I hear “gender assigned at birth” come up a lot in discussions with / about trans folks. It seems like a really bizarre phrase to me. Their (I’m sure someone would complain whichever adjective I used here, so I’ll just leave it blank, which will probably also generate complaints, but I’m not woke-enough to know the correct phrase, so fuck it) gender wasn’t “assigned at birth”. The doctor could have (and probably did) look at them weeks before their birth via an ultrasound and knew their gender well before their birth. Perhaps you could say “assigned at conception” or something like that. Could someone explain to me why “gender assigned at birth” has become the preferred phrase? It seems to be really inaccurate. My vague sense is maybe they use the phrase as some sort of solidarity with the pro-choice movement, not wanting people to think of babies pre-birth as anything but a clump of cells or something, but that’s just speculation on my part. Anyone have a good answer?
It’s in contrast to the “gender as assigned by self”, which is supposed to be definitive. “Gender assign at birth” is based (nearly always) on genitalia and chromosomes. “Gender” in general is whatever you want it to be, in theory.
Regards,
Shodan
Some people are born with girl parts and boy parts and the doctors/family “assign” them one or the other.
Gender is “assigned at birth” in the sense that birth is when you fill out the birth certificate, which is the first legal record of a person’s gender. An ultrasound might give you an earlier idea of a fetus’s gender, but doesn’t have any legal significance.
Not everyone is assigned a gender pre-birth. First of all, many transgender individuals (Caitlyn Jenner for example) were assigned a gender at birth before it was possible to know through ultrasound or amnio – you learned your baby’s assigned gender once they had exited the birth canal. Even today, many parents choose not to know the assigned gender of their child before birth. Everyone, both historically and today, is assigned a gender at birth, so its just easier to use that phrase than to try to parse the moment when a doctor and/or the parents might have known before that. I don’t think it has anything to do with the abortion issue.
And, as Miller says, the assignment only becomes legally official after birth (there are certainly cases where the gender assigned pre-birth turns out to be incorrect).
I think of two bins in the OB/GYN ward, one labeled “boy parts” and the other labeled “girl parts”. At birth, the delivery doctor checks the paperwork and then selects the right parts and snaps them in place like a Lego piece.
Except your gender is almost never assigned by chromosomes. My kids didn’t have a DNA test at birth to determine their gender, they just looked at the external genitalia and said “Girl”.
In the very rare cases where the doctor glances at the external genitalia and says “Huh?” maybe they will do some genetic testing.
Also of course nowadays they tell you the gender of your baby from the ultrasound. They do that by measuring the length of the urethra. Short urethra = “you’re going to have a girl”. Long urethra = “you’re going to have a boy”.
You’re only going to get a genetic test if you also had an amniocentesis, which is not routine and is only performed if there are elevated risk factors.
Thanks, this is probably the most satisfying answer I’m going to find for this.
Could you expand on this a bit more? My point is that, whether Mr. and Mrs. Jenner knew at birth or months before is irrelevant. Caitlyn’s gender had been determined at conception. She was, in fact, a male, months before the birth. That we have imperfect observation techniques to measure / record the fact doesn’t really change the reality. It’s not Schroedinger’s Cat.
liberals want to make “gender” separate from “sex;” “gender” used to mean the same thing but was mainly used to keep kiddies from giggling. In libs’ minds, if gender is just a “construct” and we can all change gender from day to day, what is gay and straight? We can then all be equal!
Thanks for your insights. You’ve given me a lot to think about, Derek.
Specifically this differentiation between the terms began in the late 1970s. Before that time the two were considered to be interchangeable. So yes, this is a modern idea.
I’m not a liberal, but I don’t see the harm in accepting a difference between the two, and I do see a potential harm in insisting that there can’t be a difference. I have also never seen evidence of a person sincerely changing their gender role on a daily basis. Yes, a person can claim to change their identity frequently, but anyone can claim anything they want. I would naturally assume that someone who is fickle about their identity either has no idea what they really believe (and are confused) or is being dishonest. Think of it from your own perspective; do you have a good sense of your own gender? Could you, personally, change it from day-to-day in all sincerity? I doubt that many people could.
I have seen claims that there are many genders, or that gender is a non-existent thing and needs to be ignored. I think both of those ideas are pretty marginal and I have my doubts that either will ever be mainstream or accepted by more than a fringe. All species (at least vertebrates) that I am aware of are binary sexually, and our concept of gender is derived from that biological fact. While in some individuals they feel that their gender does not match their biology, and I respect that, I have trouble accepting that gender itself has no purpose in society. I find that concept potentially harmful, at least in our current society.
Reality is messy, though. We like to categorize things because that’s how our ape brains work, and for the most part assigning people to the M category, or the F category, is completely perfunctory. Until it’s not.
If you’re sorting red widgets and blue widgets in a factory, you certainly don’t think of yourself as making any kind of color assignment. You’re just mindlessly sorting red things from blue things, and of course we all know what red is and what blue is. Until a mostly red widget with a hint of blue comes along, and you decide that surely that’s a red widget. And then a mostly blue widget comes along with a hint of red, and you decide that management must have wanted that to count as a blue widget. And then a few different shades of purple roll down the line, and you start sweating. You put each widget in a bucket, because you have to, but you know you’re making a judgement call.
And then someone walks by and asks you what you’re doing, and you say, “I’m assigning these widgets to the red box or the blue box based on their perceived color characteristics,” and they think you’re crazy.
Her chromosomes were determined at birth. If you insist that chromosomes are the sole determinant of gender, then you’re correct, Kaitlyn Jenner’s gender was determined at conception. On the other hand, if you think that genitalia is the sole determinant of gender, her gender wasn’t determined until around eleven weeks after conception. If you believe that gender is determined by brain structure, then Kaitlyn Jenner’s gender wasn’t determined until sometime after the sixth week.
Most trans people would argue that it’s the third factor that’s most important in determining a person’s gender, and the science increasingly seems to support that. So, it’s arguably correct to say that Kaitlyn Jenner’s gender was determined some time before her actual birth - and was always female. We just didn’t have the scientific understanding to recognize it until just recently.
This is an excellent demonstration of your mastery of the minds of pretend-liberals. Real world liberals think very differently. There are many on this board who would be happy to educate you on how actual liberals come to conclusions about issues, if you’d like.
I’m good with “we can all be equal.” Yay!
“’‘Twas with women’s liberation that my freedom began,’
Said the Fuller Brush woman to the Avon man.”
Is this person a male or a female?
She was assigned “female” at birth and has always identified as female. But according to her genetics, she’s male. Her name is Sharon Rose Khumalo and she is literally a beauty queen.
I really wish someone would put together a slide show where you’re supposed to choose male/female based on a picture, just to show all the various variations. There’s that weightlifter transman which should be brought up in every bathroom discussion, basically saying, hey, you want this guy in the bathroom with your daughters?
I think it would really open up some minds. Looking at that picture, I would never have said genetically male.
Yup: key word is “assigned.” It’s all about the official declaration. Tying it to pro-choice is a real reach.
It’s impossible to know for certain because she couldn’t speak at that point, but it seems most likely that Caitlyn’s gender was in fact female at conception. It was certainly female when she was a small child. The fact that she had XY chromosomes and a penis meant that she was assigned the gender male at birth, but she never identified as a male (although she tried to outwardly manifest male characteristics and behaviors and did one of the best jobs that has ever been done at pretending to be male).
The whole point of talking about an assigned gender, as opposed to an actual gender, is to express the idea that actual gender is in fact separate from chromosomes and genitalia. An assigned gender is a construct of society, therefore it doesn’t exist until society, in the form of a doctor or parents has assigned it. If it’s really important to talk about chromosomes or genitalia before birth, you could always say that at conception she had XY chromosomes…but you couldn’t even say she had a penis at that point, so you’d have to say something like, at conception she had XY chromosomes, and at some later point in her development she had a penis, but it’s a lot easier just to say that when she was born, she was assigned the gender male.