“Is Sex Assigned at Birth?”—Responding With Charity & Clarity
Finding the truth amid the arguments and twisted theories is hard enough. But it’s even harder to explain the truth so people can hear and accept it.
This week we’re honored to share a chapter from one of the many books written by Jason Evert*, called “Male, Female, Other?” Jason is a theologian, counselor and philosopher who lives in Arizona and offers help and answers to tough questions on life and relationships at his website.
We recommend growing our understanding of ‘gender theories’, where they came from, and what science and wisdom say. Jason offers some excellent summer reading! ~ Kim
What is gender? Few words today generate as much controversy.
Students, parents, and educators are asking:
How many genders are there?
What if my daughter says she’s trans?
Do some people have an intersex brain?
Should I use their preferred pronouns?
Is gender a social construct?
Does surgery prevent suicide?
Are puberty blockers safe?
What if I experience gender dysphoria?
Male, Female, Other? addresses the most common claims of gender theory and shows how to respond with charity and clarity—especially if you care about someone who identifies as trans and don’t know how to respond, or you experience gender dysphoria and wonder what God’s plan is for you.
Claim 4: Sex is assigned at birth
According to Dr. Deanna Adkins, one’s internal sense of gender is “the only medically supported determinant of sex. . . . It is counter to medical science to use chromosomes, hormones, internal reproductive organs, external genitalia, or secondary sex characteristics to override gender identity for purposes of classifying someone as male or female.”1 Therefore, when a child is born and a doctor assigns the child male or female, such a premature judgment can be damaging to the individual. According to The New England Journal of Medicine, “Sex designations on birth certificates offer no clinical utility, and they can be harmful for intersex and transgender people.”2 Because some boys have vaginas and some girls have penises, we can’t know someone’ sex unless they tell us.
In the words of trans activist Decker Moss, “imagine a world, where gender isn’t left up to doctors or judges, one where we are all able to claim our own gender based on what’s between our ears, rather than have it assigned to us based on what’s between our legs. Here, we’re all able to self-identify as male, as female, as both, or as neither.”3
(Jason’s) Reply
Although gender theory proposes the idea that every child is “assigned” a sex at birth, this language originated in the medical field for babies who are born with genital ambiguities. In such difficult situations doctors and parents were left with a difficult task of discerning how to proceed. Dr. John Money believed that clinicians had a responsibility to assist parents in assigning such children a sex and then establishing a plan of hormonal and surgical interventions if necessary, followed by social conditioning, to ensure the child will live out his or her gender role.
Thankfully, many medical professionals and clinicians today take a more cautious and less invasive approach. When a child is born with ambiguous genitalia, a team of specialists will assist the parents in navigating this challenging situation. Often, this will involve the consultation of experts in genetics, urology, endocrinology, psychiatry, and pediatric medicine. If the sex of the child is not obvious, sometimes an ultrasound or chromosomal, hormonal, or genetic tests can give the parents greater clarity. However, 99.98 percent of the time, the genitals of a child clearly indicate his or her sex.4
To apply the language of “assigning sex” to children when their bodies are clearly male or female is a linguistic maneuver by gender theorists. Despite the binary nature of human sexuality, gender theorists treat every child as sexually ambiguous. Margaret McCarthy summed up their intentions well: “It is as though we are all effectively hermaphrodites regardless of our anatomy or any other physiological make up.”5 Supposedly, all that a parent or obstetrician can do is “assign” a sex based upon their best guess, as an external, arbitrary authority. But if sex can be assigned, it can be reassigned. This is the ultimate motive behind adopting such language.
For a child whose sexual development in utero is typical, doctors and parents are not assigning a child’s sex. They’re recognizing a biological reality that was determined long before the child’s birth and identifying it. As Dr. Paul McHugh explained, “The language of ‘assigned at birth’ is purposefully misleading and would be identical to an assertion that blood type is assigned at birth. Yes, a doctor can check your blood type and list it. But blood type, like sex, is objectively recognizable, not assigned. In fact, the sex of a child can be ascertained well before birth.”6
According to biologists, sex can be defined by the type of mature reproductive cells, or gametes.
Neuroscientist Dr. Deborah Soh explains:
Contrary to what is commonly believed, sex is defined not by chromosomes or our genitals, or hormonal profiles, but by gametes, which are mature reproductive cells. There are only two types of gametes: small ones called sperm that are produced by males, and large ones called eggs that are produced by females. There are no intermediate types of gametes between egg and sperm cells. It is not a spectrum.7
The classification of human as male and female is not arbitrary. As one physician replied to The New England Journal of Medicine’s article about eliminating “unnecessary legal sex classifications,” for children, “I’m a pediatrician. The growth curves for male and female babies are notably different. Am I just to give up on tracking normal growth and development?”8
Therefore, the language of “assigning” sex should be rejected. Similar terms could also be questioned. For example, the term “born male” or “born female” can undermine the stability of sex. Was the person any less male before his delivery? Can a man cease to be male at a later point in time? What is so extraordinary about the moment of birth? Sex is such a stable reality that thousands of years after one’s death— and for all eternity—the fact of being male and female persists. Even government agencies such as the United States Selective Service acknowledge this when they declared that for the military draft, “US citizens or immigrants who are born male and changed their gender to female are still required to register. Individuals who are born female and changed their gender to male are not required to register.”9
Not all creatures have a sexual nature as stable as humans. Although most organisms do not change their sex, some kinds of animals do.10 Take, for example, the goby fish. If the dominant male dies or is removed from a habitat, the largest female becomes male. If the male is reintroduced into the habitat, the female who had replaced him as a male reverts back to a female and is interested once again in mating with him.11 A small fraction of less than one percent of animals possess this capacity, known as sequential hermaphroditism.12 For the Bluehead Wrass fish, the metamorphosis, including the outward appearance and ability to produce sperm cells, takes only a few days!13 Similarly, some plants reproduce asexually, while others can even change their sex based upon environmental conditions.14
However, even in the case of these fascinating creatures, sex is understood the same way as it is for humans: Sex is defined by how an organism is organized for reproduction. Therefore, male and female are not like two colors among many. Rather, the two sexes are intelligible only in relation to one another. They become aware of their own uniqueness only in light of their complementarity. One discovers oneself in the other. A man’s body is naturally ordered toward fatherhood, and a woman’s toward motherhood. Some might counter, “Then what about people who are infertile?”
Infertility does not negate the fact that humans are a sexually dimorphic species. In fact, it supports the fact. For example, if a man is unable to become pregnant, it’s not because he’s infertile. It’s because he’s not a woman. Just as no man can gestate, no woman can fertilize an ovum. Even in the case of men and women who have intersex conditions, they cannot self-fertilize. Like all other people, they can either impregnate, become pregnant, or if their fertility is not functioning properly, they can do neither. But if a person’s procreative potential is impaired by age or disease, this does not make the person any less male or female. It simply shows that the potential that they have for reproduction cannot be actualized. If fertility was a prerequisite for determining one’s sex, then no one could know their own sex prior to parenthood. Thankfully, long before then, one’s sex can be determined by how one’s body is organized for reproduction.
*Jason Evert earned a master’s degree in Theology, and undergraduate degrees in Counseling and Theology, with a minor in Philosophy at Franciscan University of Steubenville. He and his wife Chrystalina are frequent guests on radio programs throughout the country, and their television appearances include Fox News, MSNBC, the BBC, and EWTN.