"Assigned at birth" - challenging it at school

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Has anyone successfully challenged the use of this terminology in a school? I teach science in a secondary school and I've just overheard a non-science teacher explaining to children in PSHE that biological sex is assigned at birth. I need to challenge it, but wondered if anyone has managed to get that particular terminology changed.

My view does not imply that the actual sex was open to question, but rather open to possible error.

Yep, I hate it, this language has been flat appropriated from certain intersex cases, where there's ambiguity at birth and hence a difficult decision/judgement to be made.

As already pointed out, sex is in trivially easy to observe at birth [and thereafter] in well, well over 99% of the population.

There isn't a decision making process. The dr/midwife/whoever sees the genitals. They don't then make a decision about what sex the baby is. They observe it, announce it to the parents and then note it down on the records.

English is my first language. And no, you are wrong. Observed doesn’t include assigning a label FFS, it is merely the action of watching/looking with no value judgement and no recording.

Open to error? You are being deliberately provocative now. How could anyone, let alone trained medical staff, when presented with a healthy baby boy with very prominent cock and balls, and with medical records saying he was XY, have made a mistake about what sex he was?

Yes there was a decision making process, the HCP observed your newborns physiology and then based on their observations they thought does this baby match the physiology of a boy or a girl? Then they decided, oh, it’s a boy.

Sex is recorded at birth. Sex is recorded prior to birth. Sex is recorded officially at birth.

Physiologically that will be accurate in 99+% of all cases. Recording sex is what happens.

At no point is it assigned. Nobody allocates, decides, chooses, earmarks, allots the sex of any baby.

This is the bloody point when GC women say language matters and fight tooth and nail against the bastardisation designed to obfuscate and lie.

We cannot teach kids that sex is a matter of choice at any time, by anyone.

Just an aside to @dolorsit

Did anyone watch a TV programme years ago about 'Joella'? A baby who's sex wasn't 'assigned' at birth because of cloacal exstrophy. The DNA test was XY but the parents were advised to raise the baby as a girl.

The baby is now an adult and male, and, understandable angry.

www.itv.com/news/anglia/2015-11-06/man-who-was-raised-a-girl-calls-for-ban-on-surgery-until-children-can-make-up-their-own-minds

As noted in my first post, the term assigned at birth (rather than determined) is used because rarely an error is made. And there are intersex disorders where you can genetically be F but have a penis and testicles like a M, and vice versa. There are more commonly cases where a M with small penis and undescended testicles is thought to be a F. Errors do happen. That is a fact.

Yes they do decide at some point, based on observations or data, which sex the baby is. Between deciding what sex it is, and recording, is the act of assigning the sex. The word “recording” doesn’t cover the decision making process behind choosing which sex to record.

English is my first language. And no, you are wrong. Observed doesn’t include assigning a label FFS, it is merely the action of watching/looking with no value judgement and no recording.

This is so utterly stupid. The sex is observed, then it’s recorded.

If you see a big, round, shiny silvery object in the night sky once a month, and write down what you saw, are you assigning that object the name “Moon”?

This is the bloody point when GC women say language matters

And yet you don’t seem to grasp the actual meanings of the words determine, observe, assign, and record. Protesting against assign by claiming it means something it does not mean at all is just plain idiotic (and a waste of protest efforts).

This. I find it horrifying it is being used generally. It must be really insulting to anyone with an ambiguous intersex condition.

The proportion of kids born with genitals which are so ambiguous as to require the involvement of a medical specialist is fairly similar to the proportion of kids born with some or all of a limb missing (see www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/birthdefects/ul-limbreductiondefects.html#:~:text=How%20Many%20Babies%20are%20Born,and%20lower%20limb%20reduction%20defects).

i.e. it's very much a real thing, and plays an important niche role in our understanding of human biology, but it'd be utterly laughable to present it as any kind of norm.

No theu don't decide ffs. Deciding implies their is a choice.
They observe the genitals (which in the vast majority of cases will 'match ' the bio sex) or look at the blood results if they've been done.

It's like when I say to my dc "what do you want for dinner? There's fish pie or fish pie". They laugh and say "ooooh. Fish pie please"
They haven't really made a decision although it seems that way.

There’s more to it than merely observe and record.

Oh do stop.

I defined assign, gave you a host of synonyms all of which involve a choice.

Recording what is observed at scan and at birth is not a choice. Semantics I know, but an important distinction that TRAs etc have taken advantage of to obfuscate the facts - human beings a sexually binary and a mistake in genetic coding (VSDs) does not change that any more than a one legged man would change the fact that human beings are a bipedal.

Carry in as long as you like, but you won't get anyone with an eye on the wider picture to agree with you, because we have seen this play out n so many other areas!

Blimey there's always a poster intent on starting an argument when none is needed. Maybe they misunderstand what the word assigned means.

"There’s more to it than merely observe and record."

There wasn't any more to it than that when I had my daughter.

There is a choice…M or F. The one the HCP decides to assign depends on what they observe physiologically.

It’s nothing like a free choice independent of classification criteria.

Exactly @dolorsit Yet more of the same old appropriation - and its robust defence allocating women as the real meanies!

It's not a choice though is it. It's two options. And they observe what one of those two options apply.

Two options to choose from is by definition a choice. The fact it’s not a random choice but based on classification criteria doesn’t make it not a choice.

I work in a very liberal school and I can tell you this does not happen. PSHE is taught by a biology teacher as it happens. The kids know that biological sex is observed and recorded at birth. However, they also know that their biology does not determine their interests, hair style, choice of clothes etc. We have a good number of non-conforming kids, but not a single trans child who has changed pronouns. It is such a relief after my previous school, where the trans trend had gripped the place and about 5% were trans (mostly girls wanting to be boys) and the school just went along with it, regardless of parental consent. In fact, in 2 cases, against the advice of a paediatrician.

Challenge it. Tell them the correct approach is that sex is observed and recorded at birth. Biological sex is immutable. Gender presentation is a social construct based on stereotypes, but children can break the stereotypes without having to change their gender presentation. A very tiny minority of people suffer from genuine gender dysphoria so distressing that it is better for them to live outwardly as if they are the opposite sex. Those people need our compassion and understanding. However, they don't need children to be taught factually inaccuracies.

There’s more to it than merely observe and record.

The only “more” is the person recording knowing that testes and penis means male, and vice versa. Knowing what something you observe means before you record it doesn’t mean you’re assigning. Knowing the big round shiny silvery thing in the night sky is the Moon doesn’t mean you’re assigning the celestial object the name “Moon”.

✌️how many fingers can you see? Knowing what fingers are, you can observe and record in your reply “two”. You can’t assign that number to be two.