The Trouble with "Sex Assigned at Birth"
The phrase is well intentioned but misleading and ultimately harmful
Should the concept of biological sex be replaced with the notion of “sex assigned at birth”? Although this question has sparked contentious debate in some quarters, many progressives and mainstream institutions have quietly gone along with the shift to the latter option.
In the last week, however, two pieces about the dangers of dumping biological sex have been published in major media outlets - a good indication, perhaps, that the tide is starting to turn on this issue. Below are some excerpts from each piece.
The first piece is by the philosopher Alex Byrne and biologist Carole Hooven, and appeared in the New York Times.
The shift to “sex assigned at birth” may be well intentioned, but it is not progress. We are not against politeness or expressions of solidarity, but “sex assigned at birth” can confuse people and creates doubt about a biological fact when there shouldn’t be any. Nor is the phrase called for because our traditional understanding of sex needs correcting - it doesn’t.
This matters because sex matters…
Sex matters for health, safety and social policy and interacts in complicated ways with culture. Women are nearly twice as likely as men to experience harmful side effects from drugs, a problem that may be ameliorated by reducing drug doses for females. Males, meanwhile, are more likely to die from Covid-19 and cancer, and commit the vast majority of homicides and sexual assaults...
More generally, the interaction between sex and human culture is crucial to understanding psychological and physical differences between boys and girls, men and women. We cannot have such understanding unless we know what sex is, which means having the linguistic tools necessary to discuss it. The Associated Press cautions journalists that describing women as “female” may be objectionable because “it can be seen as emphasizing biology,” but sometimes biology is highly relevant…
The problem is that “sex assigned at birth”- unlike [other euphemisms such as] “larger-bodied” - is very misleading. Saying that someone was “assigned female at birth” suggests that the person’s sex is at best a matter of educated guesswork. “Assigned” can connote arbitrariness - as in “assigned classroom seating” - and so “sex assigned at birth” can also suggest that there is no objective reality behind “male” and “female,” no biological categories to which the words refer…
Contrary to what we might assume, avoiding “sex” doesn’t serve the cause of inclusivity: not speaking plainly about males and females is patronizing. We sometimes sugarcoat the biological facts for children, but competent adults deserve straight talk…
Sexed organisms were present on Earth at least a billion years ago, and males and females would have been around even if humans had never evolved. Sex is not in any sense the result of linguistic ceremonies in the delivery room or other cultural practices.
The second piece is by physicist Alan Sokal and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, and was published in the Boston Globe. It’s about the medical establishment’s recent move toward shunning biological sex in favor of sex assigned at birth.
A baby’s name is assigned at birth; no one doubts that. But a baby’s sex is not “assigned”; it is determined at conception and is then observed at birth, first by examination of the external genital organs and then, in cases of doubt, by chromosomal analysis. Of course, any observation can be erroneous, and in rare cases the sex reported on the birth certificate is inaccurate and needs to be subsequently corrected. But the fallibility of observation does not change the fact that what is being observed - a person’s sex - is an objective biological reality, just like their blood group or fingerprint pattern, not something that is “assigned.” The medical associations’ pronouncements are social constructionism gone amok…
The medical establishment’s newfound reluctance to speak honestly about biological reality most likely stems from a laudable desire to defend the human rights of transgender people. But while the goal is praiseworthy, the chosen method is misguided. Protecting transgender people from discrimination and harassment does not require pretending that sex is merely “assigned.”
It is never justified to distort the facts in the service of a social or political cause, no matter how just. If the cause is truly just, then it can be defended in full acceptance of the facts about the real world.
And when an organization that proclaims itself scientific distorts the scientific facts in the service of a social cause, it undermines not only its own credibility but that of science generally. How can the public be expected to trust the medical establishment’s declarations on other controversial issues, such as vaccines - issues on which the medical consensus is indeed correct - when it has so visibly and blatantly misstated the facts about something so simple as sex?
Both pieces are well worth reading in full. You can read the New York Times piece here, and the Boston Globe piece here.