How to respond: been asked what sex I was assigned at birth

[Needapadlockonmyfridge]

I recently signed up to have blood tests privately (vitamin levels etc).

On the health questionnaire, one of the questions asked what sex I was assigned at birth.

Scientific company should surely do better than this. Not sure it is worth flagging up with them. I suppose, at least they didn't ask gender, but still.... Disappointing.

Gender critical people want to map legal sex to chromosomes to legislate specific transgender rights out of existence, and yet, I have not heard a coherent definition of sex which divides all people into male and female.

Absolute bollox!

What "specific transgender rights" are gender critical people trying to "legislate out of existence"?

What about women's SEX-BASED rights, which are being eroded?

What isn't "coherent" about the definition of sex which is based on physical chromosomal differences?

Be any "gender" you want - gender is cultural and changes over time and geography. You can "change" gender by wearing different clothes etc (what used to be called "breaking gender stereotypes" ).

"SEX" however, is biologically determined and immutable. You cannot change your biological sex no matter what you wear, what surgery you have, or what drugs you take. You can change your external appearance to look more like the sex you would like to be, but no-one changes sex.

Sports, changing rooms etc are - or should be - segregated by SEX, nit gender.

The only reason these terms overlap in English is because some people are too prudish to say "sex", and others saw the opportunity this gave to blur a boundary.

But on a serious note… ‘I don’t want to stop that’.

Why do you imagine women’s spaces have got anything to do with you?

We had spaces which were single sex and would like to re establish them

So more a regaining of rights for women than anything else

What men do can be determined by that sex class

The right which transgender people have to use single-sex spaces matching their gender identity

Why should anyone have the right to use an inappropriate single SEX space, on the basis of GENDER identity? Particularly when this invades the safety, dignity and privacy of those member of that SEX who are not comfortable with people of the OPPOSITE sex in an intimate space?

Gender identity is nothing more than a system. It’s like saying ‘I have the right to use female toilets because I’m a Jewish man’.

There is no such "right", therefore it can't be removed.

Well, clearly they do, and have been for decades

I've been in female toilets for decades. You haven't, have you? Your friends might tell you this, but other than a few edge cases who "pass" they are lying.

Some people want to control what women say, think, and do.

Yep. As a straight person, I've never been to a gay club either on the basis that there are lots of places I can go

I used to go a lot at university with gay male friends, but I've come to realise with experience of males invading female spaces that maybe I was invading the space of other gay men, and I regret that.

So I don't. I do not believe that I have any right to attend, either granted to me in law, or moral.

Dadjoke and his friends aren't troubled by piffling things like morality, decency and respect for women.

Oh - I don't know.

They have a LOT of respect for those be-penised women (as Ricky Gervais might describe them).

Lucy Letby is completely irrelevant.

Sexual assault of strangers is purely a male crime. Rape, flashing, illicit photographs or videos... Transwomen commit these assaults, as far as we can tell from the statistics, at least as often as men. The only cases I can think of where women have committed such crimes, (Myra Hindley, Rose West, etc.), they are not acting alone, but in partnership with men. If there are any cases where women acted alone to do this, they are vanishingly rare, despite women being 51% of the population.

You are advocating for mixed-sex facilities. If mixed facilities are so great, why don't transwomen want to use the male toilets?

(Of course, assault is not the only argument here. We don't want nice men or nice transwomen in women-only spaces either).

Transwomen commit these assaults, as far as we can tell from the statistics, at least as often as men.

Statistics show that transwomen comprise a much larger proportion of sexual offenders than in the prison population in general.

Off the top of my head >50% compared to about 11%.

Acc to a previous thread on MN, 1 in every 585 trans women and England and Wales are convicted sex offenders.
That compares to 1 in every 2500-3000 men and 1 in every 243000 women (that’s the ones without penises). (Taken from census data).

Thank you, @SirChenjins

Thanks. It would also be interested to know how many of those "1 in every 243000 women" were acting alone, or perhaps with other women, and not to please a man.

Indeed, @DuesToTheDirt

I remember when a man had the right to rape his wife.

I remember when teachers had the right to strike a child.

I remember when employers had the right to sack women for becoming mothers.

Society can and does remove rights which harm others.

Men having the right to "become" women and thereby appropriate women's opportunities and protections, and impose upon all women a sexist, reductive redefinition of women into people with a certain type of mind rather than a certain type of body, harms women. Men - whether trans indentifying or not - should not have that right. The GRA was a bad law. Allowing the legal fiction of a sex that is not your true sex is a bad right.

Trans women can be whatever gender they want to be, but they cannot change their sex and we should not have laws that pretend they can.

We only have that law because men wanted to marry men.

No, my concern for people with DSDs is because I have one very close to me. How dare you use my concern like that! They don’t mess up the definition of sex anymore than someone born with one leg messes up the definition of humans as bipedal 🙄

How can a person’s gender identity “not match” their sex? I have a sex (female). No-one has given me a list of stereotypes I need to fulfil to be female. Why? Because there isn’t one. Female refers to my biological sex not whether I like kittens, wear lipstick and have long hair. What you’re basically saying is that women have to be feminine and men have to be masculine. Can you not see how achingly old-fashioned and conservative that is?

I have not heard a coherent definition of sex which divides all people into male and female.

Humans are gonochoric mammals.

I have not heard a coherent definition of sex which divides all people into male and female.

Male = small motile gametes
Female = large immobile gametes

This definition applies across all animal kingdoms and most plants (not eg bryophytes), not just humans.

but you absolutely can change many of your sexed charateristics, including your endocrine system

I imagine many trans individuals would be fascinated to hear how they could change their endocrine system rather than have to spend a lifetime taking artificial cross sex hormones. Or avoid extreme cosmetic surgery to construct a poor facsimile of opposite sex genitals or breasts.

Reporting back.

Following an email conversation, they have said they have investigated and will change the wording to "sex registered at birth" as they found this used by the NHS.

Not perfect, but I think that's a good improvement.

Little wins.....

Excellent news - as you say, little wins.

I had a little win too yesterday at work when I pointed out that a male/female category they had called gender should be sex, and they agreed and said they would change it.

Well done @SirChenjins and @Needapadlockonmyfridge.

These things make a difference.