Sex assignment

Sex assignment (sometimes known as gender assignment) is the discernment of an infant's sex at birth. Assignment may be done prior to birth through prenatal sex discernment. In the majority of births, a relative, midwife, nurse or physician inspects the genitalia when the baby is delivered, and sex is assigned, without ambiguity.
Sex assignment at birth usually aligns with a child's anatomical sex and phenotype. The number of births where the baby is intersex - where they do not fit into typical definitions of male and female - has been reported to be as low as 0.018% up to roughly 1.7%, depending on which conditions are counted as intersex. The number of births with ambiguous genitals is in the range of 0.02% to 0.05%. These conditions may complicate sex assignment. Other intersex conditions involve atypical chromosomes, gonads or hormones. Reinforcing sex assignments through surgical or hormonal interventions is often considered to violate the individual's human rights.
The act of assignment carries the implicit expectation that future gender identity will develop in alignment with the physical anatomy, assignment, and rearing. In about 99.7% of cases, the child's gender identity matches their sex assignment. If sex assignment and gender identity do not align, the person may be transgender or gender non-conforming (GNC). The sex assignment of an intersex individual may also contradict their future gender identity.
Terminology.
"Sex assignment" is the discernment of an infant's sex at birth. Terms that may be related to sex assignment are:
Assigned male at birth (AMAB): a person of any age and irrespective of current gender whose sex assignment at birth resulted in a declaration of "male". Synonyms: male assigned at birth (MAAB) and designated male at birth (DMAB).
Assigned female at birth (AFAB): a person of any age and irrespective of current gender whose sex assignment at birth resulted in a declaration of "female". Synonyms: female assigned at birth (FAAB) and designated female at birth (DFAB).
"Intersex", in humans and other animals, describes variations in sex characteristics including chromosomes, gonads, sex hormones, or genitals that, according to the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, "do not fit typical binary notions of male or female bodies". These may complicate the sex assignment of a newborn and can result a phenotypical sex assignment that is inconsistent with normal genotype.
"Transgender" people have a gender identity, or gender expression, that differs from their assigned sex. Transgender people are sometimes called "transsexual" if they desire medical assistance to transition from one sex to another.
"Sex reassignment": a treatment program consisting of a combination of psychological, medical, and surgical methods intended to physically change a person's sexual characteristics.
History.
The discernment of an infant's sex was, until recently, almost universally considered an "observation" or "recognition" of an inherent aspect of a baby. The rationales for sex assignment and consequential registration appear to have been little questioned. A Dutch report on gender registration states that sex registration was introduced in 1811 as an intrinsic component in population registration, due to gender-specific rights and responsibilities, such as military conscription. Many discriminatory provisions in legislation no longer exist, but the provisions remain for rationales that include "speed of identification procedures".
Assignment in cases of infants with intersex traits, or cases of trauma.
Observation or recognition of an infant's sex may be complicated in the case of intersex infants and children, and in cases of early trauma. In such cases, sex assignment is generally taken to require medical treatment to confirm that assignment, but this is disputed in part due to the human rights implications of such treatment.
"Intersex" broadly denotes the presence of atypical sex characteristics: at least some aspect of the genitalia, internal organs, secondary sex characteristics, gonadal tissue, or chromosomes is more typical of the other sex. When the external genitalia appear to be in between, they are described as ambiguous.
Cases of trauma include the famous John/Joan case, where sexologist John Money claimed successful "reassignment" from male to female at age 17 months of a boy whose penis was destroyed during circumcision. However, this claim was later shown to be largely false. The subject, David Reimer, later identified as a man.
The number of births with ambiguous genitals is in the range of 1 in 2,000 to 1 in 4,500 (0.02% to 0.05%). Typical examples would be an unusually prominent clitoris in an otherwise apparently typical girl, or complete cryptorchidism in an otherwise apparently typical boy. In most of these cases, a sex is tentatively assigned and the parents told that tests will be performed to confirm the apparent sex. Typical tests in this situation might include a pelvic ultrasound to determine the presence of a uterus, a testosterone or 17α-hydroxyprogesterone level, and/or a karyotype. In some of these cases a pediatric endocrinologist is consulted to confirm the tentative sex assignment. The expected assignment is usually confirmed within hours to a few days in these cases.
In a much smaller proportion of cases, the process of assignment is more complex, and involves both "discerning" what the biological elements of characteristic sex may be and "choosing" the best sex assignment for the purposes of rearing the child. Approximately 1 in 20,000 infants is born with enough ambiguity that assignment becomes a more drawn-out process of multiple tests and intensive education of the parents about sexual differentiation. In some of these cases, it is clear that the child will face physical difficulties or social stigma as they grow up, and deciding upon the sex of assignment involves weighing the advantages and disadvantages of either assignment. Intersex activists have criticised "normalising" procedures performed on infants and children, who are unable to provide informed consent.
History.
In European societies, Roman law, post-classical Canon law, and later Common law, referred to a person's sex as male, female or hermaphrodite, with legal rights as male or female depending on the characteristics that appeared most dominant. Under Roman law, a hermaphrodite had to be classed as either male or female. The 12th-century "Decretum Gratiani" states that "Whether an hermaphrodite may witness a testament, depends on which sex prevails". The foundation of common law, the 16th Century "Institutes of the Lawes of England", described how a hermaphrodite could inherit "either as male or female, according to that kind of sexe which doth prevaile." Legal cases where sex assignment was placed in doubt have been described over the centuries.
With the medicalization of intersex, criteria for assignment have evolved over the decades, as clinical understanding of biological factors and diagnostic tests have improved, as surgical techniques have changed and potential complications have become clearer, and in response to the outcomes and opinions of adults who have grown up with various intersex conditions.
Before the 1950s, assignment was based almost entirely on the appearance of the external genitalia. Although physicians recognized that there were conditions in which the apparent secondary sexual characteristics could develop contrary to the person's sex, and conditions in which the gonadal sex did not match that of the external genitalia, their ability to understand and diagnose such conditions in infancy was too poor to attempt to predict future development in most cases.
In the 1950s, endocrinologists developed a basic understanding of the major intersex conditions such as congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH), androgen insensitivity syndrome, and mixed gonadal dysgenesis. The discovery of cortisone allowed survival of infants with severe CAH for the first time. New hormone tests and karyotypes allowed more confident diagnosis in infancy and prediction of future development.
Sex assignment became more than choosing a sex of rearing, but also began to include surgical treatment. Undescended testes could be retrieved. A greatly enlarged clitoris could be amputated to the usual size, but attempts to create a penis were unsuccessful. John Money and others controversially believed that children were more likely to develop a gender identity that matched sex of rearing than might be determined by chromosomes, gonads, or hormones. The resulting medical model was termed the "Optimal gender model".
The view of gender as a social construct, and gender identity as a result of nurture rather than nature reached widespread acceptance, at least in liberal, progressive, and academic portions of Western society. The primary goal of assignment was to choose the sex that would lead to the least inconsistency between external anatomy and assigned psyche (gender identity). This led to the recommendation that any child without a penis or with a penis too small to penetrate a vagina could be raised as a girl, taught to be a girl, and would develop a female gender identity, and that this would be the best way to minimize future discrepancy between psyche and external anatomy in those infants determined to be genetically male (i.e. XY genotype) but without a penis that meets medical norms (e.g., cloacal exstrophy), and also in those like in the John/Joan case who lost it to accidental trauma in early infancy.
From the 1960s, pediatric surgeons attempted and claimed success with reconstruction of infant genitalia, especially enlargement or construction of vaginas. The recommended rules of assignment and surgery from the late 1960s until the 1990s were roughly:
Since the 1990s, a number of factors have led to changes in the recommended criteria for assignment and surgery. These factors have included:
Clinical recommendations in the 2000s for assignment changed as a result:
These recommendations do not "explicitly" necessitate surgical or hormonal interventions to reinforce sex assignments, but such medical management persists worldwide, utilizing rationales such as the mitigation of parental distress and trauma, reducing the likelihood of stigma, making a child feel more "normal", and improving marriage prospects.
Controversy.
Controversies over surgical aspects of intersex management, have often focused on controversies regarding indications for surgery and optimal timing. However, intersex and human rights organizations have criticized medical models as they are not based on the consent of the individuals on whom such irreversible medical treatments are conducted, and outcomes may be inappropriate or poor. Anne Tamar-Mattis, for example, states that, "The true choice is not between early and late [surgery], but early surgery versus patient autonomy." Human rights institutions now refer to such practices as "harmful practices".
However, while surgical interventions remain experimental, and clinical confidence in constructing "normal" genital anatomies has not been borne out, medically credible pathways other than surgery do not yet exist. Changes to clinical recommendations in the current millennium do not yet address human rights concerns about consent, and the child's right to identity, privacy, freedom from torture and inhuman treatment, and physical integrity.
In 2011, Christiane Völling won the first successful case brought against a surgeon for non-consensual surgical intervention. The Regional Court of Cologne, Germany, awarded her €100,000.
In 2015, the Council of Europe recognized the right for intersex persons to "not" undergo sex assignment treatment, identifying issues with the pathologization of intersex bodies as inherently disordered. In April 2015, Malta became the first country to recognize a right to bodily integrity and physical autonomy, and outlaw non-consensual modifications to sex characteristics. The Act was widely welcomed by civil society organizations.
Reassignment of sex or gender.
Sex reassignment surgery is when a person's physical appearance and function of their existing sexual characteristics are altered after an original sex assignment in infancy. This may occur in several types of circumstances.
Challenges to requirements for sex assignment.
In recent years, the perceived need to legally assign sex is increasingly being challenged. A report for the Dutch Ministry of Security and Justice states "Gender increasingly seems to be perceived as a ‘sensitive’ identity feature, but so far is not regarded, nor protected as such in privacy regulations". Australian government guidelines state that "departments and agencies that collect sex and/or gender information must not collect information unless it is necessary for, or directly related to, one or more of the agency's functions or activities"