Calling medical professionals - 'assigning' sex at birth

[MmePoppySeedDefage]

There's an article in today's Times about medical matters, in which Dr Porter talks about sex assigned at birth. Someone in the comments asked if this was what actually happens, ie it's not ' observed' and he's replied:

Assign has always been the legal term - as long as I remember - it's what we write in the notes at birth based (normally) on external genitalia. I say normally because external genitalia are not always a reliable indicator of being male or female. You can look like a boy and be a female genetically, and vice versa. Rare but happens.Gender is more complex than biological sex - not least due to social constructs.

Is this right?

Yep.

I seriously doubt that midwives or doctors write "assigned male" or "assigned female" in the notes.

It seems very arbitrary language.

I’ve had blood tests done during pregnancy and know my baby is xx chromosomes. Will her sex still be ‘assigned’ I wonder…

Certainly when you register a baby's birth to get a birth certificate, the birth certificate says Sex. The baby's red book medical record says Sex M/F. The wristband put on babies in hospital say the same.

No. Sex is observed at birth. I worked as a Midwife for 11yrs, never came across a baby born intersex, nor heard of any colleagues who did. It's a vanishingly small % of births per year.

"Male" or "Female" was all that was documented. Nothing about assigned.

It is correct - sorry if it wasn’t what you wanted to hear

Is this Dr Mark Porter, the showbiz GP? Since when did he last attend a birth and write anything in a baby's notes?

There's like 0.001% of babies born with ambiguous genitalia or xy chromosomes but no willy.

But we don't see six fingered gloves on sale in respect of the very rare cases of six fingered people.

Gender is more complex than biological sex - not least due to social constructs.

Why is he on about gender when he's been asked about sex?

As someone who’s worked on a labour ward for twenty years I have never heard the term “assigned” spoken of or documented. The computer system says “sex” and there are three options. Male, female, indeterminate.

in contemporaneous handheld notes at the actual birth I would document “ x time, NVD (normal vaginal delivery) of live infant female in good condition. Or similar

This!

off topic but I used to work in a hospital where we had a weekly surgical list which consisted of babies born with an extra finger or toe….I was surprised how many we saw

He was quoting:

No. I meant what I wrote. Or as CRUK and screening authorities might explain in more words, those who may benefit might include:
trans men and non-binary people assigned female at birth who have not had an operation to remove the breasts (bilateral mastectomy). And trans women and non-binary people assigned male at birth and who have taken feminising hormones.
No need to shoot the messenger.

@Abra1t how does your extract relate to the extract in the OP?

Sorry, I pasted in wrong comment on thread—muddled.

Yeah seriously how the fuck does gender come into this?

What's amusing is that proponents of this stuff will wibble on about how this "assigning" is so complicated due to 24% of the population being intersex or whatever.

Which then poses the question - why do you then claim this ever-so-unreliable "assignment" at birth is a synonym for actual sex, and try to substitute it in when people are trying to talk about actual sex?

For example in the above - "non-binary people assigned female at birth". No, you mean actually female non-binary people. What they were unreliably(?) "assigned" is irrelevant.

Nope never ‘assigned’ a baby their sex or seen it in the records of what must by now be 100+ baby checks I’ve done.

Good point

I work in Scotland and your medical notes now say gender not sex at the top. Fucks me right off.

Just started a new job part of which is doing occupational health referrals, the portal asks for 'women including trans women' ie they are lumping biological MEN with women for a medical assessment. Boils my piss it really does.

That's reminded me, I helped our Ukrainian refugees get registered at the doctor's, 2 weeks ago. The forms said: Gender - M / F

HCP here. Never heard the word “assigned” at work. We write “birth of live baby girl/boy” or “female/male infant”. It’s a fact not an assumption

Also 20 years a midwife. Pretty sure there wasn't a third option back then. In any case we all know sex isn't assigned.

And the whole intersex red herring drives me nuts.
Firstly DSD / Difference of sexual development is the more accurate phrase.
Secondly people with DSD must be pig sick of being co-opted as some sort of gotcha for the cult.

"Anne Fausto-Sterling s suggestion that the prevalence of intersex might be as high as 1.7% has attracted wide attention in both the scholarly press and the popular media. Many reviewers are not aware that this figure includes conditions which most clinicians do not recognize as intersex, such as Klinefelter syndrome, Turner syndrome, and late-onset adrenal hyperplasia. If the term intersex is to retain any meaning, the term should be restricted to those conditions in which chromosomal sex is inconsistent with phenotypic sex, or in which the phenotype is not classifiable as either male or female. Applying this more precise definition, the true prevalence of intersex is seen to be about 0.018%, almost 100 times lower than Fausto-Sterling s estimate of 1.7%."

No sure if it's 0.018% or 0.001% as per @BluebellBlueballs

The higher figure (1.7% or more) that some people quote is ridiculous and includes all sorts of variations in development such as hypospadias.

For a hospital such as the one I trained at, with 9000 deliveries pa these figures would mean:

1.7% = 153 pa
0.018% = 1.62
0.001% = 0.09

Think about it.
How many people with DSD do you know? (Bearing in mind they might not want to shout about it from the rooftops). 152 pa in a large teaching hospital? 3 a week? Really??

In twenty years I can only think of one case, at the large teaching hospital I trained at. A baby with multiple abnormalities including exomphalos and sacral agenesis. It was quickly transferred to a specialist centre and I know no more.
But I am pretty sure it will have had an identifiable chromosomal sex whatever the complicated anatomical presentation.
And that poor little baby's multiple abnormalities have nothing to do with trans or being assigned anything at birth.

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12476264/

Assigned was never used when I practised as midwife (UK). The computer field we filled in gave the choice of male/female/indeterminate as far as I recall and the paper notes were the same. There was no 'assigning'.

If that's Mark Porter pontificating, I'll bet it's even longer since he was in a delivery room than me and, like most doctors, is loath to admit there's something he doesn't know. Not that doctors complete the birth forms anyway - not their job He's wanging on about 'gender' to seem clever. Ignore him.