you are viewing a single comment's thread.

view the rest of the comments →

[–]Lyssa 23 insightful - 3 fun23 insightful - 2 fun24 insightful - 3 fun -  (2 children)

Right! And this is were they lost me first. I was (and mostly am) still fine with pronouns. But when the "assigned at birth" lingo started the lunacy began to dawn on me.

As if doctors and midwives threw dices and "assigned" things in the delivery room completely arbitrary and for shits and giggles. No, they look at a baby and write down what they see (save for rare intersex conditions). No "assigning" taking place whatsoever.

[–]kardamom 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

write down what they see (save for rare intersex conditions). No "assigning" taking place whatsoever.

you do see the irony in that, right?

[–]Anna_Nym 14 insightful - 1 fun14 insightful - 0 fun15 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Where is the irony? Are you trying to say that recording sex is synonymous with assigning sex? Or that the existence of rare health conditions means that the normative experience doesn't exist?

In modern medicine, no "assigning" takes places in terms of intersex conditions either. Doctors do observe the physical features of the baby's body to ultimately conclude on the correct sex and medical diagnosis. There are more steps involved, but it's still observation.

Intersex advocacy, in part, exists because doctors have performed medical operations on babies to assign them a sex. That is what the phrase "assigning" means. It is an actual action.