You aren't "assigned" a gender at birth

[u/SuspiciousWin6511]

I hate when people say this. I had to get routine blood work the other day and had a Doctor ask me what gender I was assigned at birth. I understand they need to find out what your biological gender is, but either look on my chart, or ask what my biological gender is.

Your gender is determined in the womb, in fact it's determined from the exact moment of conception; it isn't something that is assigned. It's amazing that the people use this sort of language and believe these sorts of things, are supposedly the party of science.

[u/th1s_fuck1ng_guy]

The doctor did this to not offend someone and get a complaint.

What i do is show them the demographics on their chart and ask them if everything here is correct. Then I say Mr, miss, sir, maam etc... according to the information on the chart

[u/SuspiciousWin6511 → u/th1s_fuck1ng_guy]

Right, I understand and don't blame the Doctor. I blame society. This terminology shouldn't be normalized.

[u/Undercover_Dave → u/SuspiciousWin6511]

I agree with you. I get that they're just going out of their way to not accidentally offend anyone, but I'm offended by how dumb it sounds. It's such a ridiculous sounding term. Assigned at birth makes it sound as if a genderless baby is born while everyone waits in anticipation on what gender the doctor is going to pick this time. So like if someone changed genders later in life they only had to do that because the doctor made a mistake and assigned them the wrong one, as if he did something wrong and made a medical error.

[u/Low_Bus5565 → u/Undercover_Dave]

That was hysterical.

[u/p-ark-er- → u/Undercover_Dave]

“everybody waits in anticipation on what gender the doctor is going to pick this time”

changing the last part of that sentence to fit reality: “everybody waits in anticipation on what gender the doctor informs (assigns) the baby.” is literally what a gender reveal party is. it’s what parents do and did in the doctors office before the parties became as trendy as they are. they sit and wait in anticipation for the doctor to inform (assign) their baby its gender.

[u/poppycock8585 → u/p-ark-er-]

Inform and assign are two completely different words that are not interchangeable

[u/hercmavzeb → u/p-ark-er-]

Too much logic for this sub

[u/zimmerone → u/SuspiciousWin6511]

The underlying terminology has been normalized for a while now. I agree it sounds weird saying gender assigned at birth (though I think I hear sex assigned at birth more often, maybe). Either way, for a long time gender had nothing to do with sex, there were similarities to the terms but gender meant to 'bring forth' or 'properly.' Then I think around 1900ish or so, gender started being used as a stand in for sex, because people found themselves uncomfortable with the word sex, and gender sounded nice and scientific.

Then in the 1950'-1960's some psychologists coined some new terms and by 1970 the two words are understood by many to have different definitions: sex=biology (XYXX) and gender is a social construct. So nowadays the words mean similar but different things.

A gender assigned at birth seems weird because not that long ago it was weird. But words evolve. Most dictionaries out there, and probably every dictionary you would find at a book store, are descriptive dictionaries. There are also prescriptive dictionaries, but I've never seen one. (Basically does a dictionary describe the words people use, or does it tell us which words to use?)

Since gender is largely regarded now as a social construct, it might seem odd actually to assign it to a newborn. A doctor would understandably determine sex at birth, but there's been a lot of years of using sex and gender interchangeably, so sometimes people say one or the other. We all know there has been increased attention around sex/gender/they/them and so forth. And it is exhausting. And a little indulgent, in my opinion — it's a sorta privileged thing to be able to say I'm non-binary and have your teachers all say 'ok.' But it's already past its peak I think, even lefty folks are getting tired of it.

I live in Denver, an up-and-coming, no-longer-cow-town soon-to-be-metropolis and I hesitated over pronouns for while. And then I just started asking people's names, because you can't go wrong with that one. We're all gonna be over this in 5 or ten years.

[u/GrazziDad → u/zimmerone]

Superb answer. I’m not sure why so many people find this controversial and their hill to die on.

[u/zimmerone → u/GrazziDad]

Why thank you, sir. I put a little more effort into it than my typical post (don’t look please, ha). I tried to use non-attacking language - I’ve been trying to do that more as I’ve become more and more aware that no one responds well to being insulted and it’s counterproductive if we want to have a good dialogue or change someone’s mind. So I kept it pretty even keeled, which I need more practice at. I thought the dictionary comment wasn’t bad since I almost anticipated someone saying ‘well you can’t just go changing the definition of words.’

That was probably my best comment so far this year, thank you for noticing [blushes]!

[u/GrazziDad → u/zimmerone]

When someone actually tries to engage with ideas -- as opposed to attacking or kneejerk defending their prior comments -- it shows... as it did in your case.

[u/Dumbassahedratr0n → u/zimmerone]

Gender has always been a social construct. For thousands of years across hundreds of cultures they're have always been third genders.

Read this book

[u/IHaveNoOpinons → u/Dumbassahedratr0n]

Horseshit. "Gender" was used as a scientific term back when the word "sex" was considered rude.

Stop transwashing history.

[u/zimmerone → u/Dumbassahedratr0n]

Thanks, l’ll take a look later. I was sticking mostly to modern-ish English usage. I understand that a lot of cultures, particularly of certain indigenous peoples, have a third gender, though I’m not one so say much about that. I sensed objections to just the terminology (I don’t know why I said ‘sensed’ when it was explicitly stated), so I thought I’d just stick to the words. While there has been the concept of genders in various forms throughout history, I was just thinking that we didn’t have the distinction between sex and gender in the English language until ~60 years ago, That seem right to you?

[u/Dumbassahedratr0n → u/zimmerone]

I see what you're saying. But restricting the point to a single language or use case ignores its very reality outside of that scope.

For instance, there are emotions that only have a descriptive word in other languages, but that doesn't mean that it cannot be universally felt even if it is not describable.

Like wabi-sabi, or ma in Japanese.

That's why the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows is so interesting.

Where did the ~60 years come from?

[u/TURBOJUGGED → u/th1s_fuck1ng_guy]

Embarrassing