigned female at birth" - gender neutral baby announcements

[BlingLoving]

Someone on my facebook announced birth of her and her partner's new baby (they are both women. Although I'm not sure if they identify as women or something else). Gender neutral names. In the comments, in response to a comment, she has said "[babyname] was assigned female at birth" and I just want to scream.

I'm not hugely active on these issues but I do think that saying girls have vaginas and boys have penises is a pretty uncontroversial statement personally. And it makes me sad. I love that she'll try to bring up her child to not confirm to gender stereotypes, I just don't understand why to do that the child can't be called "her/she" or be accepted as a GIRL.

Sorry. Rant over. I know a lot of you will get it.

They’re probably champing at the bit to answer questions and “educate” everyone. Ignore the buggers; it’ll drive them mad.

Very wise advice.

That term is such crap.

"Oh wow! How did you decide who got to assign the gender? Did one of you choose the name and the other choose the gender? Such a big decision!!"

[another comment two minutes later]

"🤦‍♀️ I just realised you obviously didn't really mean 'assigned' ... I actually believed for a second that people were really assigning/choosing a set of gender stereotypes for their kids at birth these days, how ridiculously regressive and sexist would that be?!! 😂

I'm not in on the 'assigned' joke (hard to tell truth from satire these days!) but since you said 'female' you must mean that you had a baby girl! Congratulations on your daughter!"

What Pope and several others have said. How very regressive of them to even mention gender at all, seeing as that is a societal construct, and gender stereotypes are harmful to both women and men. Far more progressive to simply state her biological sex.

Maybe they assigned the child female for selfish reasons, eg there’s a better chance she’ll care for them in their old age.

Much as I try to avoid pink clothing for my friends' baby girls, if I were in your circumstances I'd be inclined to pick the most vibrant pink, frilliest monstrosity I could find, and give it to them saying "well, you were so insistent you'd assigned your child a gender..."

Maybe they tossed a coin?

Babies don't 'look' female or male at birth. They just look like squishy little frogs. Having said that, 'if you hear hooves, don't look for zebras' - if there is no evidence to the contrary, a vagina = girl and penis = boy. Intersex conditions are rare.

I think 'assigned female at birth' is better than 'we're bringing our child up gender neutral so none of you are being told what's between their legs...'

“It’s a girl!” Or “It’s a boy!” is even better.

Wouldn't you be super surprised though if it was a boy and they'd decided to raise it as a girl to avoid all the hassle of deciding later he was trans. Now he can be a trendy MtF trans without the hormones and surgery.

Poor them, dealing with a newborn is overwhelming enough without carrying the weight of wokeness on one's post-natal shoulders. Agree with the advice to leave them be with their baby and their cognitive dissonance, really, but I would be fascinated to know if they regard themselves as having done the "assigning" themselves and if not, who?

Have they given it an obviously girls name, op? Is it an actual girl, or have they decided to “assign” a female gender to a male baby?
It’s a sign of this whole bloody madness that I’m not actually sure whether this child who has been assigned female is a boy or a girl 🤔
In the old fashioned sense, of course.

When I gave birth the first time, DH and the midwives thought that I should be the one to 'discover' the sex. I, however, didn't realise that a girl's labia is really swollen at birth, due to hormones. That, along with a healthy amount of gas and air, saw me announcing "It's a boy!!!" to stunned and awkward silence. DH coughed, which prompted me to look again..."It's a girl!!!" Everyone started congratulating me

To clarify, my sense is that the parents are trying to be gender neutral and that when they say "assigned female at birth" they mean that's what the hospital has decided.

As far as I am concerned, this means the baby is a girl. But I am 90% certain that future Facebook posts will refer to her as "they" so that the baby can decide later if "they" are male or female.

They sound like a pair of tedious farts, tbh.

But the hospital doesn't 'decide'

Human beings have known the sex of their babies since forever!

Your sex is a neutral fact, for all but a handful of intersex people it is straightforward.

Gender is what, exactly? Sex stereotypes? A feeling in your head? Seems totally unreasonable to put that on a baby.

How are we going backwards so fast?

Just block them now & get it over with. You will be saving yourself years of irritation with their woke tediousness.

It's just another way to set mothers up to be blamed. 'You assigned me female/male!'

It's also a bizarre projection of the tendency, in the gender-believing world, to be incredibly controlling. As if we peer at our newborns with full knowledge of their future social contagion, and willfully assign them a sex despite knowing that they shall one day come to view that as violence.

I cannot express how irritable gender nonsense makes me. (I have a gender critical psychotherapist now, so I guess I can and will be expressing it to her!)

Lord - you are right. But I won't because a) it's a window and b) she makes me think on various issues. But yes, it might come to this later if the irritation continues!! 😀

I'd be tempted to ask why they didn't go for assigning male to ensure better pay, safety etc. But as pp says, it's not worth replying

I'm sure they understood the biological reality of sex in order to have their daughter.

I do wonder what would happen if a couple decided that they would like to assign their son to be a girl. As everything is all neutral it shouldn't matter should it. However, I suspect that they would be told that they can't choose the assignment, that the assignment is in fact, an observation of fact.

Did they use a Hogwarts Sorting Hat?

Or a Hogwash Sorting Hat

Is there any chance the child is intersex, as the "assigned at birth," language was originally used for intersex conditions (before being appropriated)?

I think I'd tread carefully until that was ruled out, I'd maybe act like I assumed that's what they meant. Obviously, you know them best, so can judge the motives, but just in case...

It would hardly be necessary to announce it to all and sundry if that were the case, would it?