1. I think I can help. You have biological sex (which is not assigned)
    Trixie Wolf Trixie Wolf United States says:
    June 28, 2023 at 8:07 PM

    I think I can help. You have biological sex (which is not assigned) confused with gender. Gender is entirely social and psychological, and is assigned via parenting and external socialization when the child interacts with society or observes social behaviors and messages about sex and gender. By the time a child is three years old they almost always have a solid understanding of gender and gender expression.

    Parents and societies assign gender by dressing a child a certain way and encouraging or discouraging specific behaviors, which is clearly social because this can differ from society to society. For example, in America prior to WWI pink was considered a color only men could wear, and after the war it changed to women (because countercultural women at that time wore pink in defiance, and men returning from the war didn't want to be identified with a color now widely used by women).

    So this is why the official term in the literature is "assigned gender at birth", and that's what it means here. You don't assign sex, but you do generally raise a child in a gender you assign to them. It's a little confusing if you haven't studied the concept because in almost all societies the gender is assigned based on the sex of the child, so we tend to think of it as being the same thing, but there's nothing intrinsically biological about, say, dresses or the color pink or tool boxes--that's all socialized.

    Reply
    • Gender hijacking
      Graeme Hendry Graeme Hendry United Kingdom says:
      June 29, 2023 at 12:08 PM

      The word gender means kind, breed or sex.
      It is not social, psychological or subjective as it was already defined and does mean kind, breed or sex.
      The word was hijacked and its definition manipulated to suit the extremely questionable needs of John Money who,,, well read about the Reimer boys and  the grotesque work he was involved with.
      People based in reality are being asked to adopt a viewpoint that was invented by this individual and accept the findings generated through, and this is being generous, pseudo science and fiction without any quantitative basis in reality and with no evidence or facts to support any of the outcomes claimed.

      Reply
    • That's a solid explanation of the difference between gender and sex. The
      Les Phier Les Phier United States says:
      June 29, 2023 at 4:38 PM

      That's a solid explanation of the difference between gender and sex. The problem, as you rightly note, is that most people haven't studied the topic, which leads to confused claims like "trans women are women." The error is easy to spot: the proper claim would be of the form "trans women are female-gendered men."

      Of course, even THAT conflates sex and gender: the only actual trans women are male-gendered women, precisely the reverse of those inaccurately referred to as "trans women." But lately, more people have been getting educated, leading to increased usage of the terms transfem (female-gendered men) and transmasc (male-gendered women). Widespread adoption of those terms would surely clear up a lot of the needless confusion, frustration, and animosity that's been going around!

      Trans people have it hard enough getting people to recognize their gender; it's a double-whammy that so many (even within the trans community!) get their sex wrong as well, likely a relic of the days when one spoke of "sex-change operations" (as if one ever hope to change one's sex!).But I think that's a solid explanation of the difference between gender and sex. The problem, as you rightly note, is that most people haven't studied the topic, which leads to confused claims like "trans women are women." The error is easy to spot: the proper claim would be of the form "trans women are female-gendered men."

      Of course, even THAT conflates sex and gender: the only actual trans women are male-gendered women, precisely the reverse of those inaccurately referred to as "trans women." But lately, more people have been getting educated, leading to increased usage of the terms transfem (female-gendered men) and transmasc (male-gendered women). Widespread adoption of those terms would surely clear up a lot of the needless confusion, frustration, and animosity that's been going around!

      That's a solid explanation of the difference between gender and sex. The problem, as you rightly note, is that most people haven't studied the topic, which leads to confused claims like "trans women are women." The error is easy to spot: the proper claim would be of the form "trans women are female-gendered men."

      Of course, even THAT conflates sex and gender: the only actual trans women are male-gendered women, precisely the reverse of those inaccurately referred to as "trans women." But lately, more people have been getting educated, leading to increased usage of the terms transfem (female-gendered men) and transmasc (male-gendered women). Widespread adoption of those terms would surely clear up a lot of the needless confusion, frustration, and animosity that's been going around!

      Trans people have it hard enough getting people to recognize their gender; it's a double-whammy that so many (even within the trans community!) get their sex wrong as well, likely a relic of the days when one spoke of "sex-change operations" (as if one ever hope to change one's sex!).

      Reply
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