{"id":8855,"date":"2024-04-12T08:44:15","date_gmt":"2024-04-12T06:44:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gender-theory.org\/2024\/04\/12\/agtrt-bdf80-alex-byrne-and-richard-dawkins-see-problems-with-the-term-sex-assigned-at-birth-that-are-not-there\/"},"modified":"2024-05-05T10:51:17","modified_gmt":"2024-05-05T08:51:17","slug":"agtrt-bdf80-alex-byrne-and-richard-dawkins-see-problems-with-the-term-sex-assigned-at-birth-that-are-not-there","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gender-theory.org\/en\/2024\/04\/12\/agtrt-bdf80-alex-byrne-and-richard-dawkins-see-problems-with-the-term-sex-assigned-at-birth-that-are-not-there\/","title":{"rendered":"[AGTRT-BF80] Alex Byrne and Richard Dawkins see problems with the term “sex assigned at birth” that are not there"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Jan Bergstra & Laurens Buijs<\/strong>Amsterdam Gender Theory Research Team<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

This past week, two opinion pieces appeared in the American press expressing dissatisfaction with the term “sex assigned at birth<\/em>.” On April 3, the opinion piece “The problem with saying ‘sex assigned at birth'”<\/a>(archive.ph<\/a>) by Alex Byrne and Carole K. Hooven in The New York Times<\/em>, and on April 8, Alan Sokal and Richard Dawkins featured the opinion piece “Sex and Gender: The medical establishment’s reluctance to speak honestly about biological reality<\/a>“ <\/em>(archive.ph<\/a>) in The Boston Globe<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n

Both pieces point out that an increasing number of U.S. health organizations (the American Medical Association, the American Psychologcal Association, the American Academy for Pediatrics, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) are calling for the use of that term“sex assigned at birth<\/em>,” rather than talking about “sex<\/em>” (gender).<\/p>\n\n

Both Alex Byrne and Richard Dawkins are well-known leaders in the essentialist camp of the gender debate. Both opinion pieces speak out against this development: the authors feel that this is verbiage that sweeps under the rug the fact that, in the vast majority of cases, the assignment of sex has a decisively biological background that should not be denied. So write Sokal and Dawkins: <\/p>\n\n

\n

“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.”<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

We understand the authors’ concerns that biological gender, under the influence of co-essentialist gender ideology, is increasingly in danger of fading into the background. Both authors make the valid point that biological gender matters, and that it is problematic if the difference between man and woman through the word gender is expressed only in sociocultural terms, or in terms of identity.<\/p>\n\n

Yet we do not share the concerns of these essentialists. After all, no one can deny that “sex assigned at birth<\/em>“ <\/em>(SAAB) correlates to an extraordinarily high degree with a combination of very determinable purely biological characteristics. So assigning great importance to SAAB is precisely a practical and relatively uncontroversial way to give biological aspects a role. It can then also be secured on that basis that a person with SAAB female<\/em> thereby herself female<\/em> is, and so there will also be an answer to the question of whether someone with SAAB male<\/em> himself is male<\/em>, and the question of whether someone with SAAB neutral<\/em> himself is neutral<\/em> (see AGTRT-BF75<\/a> for this language).<\/p>\n\n

Read more about the difference between sex and gender: <\/em>The Dutch language is deficient for gender theory, and must be expanded to include male and female<\/a><\/p>\n\n

We believe that the use of SAAB is preferable to gender in the medical profession because that language can easily be used to clarify that some people have a different (formal) gender than their birth sex. We also think that SAAB is preferable to gender if in fact gender identity is meant by that (something that now often seems to be the case in the Netherlands). <\/p>\n\n

SAAB, by the way, we read as “bodily gender assigned at birth<\/em>” (BGAAB). That matters, because there is not simply a standard definition of bodily gender (see AGTRT-BF41<\/a> and AGTRT-BF42<\/a>), and that is what is needed here. Around 1900, sex was determined differently than anno today, at least in “difficult” cases (see AGTRT-BF54<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n

Learn more about the basics of gender: <\/em>What is gender anyway, and why is biological sex not sufficient?<\/a><\/p>\n\n

It seems to us that the Byrne & Hooven and Sokal & Dawkins duos might actually be pleased with the progression of language whose biological basis is virtually uncontested. We share their concerns about overblown gender ideology, but the solution is not to think about the difference between men and women solely in biological terms again. <\/p>\n\n

The solution, though, is to arrive at a definitive of gender that takes biological reality seriously, but also allows for the complexity that is well and truly associated with the difference between male and female. That is what we at the AGTRT are trying to do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jan Bergstra & Laurens BuijsAmsterdam Gender Theory Research Team This past week, two opinion pieces appeared in the American press expressing dissatisfaction with the term “sex assigned at birth.” On April 3, the opinion piece “The problem with saying ‘sex assigned at birth’”(archive.ph) by Alex Byrne and Carole K. Hooven in The New York Times, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":94225296,"featured_media":7782,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"federate","footnotes":""},"categories":[770841050],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-formal-gender-theory-en"],"rttpg_featured_image_url":{"full":["https:\/\/gender-theory.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/screenshot-2024-04-12-at-08.43.18.png",1097,516,false],"landscape":["https:\/\/gender-theory.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/screenshot-2024-04-12-at-08.43.18.png",1097,516,false],"portraits":["https:\/\/gender-theory.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/screenshot-2024-04-12-at-08.43.18.png",1097,516,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/gender-theory.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/screenshot-2024-04-12-at-08.43.18.png",150,71,false],"medium":["https:\/\/gender-theory.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/screenshot-2024-04-12-at-08.43.18.png",300,141,false],"large":["https:\/\/gender-theory.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/screenshot-2024-04-12-at-08.43.18.png",1024,482,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/gender-theory.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/screenshot-2024-04-12-at-08.43.18.png",1097,516,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/gender-theory.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/screenshot-2024-04-12-at-08.43.18.png",1097,516,false]},"rttpg_author":{"display_name":"Laurens Buijs","author_link":"https:\/\/gender-theory.org\/en\/author\/laurensjanbuijs\/"},"rttpg_comment":0,"rttpg_category":"Formal Gender Theory<\/a>","rttpg_excerpt":"Jan Bergstra & Laurens BuijsAmsterdam Gender Theory Research Team This past week, two opinion pieces appeared in the American press expressing dissatisfaction with the term “sex assigned at birth.” On April 3, the opinion piece “The problem with saying ‘sex assigned at birth'”(archive.ph) by Alex Byrne and Carole K. Hooven in The New York Times,…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gender-theory.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gender-theory.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gender-theory.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gender-theory.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/94225296"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gender-theory.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8855"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/gender-theory.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8855\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9252,"href":"https:\/\/gender-theory.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8855\/revisions\/9252"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gender-theory.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gender-theory.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gender-theory.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gender-theory.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}