"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.

@Discovereads Do you believe that doctors assign some children disabilities at birth? Because if they're assigning sex, then they must also be assigning disabilities, right?

Again another lie, there were no rights or wrongs of geography or morality. There was no mention of moral or social.

The entire paragraph reads:
”Value judgment also can refer to a tentative judgment based on a considered appraisal of the information at hand, taken to be incomplete and evolving—for example, a value judgment on whether to launch a military attack or as to procedure in a medical emergency.[2] In this case the quality of judgment suffers because the information available is incomplete as a result of exigency, rather than as a result of cultural or personal limitations.”

Yes in the case of birth defects. This too would be observed, the disability assigned and recorded. Such as cleft lip, missing limb, club foot, etc.

I teach RE. I start every lesson with the rider that religion - any religion - is a belief system. Some things can be proven, some can’t. It can be proven that Jesus was crucified, but not that he rose to heaven then returned to Earth.
RE teaching should not be about claiming one religion is the truth.

Hypothetically you can. But that would be an incorrect choice.

So a chain of three people:
Person 1 looks at baby and describes their observations to person 2.
Person 2 processes that information and “assigns” the sex and tells person 3.
Person 3 records it.

Is that correct? 🤣🤣

So can person 1 see a baby in a yellow top and yellow bow and observe Wiggles fandom and tell it to person 2, who assigns them to be the youngest member of the Wiggles Fan Club, and person 3 records it in their baby records?

Are these two uses of the word “assigned” the same?

Most tedious derail ever

To go back to the OP's question about how to deal with this in schools, most when presented with a dictionary definition of the word "assign" can see that it does not match with what doctors do regarding the sex of a child at birth. Here is another helpful way to explain it at a school level:

A child sits a Maths test with 100 questions. They get 75 questions right, and 25 questions wrong. The teacher who marks the test writes 75% on the top page. The teacher has not given or assigned the score to that child. They have simply recorded what is already the case. Even if the test were left at the bottom of a drawer and were never marked, it would still be 75% correct. The teacher has recorded the score, not assigned it. Later on, the teacher may decide on a pass/fail mark or on grade boundaries. These are subjective and decided by the teacher. So the teacher looks at 75% and assigns the test a Grade B. The 75% is recorded, and the B Grade is assigned.

Again another lie,

The para you now quote in full really doesn't say what you seem to think. it does reference the advisability of a specific target/strike, the word whether gives you that concept! Some points to consider would be whether the site had been correctly, tightly, identified and any people who may be injured, I gave them as obvious examples!

I did not lie. I expanded, expounded. It's called trying to make something clear, to explain.

Can you post an example of this - just one will do, with references.

Both of my children’ so sexes were determined by amniocentesis well before they were born, and even before any external genitalia coupled be seen on a scan. No one assigned anything to them.

Even if Discovereads' interpretation of "assigned" were correct, this is not how it is being used in PSHE lessons.

Children are taught that their sex is what a doctor is assigned to them at birth, in fact I have seen that as a supposed definition: "sex is what a doctor assigns you at birth".

This must imply sex is unreliable and irrelevant -> gender identity is paramount.

In so expounding, you must have missed the criteria of exigency, which would mean there isn’t time for all of that. It’s a value judgement partially because it has to be done on the spot and urgently.

Oh but they did. The person doing the amniocentesis did, what was it now? A look and a thingy and a value judgement based on the terpsichory of the value 2 and a flummery was observed and deduced. It's elementary...

Yes, exactly. See my earlier post. So many heartstring tugging trans stories involve “the doctor got it wrong” like little Jazz Jennings all those years ago. No. They didn’t. They got your sex correct. And now you don’t like it. Which is fine. But don’t change the reality of what happened and don’t tell children that it’s something that can be considered to be the original mistake if they aren’t happy with themselves somehow.

In so expounding, you must have missed the criteria of exigency, which would mean there isn’t time for all of that. It’s a value judgement partially because it has to be done on the spot and urgently.

Erm, you are now wandering very far from your starting point. Urgency has no bearing on the definition of "value judgement". That was a caveat to the wider, military application and explanation!

Look, this is pointless. Amusing for a while, but pointless and I feel like I am belabouring you with something you cannot perceive. I am not a bully, so I will leave it, with a sincere apology.

Same for me. This could even have been done at a scan. If the obstetrician caught sight of the genitals, they could have shared the news that I was having a boy.

@Discovereads we obviously have our differences, but I admire your tenacity and work ethic.

That is depressing. Thank goodness for Science teachers who displace fiction with fact! It is amazing how people are spreading this mendacious propaganda, and influencing impressionable youngsters.

Go down the route of asking them for clarification. Ask what they mean by assigned at birth. Ask for evidence of what they're basing the claim on. Going on defensive won't work.

Thank goodness for Science teachers who displace fiction with fact!

Having taught Physics in a Catholic school I'm quite versed in separating scientific knowledge from faith-based ideas, and hopefully I'm also quite clear in communicating the differences to children!

This discussion has been way more complicated than it needs to be. When teaching children we try to keep the language as simple and clear as possible. Arguments over the definition of the word "assigned" simply make me even more convinced that it is an inappropriate word in this context. It is vital that children know what biological sex is, and that it cannot be changed.

I do think this is being presented differently than a philosophical or religious belief.

If youngsters are being told, or led to believe, that they can literally change their sex (here and now on planet earth), then that is fiction being presented as a fact.

The fact is that the use of “assigned” is a deliberate one here. It’s used because trans-rights activists have pushed the fiction that sex really is mutable, and that it genuinely was a choice being made in the maternity ward when the sex was “assigned.”

The semantic argument around whether you can stretch the meaning of that word far enough to be true is neither here nor there, in practice it’s used to support the lie that doctors really are choosing which sex, and that the “innate” one is often different.

As above, we have other, more accurate, clearer, and more usual words that should be used in education. There is no reason whatsoever to say that sex is assigned.

And this, folks, is why we don’t use (poorly written and easily misunderstood) Wikipedia pages as academic sources. 🤷‍♀️

I introduced deduced. I also like determined. I'm not happy with the nuances of assigned which imply a simple scientific process is less objective, and somewhat more arbitrary than it actually is. Sex is in nearly 100% of cases unambiguously determined correctly from the evidence. The number of cases where it is deduced incorrectly is miniscule.
The word assign has unfortunate nuances because it is used in other contexts where assignment is arbitrary, or where mis-assignment is much more likely.