"Assigned female at birth"

[Lyonesse2020]

I have just realised that I was not "assigned female at birth". I was born in the 1970s, so my parents would just have been told "It's a girl!".

When did people start being assigned a sex at birth? And if it was only in the last ten years or so, doesn't that mean that the vast majority of people who have sought transition were never assigned to the wrong sex?

Well I wonder what happens in the delivery room now?
"Is it a boy or a girl?"
"Err...?"

It is not a thing. It was only done for a vanishingly small number of children born with indeterminate sexual characteristics in the days before DNA testing. Now we know much more about foetal development so can determine sex pretty accurately and have better knowledge and understanding of any differences of development. So it is now very, very vanishingly rare.

However, it is a convenient expression to be repurposed by anyone who believes that how one expresses oneself now overrides one's sex.

If everyone is 'assigned a sex' at birth it is logically easier to 'change' it or claim it as wrong. This is all a belief system as sex cannot be changed. Only appearance.

It's not a thing. I have done literally thousands of baby checks. I can only think of a couple of occasions where there was any doubt as to the baby's sex, and in those cases ultrasounds for gonads, and blood tests for chromosomes (and some other bloods looking for possible health problems) rapidly revealed the babies' sex. It really winds me up, misappropriating the pain of people with differences in sexual differentiation, and their families.

What? I don’t really understand what you are saying? If the midwife said ‘it’s a girl’, then surely that assigns a sex? Your post makes no sense.

That is not assigning a sex. That is recognising the sex that nature has already decided.

In over 40 years of being a midwife my mother said she only came across 1 baby that they couldn’t identify the sex of at birth.

I wonder if they have a quota?
I mean if they're assigning then that's possible right?

@Bonnealle

What? I don’t really understand what you are saying? If the midwife said ‘it’s a girl’, then surely that assigns a sex? Your post makes no sense.

'Assign' means 'allocate', not 'recognise'.

“Midwife Jane, we’re running short on girl babies this quarter, the next 5 babies you deliver are to be boys, ok?”

If the people who threw this stupid phrase around just stopped and thought about it for even a teeny tiny second.

Realising it's widespread adoption was complete and utter nonsense was one of the big 'scales falling from the eyes' moments for me.

Of course that makes no sense at all! I mean, they’re to be girls!

It comes from the minds of people who refuse to accept that words mean actual things and not just what they feel they should mean.

well the hospital forms would have assigned you as male or female or ambiguous based on your external genitalia.
the little name card would have said f/c for female child or m/c for male child and all supporting documentation on your mothers and your records would say female or male so yes an educated person has assigned you something at your time of birth. statistics are kept.
go on ancestry check out as many birth certificates as you please and all will say male or female. even those baptized and recorded in the church register will say boy or girl.

so yes an educated person has assigned you something at your time of birth

No, they have simply recorded your sex.

@fallfallfall

well the hospital forms would have assigned you as male or female or ambiguous based on your external genitalia. the little name card would have said f/c for female child or m/c for male child and all supporting documentation on your mothers and your records would say female or male so yes an educated person has assigned you something at your time of birth. statistics are kept. go on ancestry check out as many birth certificates as you please and all will say male or female. even those baptized and recorded in the church register will say boy or girl.

No, they observed what sex you were and recorded it.

'Assigned' has a distinctly different meaning.

@Kendodd

Well I wonder what happens in the delivery room now? "Is it a boy or a girl?" "Err...?"

‘Sorry we’re not allowed to use that sort of language in here’ 🙄

Check out the Brook website. It states both sex and gender are assigned at birth.

Didn't happen to me or any of my dc...

I thought the phrase was gender assigned at birth.

Is it sex now? I'm not surprised. After all taking issues from other groups and turning to different unrelated purpose is standard. In this case it's people with DSDs. Prob bolstered by idea sex is very very hard to determine and on a spectrum and etc.

The fact that loads of people do, and have through history. Given birth without any HCPs and known perfectly well if it's a girl or a boy is generally not considered.

Sex and gender are assigned at birth.
Fucking hell.

Yep, and apparently the gender you're assigned at birth is a set of characteristics associated with your sex.

RAGE

@CheeseMmmm the Brook website does indeed state sex is a spectrum....

Neither my DC nor I were assigned anything at birth. Our sex was observed and noted. (Most recent birth was 2006)

Well in the old world gender WAS the sex role. And means loads of things for any baby due to their sex.

Sex is what it is. Observed. Kids running around no clothes on. Everyone knows which is which.

Gender / sex role is what gets eg so many female babies aborted.

I think it's one of those things where the wording is deliberately out to confuse.

Assign is different to observe.

If you walk into a room with a dog and a cat in it, you can't look at them and say "I assign this one to be a cat" (pointing to the dog), "and this one to be a dog" (pointing at the cat.). They are already a cat and a dog. You just look and see which is which. You can't pick to label them the wrong way round.

You can assign them a name - fido the cat, and felix the dog - whatever you like. That's the assigning bit. Not the bit you're just looking at and noting down factually.

Characteristics that they've assigned presumably randomly no?
Or based on observations...

I don't know whether to laugh or cry, it's bonkers.