Some thoughts on ‘assigned’ and ‘identified’, plus commenting freely

Unless a baby has ambiguous genitalia, as with intersex babies, they are not “assigned” a sex at birth; their sex is “identified.”

When we discover a new planet we do not “assign” it a spectral class or type. We “identify” it by its natural phenomenon. Sex is a natural phenomenon.

Repeat after me: Biological sex is a natural phenomenon.

tagged as #see also: stop using intersex people as pawns #and stealing their fucking language

From Next Years Girl and Pizza-rolls-not-gender-rolls.

I have only seen this argument in the last few months. I have always used ‘female assigned at birth’ as it covered both biological females and intersex individuals assigned female at birth, and therefore raised the same as other girls (it also gave us the brilliant acronym ‘FAB’!), and I know I’m not the only one to use this terminology.

The above argument is a good one, although there is a risk with using the word ‘identify’ because it is used in identity politics to say anyone is whatever they identify as (whether it’s a member of the opposite sex, another race, or an imaginary animal).

However, even acknowledging that risk, I will from now on be using ‘female assigned/identified at birth’ (the less satisfying ‘FAIB’ – but at least not FIB!).

This has come up now because the Guardian has published a piece on the so-called ‘terf wars’, and, amazingly, so far, my gender critical comments have been allowed to stay up (only one has been deleted, and that’s really odd because it’s the same comment I made many times on that thread, asking how bullying lesbians is progressive). My first comment (time wise) even has the most ‘recommended’ votes (of those comments visible on the front page) as of writing this. We’ll have to see how it goes.

I do often wonder how many people actually read comments sections (I’ve always been of the opinion that if you can’t get your comment on the first page, don’t bother). I (perhaps unwisely) linked to this blog in one of my comments, and I’ve had eleven click-throughs from the Guardian so far today.