NHS hospital tells staff not to describe babies as ‘born’ male or female

[SerendipityJane]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/10/09/nhs-hospital-in-great-yarmouth-gender-language-guidance/

Oh FFS

This is the kind of story that makes you think it MUST be a plant by TRAs so they can say that GCs will fall for anything stupid story..

The article is behind a paywall - well, sort of paywall - so I ;m depending on other wise women to tell me that yup, it's as 100% true as it is 100% stupid.🙄

Makes me so glad not to work in the NHS any more.

Guidance developed by the James Paget University Hospitals Trust in Great Yarmouth said its staff should use the phrase "assigned female/male at birth” instead.
It claims this “accurately depicts the situation of what happens at birth” and also describes other “inclusive language dos and don’ts” for its staff.

The document, called Celebrating Pride, includes an “LGBTQ+ glossary” with definitions for the range of terminology that should be used. It also has a list of words and phrases to avoid in order not upset patients.

Not an accurate description of what happens, and it's managed to upset me - I'm sure plenty of patients will also be upset, offended, and worst of all confused.

It also tells staff to avoid terms like “both genders” and “opposite sexes” because it implies there are only two – as well as titles such as mailman, fireman, and policeman.

There are only 2 sexes. And that last bit tells me it was lifted wholesale from something American.

See that. If it's true. That is evil.

OK so I'm future it's "born with or without a peπis".
Let's see what all the men have to say about that!
I can just imagine a nurse running around saying "oh wow that boy - oops - that peπis over there is big - oh, I mean...".

I wish today was April 1st because then I’d be sure that this is someone’s idea of a joke.

Assigned at birth? Are doctors walking around randomly saying "Male. Male. Male. Female" like a weird game of duck duck goose? How about "genetically determined male at the point of conception"?

https://archive.is/azNGo

👍

https://www.jpaget.nhs.uk/media/554321/Celebrating-Pride.pdf

This is quite possibly the document although it does say it is to be reviewed in 2024.

The article says: "The James Paget document, which appears on the hospital’s website, was first published in 2021 but was reviewed in June."

I don’t think I could trust a doctor who talked about sex being “assigned at birth”.
This phrase made sense back in the days when babies born with certain DSDs were “assigned” a sex by a doctor, based on the surgical techniques which were available at the time to “normalise” the children’s appearance.

Many of these children grew up to regret the surgery they underwent, especially when it resulted in the permanent loss of sexual sensation. So, doctors shouldn’t be assigning sex anymore.

If we are talking about “assigning sex” to mean “observing sex at birth”, then obviously, this is also obsolete. Due to non-invasive prenatal testing, we can sometimes find out if a fetus has an XX or an XY genotype as early as 10 weeks into the pregnancy.

Just stop it loading before it's fully done by pressing x to the right of the url window and yiu can read it fine.

Born with or without a vagina would probably galvanise men into a proper WTF moment.

If someone told me my newborn was being assigned any sex at birth rather than them just being a boy or a girl I'd be offended.

But yeah let's crack on and ignore that bit.

The world is fucking nuts.
I you have a vagina you are a girl, you would have a penis You are a boy

This language is all part of the social/political/corporate activism to separate female biology from motherhood and to redefine it. And it highlights the fact that even though some progress has been made for women, there is a lack of respect in our society for mothers and motherhood - this dehumanising language could only happen in a society that doesn't genuinely respect women:

The parody of motherhood continues...

"mail person Pat, mail person Pat, mail person Pat and his non-binary caaaat"

It's been postie for 30 years, surely. Everyone I know who works on the Mail is called a postie, man or woman. Never heard anyone say mailman apart from on American telly.

I mean things like de-gendering professional titles was gathering steam decades ago, saying "police officer" and "firefighter" because it reinforced the idea that only men did those jobs if you said "policeman" and "fireman", plus the problem with using a masculine plural for a mixed group. Those specific examples are American, but neutral language isn't unique to them, or even to English. Notice how many writers don't use the word "actress" anymore. It didn't originate because of trans or nonbinary people, it was about women, actually. They've just decided to repurpose an existing idea for a new agenda here.

(I can find far worse examples, including questioning the entire word "midwife" since it means "with woman.")

BTW the gender neutral Americanism for "mailman" is "mail carrier" or "letter carrier".

@knitnerd90 yes, in itself degendering titles is not a huge deal. But the fact the word it's "correcting" isn't even a word that's used in the UK is a sign that it's not really thought through/addressing real problems.

So what happens when parents ask ‘are we having a boy or a girl?’ Are the NHS allowed to answer?

"they will be assigned male at birth"
"why will you assign them male"
"it's not actually hospital policy to disclose the decision making matrix we use to make the assignations. Just be aware, based on this scan, yours will almost certainly be being assigned male on the day"

Trendy parenting gone to far it all done to keep the minority of o my five day omd identifies as such n such look at me im such a trendy parent
Also the parents i wanted x and got y so y will identify as x from day one to keep me happy who cares about the kud

Maybe they will say
“Congratulations! it’s a firefighter.”