Assigned at birth

[HDDD]

I have a real issue with this phrase. It seems to have crept into common parlance. I've just read it in a news report on SKY. I've seen it in a questionnaire I had to fill in for my local authority. It was in the charity commission doc about LGBA.
It's blatantly not true. Sex is observed, not assigned. I get that some people will 'identify' as different to their sex as observed at birth. I feel the need to 1. collect instances of use of the phrase 2. challenge use of the phrase. Anyone with me?

“Assigning” a sex implies that the midwife could have assigned either of the two alternatives, and the arbitrary decision is hers. Obviously nonsense.
The sex was determined at conception, so the midwife has no leeway to assign anything. She can only observe a pre existing fact. The mother often asks her not to announce it anyway, as she wants to see for herself.

One of my babies I had NO IDEA until I'd popped (despite multiple ultrasounds)

The other one peed across the screen in the way that only boys can long before birth

I saw an episode of One Born Every Minute where the parents had the sex wrong for the first few minutes, before they realised their mistake. I guess that girl could literally argue she was assigned male at birth.

“HDDD

For anyone (like me) who had not seen the Nursing and Midwifery Council response to the Women and Equalities
Committee’s inquiry into Reform of the Gender Recognition Act
www.nmc.org.uk/globalassets/sitedocuments/consultations/2021/nmc-submission-to-women-and-equalities-committee-inquiry-into-reform-of-the-gender-recognition-act.pdf
Good grief.“

I read some though not all. They do say ‘assigned’.

A lot seems not to be about children born though, but about their belief that gender recognition should be on the basis of self-identification - carried as quickly and automatically as possible - for the benefit of their own professional body which includes trans people and hires trans people.

I knew for sure the sex of my DD way before birth, as I had an amnio.

The eventual sex of ivf babies may be known before the embryo is implanted, and even selected, in the case of sex-linked conditions....or in some countries, to avoid unwanted girls.

'Assigned' is simply the wrong word, as the OP and PP say. It's deeply disingenuous, to say the least.

Shizuku or anyone else who is in favour of terms such as "sex assigned at birth" being applied to everyone... What exactly is the point of it in your eyes? How exactly do you feel this helps trans people?

You're sort of right.The Y chromosome is male determining in humans. The normal state of affairs (in 99.9% of conceptions) is XX is female, XY is male. Women's eggs are always X (female, obviously, as they are female) and that egg is always "female". Because human males have 2 different chromosomes, an X and a Y, the sperm get one or the other (they're like half a normal cell), so an average bloke has half "male potential" sperm and half "female potential" sperm. So if the X egg gets fertilized by an X sperm - you get a female girl baby. If it happens to be a Y sperm that gets there first, you get an XY and a male baby boy.

DSDs (disorders/difference of sexual development) are when this usual state of affairs goes awry/different in some way or another. This can be XY males that can't metabolise testosterone so can appear female (to varying degrees) or something non-standard at the chromosome level like XXY or XXX or XXXY or whatever where, apart from in one very rare condition, the Y chromosome is still male-determining. So you're right, intersex people are still male (Y chromosome there somewhere) or female (no Y chromosome involved) - apart from in one very rare condition where there is a Y chromosome but complete insensitivity to testosterone where to all intents and purposes they are the same as females/no Y chromosome. But they are not the same as bog standard females (XX) or males (XY) at the (fundamental) chromosome level, despite being male or female.

It's a complex process with lots of possible effects further downstream from gene expression involving hormones and receptors and possible disorders there.

"Assigned at birth" though is laughable - mother nature has already weighed in long before random doctors/nurses get a look.

sorry, that was in reply to YouSetTheTone

@AssassinatedBeauty

For both my children, at the moment of birth there was no announcement or assigning. Just cleaning up and weighing, and someone saying out loud whilst writing it down on a wristband something along the lines of "male baby, 3.75kg born 9.39pm". I knew they were boys from the 20 week scan onwards. The observing of sex is exactly the same as observing the baby's weight.

Indeed. DC3 was born so quickly that the midwife only managed to get one glove on (and I only just kicked my shoes off to get on the bed) so the arrival was a bit chaotic.

I don't remember any announcement of sex - the midwife had to run off to the next lady. They didn't manage to find me any blankets to help as I went into shock so we gave up and went home.

DC3 has started bleeding occasionally from their 'nethers' now and gets proper grumpy so I'm assuming that DC is a uterus-haver who is menstruating. Fingers crossed!! If not, we're in trouble.

I'll keep you updated.

'Assigned' is simply the wrong word, as the OP and PP say. It's deeply disingenuous, to say the least.

I suspect many of those who use the word have not experienced birthing a child themselves (from the uterus end of the experience since 'birthing' is similar to 'marrying' and can relate to the person delivering said child or conducting said ceremony).

I find most who have experienced it have a very realistic view of the sex categories. For others, it remains this thing that is non-tangible to them and they can detach it from reality all they want.

I Could be talking bollocks too, but that is my observation from watching these discussions over the past couple of years.

'Assigned at birth' is one of my top problems with gender ideology. It's not true. It is being imposed from top down in order to separate the idea of a human being from the fact of its sex.

There was no health professional at my own birth, and at the birth of my son there was no announcement. There's no connection with actual fact in this profoundly dumb and insulting phrase

That's a good point. My friend's son was born in the back of her car in the hospital carpark with no one else present. How on earth did she know he was male with no one there to assign it?

I had slightly taken the ‘assigned’ aspect to be like it was decided by a ‘higher power’. Another way in which belief in gender ideology is like a religion.

As pp have pointed out - if it wasn’t ‘assigned’ by a higher power at the point of conception (sex is evident way before birth, obviously) and there was no midwife present to ‘assign’, then who assigns it? It’s all such bollocks.

I will be challenging any person or documents that use this wording to justify it.

In most circumstances, a midwife, parent or doctor checks the genitalia, observes the sex and states “It’s a girl” or “It’s a boy”. This demonstrates perfectly that the current attempt to change the meaning so that girl and woman are gender terms whereas female is a sex term is unsuccessful outside the bubble.

Outside the bubble, the vast majority of the world continues as if nothing has happened, and indeed are unaware that the bubble exists.

I wish I could think of the ideology bubble as being like Terry Pratchett’s reality bubble in Mort. In that book, a small alternate reality bubble is created, which then gradually contracts. Even those inside the bubble have problems keeping up with the alternate reality because they are somehow aware it’s wrong, and however hard those who want the alternate reality to persist fight, the bubble continues to contract until it finally becomes so small, it is no longer recognizable.

Unfortunately those inside the bubble here are influencing governments and laws while those outside remain blissfully ignorant of the fact that their rights are being removed and the actions inside the bubble affect everyone, unaware or not.

I always think of the Hogwarts sorting hat too with the word ‘assigned’!

I think the more people who object to words such as ‘assigned’ and ‘gender’ on forms instead of ‘sex’ - will maybe cause irritation on the organisation involved having to reply to letters/emails that it may bring about change. If nobody objects they’ll carry on using the wrong terms.

It's also stealing from a strand of feminism. The exposure of overmedicalisation of birth, particularly in the US but also here, was a campaign of real value and feminist influence in the 50s, 60s and 70s. We perhaps have a different perspective now because that campaign had to have corrections due to an overvaluing of 'natural' birth even when risks were being underestimated. But it meant that women who experienced that were receptive to the idea that health professionals' speech act of saying anything about the baby somehow represented the act of an overmighty culture. It was fascinating to see how the US phrase 'assigned at birth by a doctor' had to be adapted for the vast majority of births round the world where no doctor is involved. And the use of a genuine campaign for reduced intervention for babies with VSD to suggest that sex is somehow an imposed burden, not an observable fact.

Nodal thank you for the explanation about DSDs. I have a much clearer understanding of this now.

Interesting too - a fact which I took from one of Kellie-Jay Keen’s YouTube shows, and looked up to verify as I didn’t know - that a mother’s breast milk changes the composition slightly as to whether the baby is male or female. Isn’t nature/biology great ?

I think you're very right about the people using this terminology having never actually been pregnant or given birth. For many, many people the sex of their child is no surprise at birth, especially these days. What do they think all the silly "gender reveal" parties early on in the pregnancy are about?

Many/most people find out at various scans during the pregnancy that their child is a bit or a girl. Other people who have CVD or amnio actually find out what chromosomes the baby has so it's 100% clear before birth that the baby is male or female and this even picks up many DSDs and other genetic abnormalities, way, way before the birth. The harmony test etc has only increased the amount of people examining the chromosomal makeup of their baby before birth I would have thought.

I had CVS in 3/4 of my pregnancies so my children were fully karyotyped before birth, I remember reading the reports that indicated 23 pairs of normal chromosome with presence of a male determining Y chromosome. The random midwives at the birth who Id never met before didn't know I'd had the CVS but they still didn't do any assigning or even commenting on the sex of my babies as I'd ready told them that I knew the sex. Even my first pregnancy with no CVS of been told at multiple scans (because I'd ask) what sex my baby was.

The activists that invented the "assigned at birth" nonsense have obviously not been at many modern births and are harking back to very medicalised births in US, not here, where babies are delivered by doctors who probably do say "it's a girl!" or "there's an issue here as this baby's genitalia are ambiguous" - but they're not assigning anything, they are observing what in many cases was already known. And the random assigning of intersex babies hasn't happened for decades because their chromosomes are checked first now if there is any ambiguity.

that a mother’s breast milk changes the composition slightly as to whether the baby is male or female. Isn’t nature/biology great ?

Really, how does that work with boy/ girl twins?

This demonstrates perfectly that the current attempt to change the meaning so that girl and woman are gender terms whereas female is a sex term is unsuccessful outside the bubble.

This is kind of what I was saying before when asking (never did get an answer!) if there are no characteristics of being a woman, nobody asks me and I don’t tell anyone, how is it is that there’s no dispute that I’m a woman?

Similarly someone else the other day said something akin to: the bin? It’s between the woman in the stripy top and the man with the blue coat.
You don’t tend to hear: the bin? It’s between the female in the stripy top and the male with the blue coat.

I saw a news article the other day too, something along the lines of “an unknown man and woman were also involved”

These all show that the general public use the words men and women, for the sex of a person

@AssassinatedBeauty

For both my children, at the moment of birth there was no announcement or assigning. Just cleaning up and weighing, and someone saying out loud whilst writing it down on a wristband something along the lines of "male baby, 3.75kg born 9.39pm". I knew they were boys from the 20 week scan onwards. The observing of sex is exactly the same as observing the baby's weight.

I was going to make the same point. Presumably people who talk about sex (or gender) being assigned at birth also use the same language when they talk about the baby's weight, length or hair colour. Or what about even the baby's entire existence? Is that a fact or do you wait for it to be assigned by a midwife?

Terry Pratchett’s reality bubble in Mort

Oh, thanks for that memory. Love TP.

I was thinking of him yesterday. One of his other quotes always seems apposite in the way some of these Woke people operate. From the ever-sensible Vimes - "Just because someone's a member of an ethnic minority doesn't mean they're not a nasty small-minded little jerk."

Vimes wouldn't put up with this nonsense.

Or what about even the baby's entire existence?

What about clownfish? If they're all assigned male at birth, does it not count if they change sex later?

You see if humans could change sex, then it would be clear what we as "sex matters"/GC people are worrying about is current sex, not original sex.

(Although I could imagine there could be some difference between "born as male" and "converted to male later" humans in this hypothetical universe, the current sex would be a big deal.)