"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.

You're the science teacher - leverage that - you know what a fact is and what it is not!

Also have you seen this in the TES - more on the point of school's responsibilities to kids who think they are trans than on the teaching of sex as a concept. The one obviously does have an effect on another though. If you teach things that are not facts the school could be seen as proselytizing for a particular political point of view too (which is what happened in that PSHE lesson).

www.tes.com/magazine/analysis/general/trans-students-legal-risks-schools

All power to you - and thank you for sticking your head above the parapet.

My points still stand. Whether it’s a sonagrapher or a HCP at birth, they are still assigning a sex to what they observe. Obviously, if you have genetic testing done, the sex is determined, not assigned.

No, there is no value judgement involved at all and there is no "guiding of choice". An infant is male or female.

Are children 'assigned' ten fingers and ten toes at birth, or are those numbers observed and recorded?

I have a mental image of the spare finger/toe box being raided in case there aren't enough for the medics to 'assign'...

So if no one "assigns" the sex at all, does the child remain sexless?

Tbh anyone who can claim to have had four children (if that’s actually true!) and still believe in any of this assigned at birth stuff, has bigger problems with cognitive dissonance than any of us can solve on this thread 🤷‍♀️

Yes you can if you so wish decide that the moon is the Sun, but that would be what we call the wrong decision and you’d be an idiot to mix the two up. But silliness aside, there are many cases in life where we decide something is x, but then later find out it is actually y and we made the wrong decision.

Deciding doesn’t change the nature of a thing. It’s merely your conclusion as to what that thing is, and is of course subject to the possibility error.

Hypothetically that is.

Obviously, if you have genetic testing done, the sex is determined, not assigned.

What complete logic fail. By your logic, the person in the lab, who isolates the sex chromosomes, is also assigning the sex, by recalling the knowledge that if the test returns two X chromosomes the sex is female.

Sigh. Yes there is a value judgement going on. You are looking at a dick and so you make the value judgement that males have dicks ergo this baby is a male.

No, I never said that “recalling knowledge” is assigning, you said that and I gave up on you as too dim to understand what the term assigning means.

"But silliness aside, there are many cases in life where we decide something is x, but then later find out it is actually y and we made the wrong decision."

No they made an incorrect observation. No decision involved.

Then I suppose there’d be a blank spot on their birth certificate. The child would have a sex, but it would not be recorded because you can’t record M or F until someone makes a decision and assigns a sex to the baby.

Haven't read the whole thread. I'd advise you contact the Safer Schools Alliance who know how to deal with this kind of situation.

No, I never said that “recalling knowledge” is assigning, you said that and I gave up on you as too dim to understand what the term assigning means.

No need for insults, it’s your logic that has holes. What’s the difference between a human seeing a penis in a newborn, and a human seeing XY chromosomes on a lab result, that makes the former “assigned” and the latter “determined”?

No, they didn’t make an incorrect observation. They observed big shiny disc in sky. The observations themselves are still correct. But then they failed to come to the correct conclusion that said big shiny disc in the sky is the moon instead of the sun. They made the wrong decision as to what the disc is, and so assigned the wrong name to it.

I never mentioned a big shiny disc.

That was *your logic” not mine and I knew it had holes in it. Perhaps deliberately so.

The difference between depending on physiological observation and depending on genetic testing is that in the first it is proven to be not 100% accurate and thus you can only provisionally assign a sex whereas in the latter, it is proven to be 100% accurate and this you can definitely determine a sex.

Men have penises is a “value judgment” now <sigh>

Only if you believe in the whole daft circular non-logic edifice of gender ideology, unfortunately. In which male = penis is a “value judgment” because sometimes penises are female because some people believe sex isn’t about genitals because “assigned at birth” because…and it goes on. Methinks some basic reading in history and theory of science would help here, but I cannot really be bothered to provide a reading list for those seemingly assigned lazy thinking at birth.

Also for some reason this graphic comes to my mind right now, I don’t know why…. 🤷‍♀️

It's not a choice though. It's an observation - the word 'choice' implies the chooser has a decision to make and can go either ways.

And what about those where we knew from around week 14## what the sex of the baby was? Do we get to reject the term 'assigned at birth' and use 'determined at 14 weeks' instead? DA14W Why should those kids be mis-labelled?

##approx 14 weeks - don't remember the exact week but I can check records if we are being pedantic about it

Yikes, I didn't expect so many replies so quickly! I will catch up properly when I can, but thank you to everyone who has contributed.

I think I'll ask for it to be changed to "determined by genes at conception, generally recorded at birth". I've already had to clear up some misconceptions with year 7 reproduction (some thought you could literally change sex) so I'll aim for that angle.

Don’t know what you are on about. I am using “value judgement” in its meaning and usage as a tentative judgment based on a considered appraisal of the information at hand, taken to be incomplete and evolving

There are three conclusions possible at birth male, female or not sure. For not sure genetic testing will be carried out and then it’s either male or female or extremely rarely genetically indeterminable.
The baby can then be registered as male or female. Assigning sex is not the responsibility of either medics or parents, it should be the choice of the child when they are able to make that choice.
Just because their gonads are not physically normal doesn’t mean they should be reassigned to fit the norm.
So I agree “assign” is totally incorrect. It implies that you can choose the sex of your baby at birth regardless of the anatomy they present with.

That was your logic” not mine and I knew it had holes in it. Perhaps deliberately so*

No, it was yours. You said it was about what your brain knows. You said:

Knowing what something you observe means or what something you observe is requires an internal decision making thought process

So it’s your logic of saying recalling your knowledge is what determines the assignation.

The difference between depending on physiological observation and depending on genetic testing is that in the first it is proven to be not 100% accurate and thus you can only provisionally assign a sex whereas in the latter, it is proven to be 100% accurate and this you can definitely determine a sex.

The presence of testes unequivocally determines a child is male. The observation that a child has a vulva is accurate to 99.9% that a child is female. This is determining sex, in the same way that someone observing lab results of chromosomes is. The NIPT is not 100% accurate at all. This is very clear when you’re counselled when having the test regarding trisomies.