The phrase “sex assigned at birth” was dreamed up to suggest that biological sex (male or female, determined at fertilization and encoded in chromosones) is not an objective reality but a label slapped on a baby by a doctor in a delivery room. As if maleness and femaleness were within the purview and authority of adults to decide. As if the biology was negotiable.
Most people now recognize this for what it is: a denial of biological reality. The fact of male and female can be suppressed for a while — dress it up, pump hormones into a body, issue new documents. But like pushing a beach ball under water, the truth surges back to the surface. Doctors cannot assign sex. We can only recognize it.
