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.

Sex is determined at conception, observed at birth, and doesn’t depend on your feelings.

Germain Greer said it well:
"Female is real, and it's sex, and femininity is unreal, and it's gender.

For that to become the given identity of women is a profoundly disabling notion."

Cross it all out and put female.

If there's an "other" drop down to the what gender are you question. I always tick other and write an essay that I don't have a gender I have a sex which is female.

@itsmyp4rty

Yes. Every time. The only question is:

What is your sex? M / F

Any other question particularly in healthcare literature is meaningless. You may as well ask for star signs or preferred drink for all the relevance it has in a medical context.

If you’ve worked in comms, you know that’s what we do…get the experts to explain it to us so we can translate and ensure that non-experts can understand.

Yes, absolutely, no argument! You've taken lots of points on board, fair play to you for engaging. I think we often get frustrated on this board, sorry if I was snippy!

Sorry that was to @LaughingCat

This seems to be overcomplicating the issue. Ask 'sex at birth' male/female (I know 'at birth' isnt perfect, but it's clear to most people, even those for whom English is a second language AND those who might be tempted to write down their gender what is being asked). And then if it might be at all relevant to treatment, ask 'have you ever been diagnosed with a disorder of sex development?' yes/no. And then they discuss it with you if necessary. No one's doing a complete diagnosis of the form, after all - or they shouldn't be!

So ask for sex and put a note explaining that medically it’s important to know what sex someone is. If they then chose to lie that’s on them.
You could also ask what gender they identify with if you want them to feel validated but that isn’t the purpose of health checking

"Sex assigned at birth" refers to the process whereby a medical professional looks at your baby and decides if it's male or female, then notes it, which then appears on the birth certificate. The "assigned" rather than "observed" is a nod to transgender people.

"Sex assigned at birth" refers to the process whereby a medical professional looks at your baby and decides if it's male or female

No medical professional decides if a baby is male or female - the baby is male or female, irrespective of what the health professional decides.

This. And then find something interesting to do with your life.

The question is unanswerable - because no-one assigns a baby a sex.

Sex is determined at conception by chromosomal make up.

Thank you to whoever quoted this. It's succinct and I shall use it wherever possible.

So many online forms don't give flexibility. If asked about gender I always tick other and in the text field I type "no gender but my sex is female. "

At birth our sex is observed.

Our future fashion choices are not.

I’ve crossed out the offending descriptor and written my own before now. Also would be tempted to send a sarcastic note stating that you were assigned male but sadly they were out of stock in your parents’ preferred colour, so it was female for you. And let’s not get started on the budget range mum and dad could have been assigned…

The form is asking what your sex was at birth - I know that, you know that, we all know that.

This arguing is all about semantics and linguistics around what is a very difficult topic and hard to get right. HCP's are just trying to get accurate data.

Everyone knows what information this form is asking for.

How clever of you waste time of busy healthcare professionals with your witty remarks.

Do you understand what “tempted” means? There is no indication that Craftycorvid has ever succumbed to this particular temptation.

Everyone knows? Where’s your proof of that?

You’re absolutely right, it’s semantics and linguistics - and from a health literacy pov it’s vital that clear, factual and unambiguous terminology and language is used. ‘Assigned at birth’ is not that.

They observe the baby and assign it a legal sex based on its observable characteristics. Sometimes it is wrong, particularly in the case of people with certain DSDs, It's a legal process.

No, it’s stealing the language of people with DSDs who are sometimes ‘assigned a sex’.

Sex is determined at conception, usually clear on ultrasounds and merely confirmed at birth. Transgender people also have a sex. Looks like you’re conflating sex and gender, which is transphobic.

No, it’s not ‘wrong’ for people with DSDs. If their sex is ambiguous, further tests are done. The idea that they just pluck a sex out of the air is highly offensive to people with DSDs and serves to other them. Someone close to me has a DSD and this whole “assigning” crap has caused them a lot of upset.

What’s with this thread? It’s like being in the 80’s.
Assigned at birth is incorrect and we shouldn’t have to collude with inaccurate and potentially dangerous language. OP is correct to challenge it.
do people on this thread really actually think that OP is confused by the term or the difference between sex and gender??

yeah, it's stupid.

this language, "... assigned at birth..." has been appropriated from discussion of people with DSD's, but is absolutely the wrong thing to use here. for those exceptionally rare instances whereby a person's sex is indeed wrongly assigned at birth and subsequently cleared up , the questionnaire here isn't at all interested in the initial incorrect assignation, what they want from respondents is their real, inescapable, factual, sex.

Exactly as the last posters have said. If a DSD is noted then further tests are carried out to establish the sex (of which there are only 2 - male or female). This questionnaire isn’t asking whether you were (incorrectly) assigned a sex at birth which was corrected later.

It’s this kind of inaccurate, ambiguous and confusing language that results in the kind of errors we saw from the ONS a couple of years back.