Response from health care service providers "assigned at birth"

[FernlovingNodosaur]

Can you please give your thoughts on this matter and if your smart wording/thinking could add anything to my response letter.

I complained via email because I very recently received an unsolicited advert from my major health care provider see below for company. About a serious sex based disease yet the advert used assigned at birth manta.

Their response email below:

Dear Ms

I'm emailing you in response to your complain on Wednesday 2nd November regarding your unhappiness that we make reference to the term "assigned at birth" rather than classifying a specific gender.
I apologise if it has caused you any offence - it is not the service that Babylon aim to deliver.
Our marketing team are using the term "assigned at birth" to cause minimal offence to our many patients and we will be continuing to use this term. Unfortunately, we can't adapt marketing emails individually to each person's gender and have to use a neutral term.
If you have any further queries, please let me know.
Cheers,
Clinical Operations Team Leader.
**

Well she's been quite adament about it, even offering to show it to sporting officials. And she's hardly the only intersex person with XY chromosones and female genitalia. People (men apparantly) with Swyer Syndrome often have vagina, a uterus and fallopian tubes and almost always have a female gender identity despite being XY. Is this a delusion? Should they be forced to go through life legally recognised as men?

It seems the spirit of John Money is alive and well on this forum.

Gender is the delusion livvy

No it isn’t

So you're saying people with Swyer Syndrome who see themselves as women are deluded?

Do you even read posts?

Where have I said that chromosomes are the only indicator of sex?

I will repeat what I wrote on the last page.

Ultimately, the sex of a person, even one with a Difference of sex development is whether they have a body built around the production of small or large gametes. Regardless of whether those gametes are being produced, have been or will be.

A male has a body built around the production of small gametes regardless of whether those testes are internal or external.

why wouldn't you support surgery if the outcome would be more functional genitals which appear more inline the with the sex you've assigned them?

Do you understand that these surgeries were also quite high risk and caused major issues to those patients?

Do you understand that this board has many parents and as parents, many of us would be hesitant knowing what we do now to subject children to unnecessary processes?

For fucks sake Livvy. You seem so far deep in your entrenched prejudices of who posts on this board that you don't seem to be able to process the reality compared to your assumed one.

I don't actually think you have any depth of understanding about gender identity and how it impacts our children.

I'm sure all someone like Castor Semanya needs is for a gender critical person to sit down with her and explain she's really a man and he'll understand and get on with life happily in the male sex role relieved to be free of his delusions.

And BOOM! you have just fucking weaponised a person's medical condition as a gotcha!

again, I don't believe that you really know any of the nuance to what feminists actually are saying or what they believe. How surprising!

“Congratulations Mrs Smith…it’s a beautiful baby Two Spirit!”…said no doctor ever.

Caster Semenya has 5ARD and is male. There is no doubt that Caster Semenya has know they are male for some time.

Should they be forced to go through life legally recognised as men?

Please explain why a person who knows that they are male and has had the benefit of male puberty should play sport in the female sports category. Sport is not gendered at all. It is about the best bodies of each sex. Not gender.

Outside of sports, why shouldn't Semenya live as a woman if they are then not entering into female single sex spaces and that is what they want?

You seem very determined to try to frame people's views as absolutist. Whereas, the only absolutism I have seen lately is from posters such as yourself. And some of the absolute bollocks being posted that is.

the scientific consensus is that people do have a gender indentity in the sense of an inner feeling of what sex/gender they are.

That is bollocks.

That is bollocks.

Not least given that a lot of people are claiming to have a feeling of what sex/gender they are not. 😂 If it exists it's clearly not working for them, or they're not using it.

Outside of sports, why shouldn't Semenya live as a woman if they are then not entering into female single sex spaces and that is what they want?

So your position is that Castor or those with similar conditions should also use male toilets and changing rooms? Despite the fact she was assigned female at birth. You think a teenager with Swyer Syndrome should use a male changing room or be sent to a male prison despite probably having been brought up a girl and having a vagina and a uterus? Can I ask why because that seems unspeakably cruel?

So your position is that Castor or those with similar conditions should also use male toilets and changing rooms?

Absolutely, yes. Are you aware of Erik Schinegger, someone with the same condition? He's absolutely gone and done that.

He was treated cruelly by being excluded from male sport, despite being good enough. He was correctly excluded from female sport, as he acknowledges.

But no-one is wrongly excluding Semenya from male sports. The only hardship Semenya is suffering is "not being allowed to compete in female sports while not being female". The same rule as applied to everyone else.

And Semenya and Shinegger both have as much right to express themselves as any other male. Including how they dress, or what names they use. But they don't get any special privileges of entry to female spaces due to any incorrect "assignment at birth".

And surely you're not suggesting that "assignment at birth" should determine someone's treatment? That sounds rather... transphobic, you know.

Isn’t it fascinating when someone like livvy, who clearly has absolutely NO prior knowledge of DSDs, comes on the board and throws a couple of crappy articles in the mix, talks about “intersex” and pretends to be an expert?

Women often talk about suffering from Imposter Syndrome - even when we’re absolutely qualified and experienced in something, we feel we don’t deserve to be seen as an authority on that issue - that we are an imposter despite all our knowledge and skill - and find it hard to stand up and confidently share our expertise. One of the many delightful legacies of female socialisation.

livvy, OTOH, seems to be suffering from the polar opposite. What would you call that? I mean, if livvy is trying to present livvyself as an authority on DSDs, then we could say livvy actually is an imposter. But that term’s already in use. So… what can we say? Bullshitter’s Syndrome? Faker’s Syndrome?

Any thoughts?

Semenya has 5ARD.

Semenya knows they are male. They also process testosterone and can be perceived as having male cues.

Are you saying that Semenya , knowing this could cause distress to females, would continue to use female single sex spaces?

Are you saying they would be so disrespectful?

Gosh. You have a low opinion of some people.

“And surely you're not suggesting that "assignment at birth" should determine someone's treatment? That sounds rather... transphobic, you know.”

indeed!!!

Oh it very much is. Money didn't believe people had an inherent gender identity either and it was that belief, coupled with him hiding that his experiment he claimed proved this had been a failure. that led to the medical consensus that surgery on intersex children was the optimal treatment. Because it was thought that someone's gender identity would match their upbringing so it didn't matter what sex they were surgically assigned as long as they were raised in that sex. It wasn't until another researcher followed up on Money's experiment in 1997 that it was discovered to have been a failure and that the boy who was raised as a girl following surgery was not happy and did not accept his assigned gender.

When you mix up the words sex and gender you make no sense,

on this board they mean two different things…

Isn’t it fascinating when someone like livvy, who clearly has absolutely NO prior knowledge of DSDs, comes on the board and throws a couple of crappy articles in the mix, talks about “intersex” and pretends to be an expert?

It's fascinating that a bunch of people on a message board can defy pretty much every major medical organisation in the world's understanding of gender identity based solely on what they've read on gender critical websites. Endocrinologists eh, what do they know about gender, I bet they haven't read any posts on mumsnet.

it was discovered to have been a failure and that the boy who was raised as a girl following surgery was not happy and did not accept his assigned gender.

Can you really not spot the logical failure there?

Someone being able to figure out what sex they really are when they are lied to about it tells you nothing about people with an incorrect belief that they're the sex they're not.

If I tell someone they're 5', and they eventually figure out they're 6', that doesn't mean that someone who is 6' and feels that they're 5' has an "inner height identity" and we should pretend they're 5'.

What the fuck!

We are discussing people with Differences of sex development?

And here YOU are bringing trans people into the conversation.

Every major medical organisation eh?

I call bullshit on that too. Such absolutism, again. This is another cognitive distortion being used unconvincingly.

Endocrinologists eh, what do they know about gender, I bet they haven't read any posts on mumsnet.

Well what do Endocrinologists know about gender?

According to what point people are making, gender is either a social construct or an intangible inner identity.

Endocrinologists are specialists in hormones. Which are sex not gender related.

Endocrinologists are specialists in hormones. Which are sex not gender related

so the answer to livvys question is …not much

Are you saying that Semenya , knowing this could cause distress to females, would continue to use female single sex spaces?

By this kind of logic you could argue that any woman who looks a bit masculine should use the men's so they don't make anyone uncomfortable. In the cases of some intersex girls, or boys as you would call them, we're talking about people who present as female, were often assigned female at birth, were raised as girls and did not undergo male socialisation, look like girls, have female genitalia, have a uterus in some cases, and quite frequently did not undergo male puberty and are taking female hormones - and you think they should use the men's? Why, because they possess some mystical male essence based on their chromosones? And do you think teenage girl like this would be safe in the men's? Or do you just not care what happens to her as long as she doesn't make a 'real' women feel a bit uncomfortable because she might look a bit androgynous?

OP, I think the main point you need to make is that “sex assigned at birth” is far from a neutral term. It’s an ideologically driven one, misappropriated from people with DSDs, used to promote the concept of gender identity ideology.

That in using it they are causing grave offence to you and their many other patients who don’t subscribe to gender identity ideology, and don’t wish to have it forced on them.

I think it’s pretty clear they haven’t actually understood your original point, probably because they don’t understand what they’re doing themselves - just following orders - but you need to make the distinction between sex and gender, and make sure they know that the issue is not that you want to be referred to as a “specific gender”, but that there needs to be clarity around sex.

That for the vast majority of people, sex is observed at (or before) birth, and these days, never assigned. You could say that it’s deeply disrespectful to people with DSDs to use this language - because it is. (The same way that constantly referring to people with DSDs as “intersex” is deeply disrespectful.)

You could also make the point that this language may well confuse and even alienate many people, those who are not familiar with the jargon, as it’s not common usage.

And you could suggest “sex registered at birth” as a much more neutral alternative: I’ve seen that on some forms and it covers most if not all eventualities. Certainly much more tied to the real world, much clearer, and much less partisan than the dreadful “assigned”.

Good luck.

Someone being able to figure out what sex they really are when they are lied to about it tells you nothing about people with an incorrect belief that they're the sex they're not.

How did intersex people know what sex they really were before Karotype testing was developed?