It’s just a word, maaaaan
How are adults managing to do this first week at university routine still?
The madness persists, as was made clear last week with news that an NHS hospital – the James Paget University Hospitals Trust in Great Yarmouth – has told people working in obstetrics and midwifery to refer to new babies’ gender as having been “assigned female/male at birth” which it claims “accurately depicts the situation of what happens at birth”.
Yes, youngster, it’s true that we name things and that that’s a human activity as opposed to something carved into the cosmos. It does not follow that the things we name are not real.
Please move on now. Failure to do so will result in failing the course.
Do they assign a species at birth? Could have terrible results for transpecies individuals if they don’t. Like me. I identify as a giraffe.
What happens at birth is birth. Nothing happens regarding sex or gender at birth. It is not situational. Sex is determined at fertilization. The only “situation” is that of people thinking they have power over something that they have no power over. “Assign” and “identify as” all you please, it changes nothing (but people who know better might think you’re idiots).
“I’d like to register a complaint. I realize that my new baby looks like a girl, but you see, we need a boy in order to carry on the family name and my wife doesn’t want to have any more children. Please correct the paperwork and assign my baby male. There’s a love, and I’ll slip an extra tenner to ya.”
The (very) occasional Caster Semenyas etc. may be the only example of such ‘assignment.’ But even then, there was no one ‘assigning’ sex at the birth. Sex was assumed, on the basis of appearance. For more than 99% of us, there’s no opportunity for assignment. I was assumed male at birth, accurately. No evaluation or assessment needed at all.
“Congratulations Ms. Jones, you have a perfectly healthy… well, we were going to say girl, but who knows, it may turn out we are wrong, and there have already been more girls born today, so we hope you don’t mind if we assign your baby as a boy. After all it doesn’t make any difference does it?”