When influential organizations and individuals promote “sex assigned at birth,” they are encouraging a culture in which citizens can be shamed for using words like “sex,” “male” and “female” that are familiar to everyone in society, as well as necessary to discuss the implications of sex. This is not the usual kind of censoriousness, which discourages the public endorsement of certain opinions. It is more subtle, repressing the very vocabulary needed to discuss the opinions in the first place.
As you may have noticed, “sex” is out, and “sex assigned at birth” is in. Instead of asking for a person’s sex, some medical and camp forms these days ask for “sex assigned at birth” or “assigned sex” (often in addition to gender identity). The American Medical Association and the American Psychological Association endorse this terminology; its use has also exploded in academic articles. The Cleveland Clinic’s online glossary of diseases and conditions tells us that the “inability to achieve or maintain an erection” is a symptom of sexual dysfunction, not in “males,” but in “people assigned male at birth.”
This trend began around a decade ago, part of an increasing emphasis in society on emotional comfort and insulation from offense — what some have called “safetyism.” “Sex” is now often seen as a biased or insensitive word because it may fail to reflect how people identify themselves. One reason…
Read more@ISIDEWITH2mos2MO
If you had to explain to someone younger why 'sex assigned at birth' is being used instead of 'male' or 'female,' how would you distinguish between respecting personal feelings and acknowledging biological differences?
@86ZDHQ7Independent 2mos2MO
We cannot deny biology- someone can psychologically identify how ever they want but everyone is either biologically male or female. To be honest this shouldnt even be a news story. There are far more important issues that we need to be tackling, this not one of them. The LGBTQ+ community is not oppressed-they have all the same rights as everyone else. There is an agenda of forced acceptance through major corporate media. This is an issue that effect 2% or the population yet we spend 70% of our media resources covering it. This is nothing more than a red herring of the 21st century. Let me distract you with something hits you in your ideological mouth and while we are tearing each apart over this issue-there is a tremendous transfer of wealth.
@9LBX2PDRepublican2mos2MO
There are only 2 genders and you should either be male or female, you can't be another gender and you can't change your gender.
@9LBVT3S 2mos2MO
I would explain that 'male' and 'female' are sexes that people are born with, but gender is an identity and sometimes it's not controlled by one's sex, which means someone can be transgender, or nonbinary and it's normal and it's okay.
@9LBVN4L2mos2MO
You can identify as a man or woman, but you can not change the fact that you are biologically "male" or "female". Acknowledging facts about your body should not be controversial as it is unrelated to how you prefer to be addressed or referred to outside of a clinical sense.
@ISIDEWITH2mos2MO
How would you feel if society no longer used terms like 'male' and 'female' to describe people, and what do you think the impact would be on everyday conversations?
@9LBZZD52mos2MO
You can't change science your either born with a vagina or a penis and that's the way it is
@9LBX58R2mos2MO
I think that not using male or female terms anymore would make it difficult to identify criminals
@9LBX2CM2mos2MO
Your genetics and features are what you are, you can't just change or ignore them
@9LBWXJT2mos2MO
I think its weird to no longer use those terms.
@ISIDEWITH2mos2MO
Do you believe the term 'sex assigned at birth' respects individual identity more effectively than traditional sex labels, or does it cause unnecessary confusion?
@9LBVNZ3Republican2mos2MO
I personally feel like children should not be taught about transgender because it can create a confusion, but if when they are older, they decide to identify as something other than their assigned gender than they should feel free to do so. people should not be getting canceled for misgendering people though because that is their freedom of speech.
@9LBVHR32mos2MO
It's used to respect others more effectively
There's a difference between sex and gender identity. I don't think the term "sex assigned at birth" is an accurate way to describe someones identity. Some peoples sex matches how they present, but that's not always the case. Sex assigned at birth shouldn't be used as a resolute way to identiy someone. Not everyone is comfortable with their "assigned" sex. And not evryone is able to change what their birth certificate says. I believe you should be able to present yourself how ever you want because sex only refers to how you body reproduces. Gender is a social contruct that forces people into labels that don't work for everybody.
@9LBZ72V2mos2MO
I do believe it respects theyre identity but of course within reason.
The reference to the Galapagos tortoise is spot on, and hilarious.
I learned something about sex, genetics, and animal anatomy and behavior in university. As a farmer, I deal with these realities every day.
Humans are mammals. We may be anywhere on the sexual preference spectrum, but we are physically male or female, to the core of our DNA.
Not always, and probably due to our consumption of chemicals which affect hormones, it seems many mammals and lower life forms (frogs esp.) are increasingly exhibiting sexual organ duality or lack of differentation at birth, requiring an assignment of gender for a birth certificate. At puberty, some develop contrary to assignment and lived experiences. These used to be called hermaphrodites and have been known from ancient times. I wonder that you, as a farmer, are not aware of this in animals at least since the internet has so many pictures of two-headed calves, snakes, etc. If nature is capable of duplicating the most complex part of the anatomy, sexual organs should be much more common.
@PretzelsJoshGreen2mos2MO
Trans people know that sex matters more than most cis people. Authors like this appeal to science, but their conclusions are conveniently aligned with religious extremists. We're supposed to believe they're not the ideologues?
@ReferendumBellaVeteran2mos2MO
"Authors like this appeal to science, but their conclusions are conveniently aligned with religious extremists"
Actually, no. The authors are aligned with biological science...anyone else to whom that science appeals, regardless of their reasoning, is incidental to that fact.
@ArtisticEagleUnity2mos2MO
Thank you for this. It’s imperative that our common language be rescued from ideologues who’ve twisted it to reflect a viewpoint which is against science, logic and common sense. Sex matters.
Nature created a norm, which reproduces, with all else being much less likely to reproduce and pass along what ever genetic anomaly they possess. In its consummate practicality, Nature does not care that humans have come to a point at which some are offended and hurt by the fact that biologically, we are either normal or not. What is normal psychosocially is a human construct and is trickier and more prone to malleability - for better an worse. So, XX = female and XY = male. All else is abnormal from a biological perspective but that does not make it evil or deserving of persecution or disres… Read more
@Ind3pend3ntCoconutPatriot2mos2MO
I recently went to the doctor and my aftercare summary and notes used HE and HIM throughout even those I have ALWAYS been SHE and HER in my medical records at this place for 20 years. When I asked why they used wrong pronouns for my sex (female), they said I did not check what "gender identity" I was in my electronic chart. I went to look at the form, and it does not even include a box for "sex" at all. My only choice would be to mark a gender "identity". My health and medical care needs to be based on my sex, not my gender (socially and culturally etc constructe… Read more
@ISIDEWITH2mos2MO
Imagine a world where biological distinctions are not immediately recognized; how might this affect areas such as healthcare, sports, or personal relationships?
@9LBVMZL2mos2MO
It would be better because there is no confusion because of multiple different genders.
Your sex isn't "assigned at birth" it's assigned by God at the point of conception, and every cell in your body is built preprogrammed "male" or "female." Science.
We tend to conform to the loudest voices, the demanding shouters who won't relinquish the microphone, and the extreme ten percent on either side who account for 80% of the tweets (or some disproportional percentage). For most people just trying to afford eggs and milk and make it through another exhausting day it's not worth the time or energy to jump into the current vocabulary steel cage.
@KittenBobbyNo Labels2mos2MO
We tend to conform to the loudest voices, the demanding shouters who won't relinquish the microphone, and the extreme ten percent on either side who account for 80% of the tweets (or some disproportional percentage). For most people just trying to afford eggs and milk and make it through another exhausting day it's not worth the time or energy to jump into the current vocabulary steel cage.
@TortoiseBarryUnity2mos2MO
Mammal Biological sex is not necessarily binary: humans are made up of cells, and the genotypes of those cells are not necessarily all the same. I expect that as a farmer, you don't come across genetic mosaics and chimeras all that often, but they do exist. They are, to use your terminology, "realities".
@EcstaticTermiteDemocrat2mos2MO
This is important. Women lost their rights when Roe was overturned in 2022. We can’t advocate for women’s rights when we can’t say the word women or female. Now it’s being framed as “reproductive rights” but men haven’t lost their reproductive rights, only women have.
As the authors point out there are areas of medicine where sex is important. It’s misleading to say the phrase “sex assigned at birth” when scientifically sex exists at conception. Women have been ignored and left out of medical studies because it was assumed that men… Read more
@VibrantL1ber4lForward2mos2MO
This is indeed true, but the number of ambiguously sexed babies is vanishingly small, and so should have very little bearing on language. It seems remarkable that we're all trying to adopt language that always includes tiny exceptions. It seems clumsy at best, patronizing at worst. The vast majority of the human race is clearly sexed, and to share ideas about this aspect of the human condition, we need language that is understood most broadly.
@ISIDEWITH2mos2MO
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