In his recent article, “Is Sex ‘Assigned’ at Birth?,” evolutionary biologist Colin Wright criticizes Planned Parenthood’s claims that a doctor “assigns” a baby’s sex at the time of birth. As Wright points out, a doctor merely notices and reports the baby’s sex. Planned Parenthood’s website makes as much sense as claiming that an obstetrician “assigns” a baby’s two-leggedness or “assigns” the eye color of a newborn.

There’s good reason to believe that Planned Parenthood intentionally misused the word “assign,” given that this word appears 19 times on Planned Parenthood’s highly problematic webpage, “Sex and Gender Identity.” Here is an excerpt:

Sex is a label — male or female — that you’re assigned by a doctor at birth based on the genitals you’re born with and the chromosomes you have. It goes on your birth certificate . . . . Instead of saying “biological sex,” some people use the phrase “assigned male at birth” or “assigned female at birth.” This acknowledges that someone (often a doctor) is making a decision for someone else. The assignment of a biological sex may or may not align with what’s going on with a person’s body, how they feel, or how they identify.

Wright’s article is a patient and focused response to yet another instance where activists are attempting to use ideology to rewrite biology. Wright’s counter-measure consists of serving up the kind of accurate biology lesson that most high school science teachers have uncontroversially delivered over many decades. That lesson goes something like this: “Here’s a male mouse. Notice the penis. Here’s a female mouse. Notice the vagina. Here’s a diagram of a male human and a female human. Same thing. Quiz tomorrow.”

Real-life biology is something that many Critical Justice Activists have self-trained themselves to find irrelevant. They also find real-life biology incomplete–those biology books keep forgetting to talk about feelings when they discuss gonads! Many of today’s Woke students don’t like hearing any blunt talk that they are human animals or that it is Nature (not a doctor) that calls the shots regard to a baby’s sex. Wright explains:

The claim that biological sex is “assigned at birth” is very misleading as it draws a false equivalence between transgender and intersex people, and suggests that identity, as opposed to reproductive anatomy, defines one’s biological sex.

Rather than being “assigned” at birth, sex is simply recorded at birth using genitalia as a very reliable predictor of underlying gonad type. The fact that doctors, on very rare occasions, are wrong in their assessment does not therefore immediately call everyone’s sex into question.

Planned Parenthood employs many highly educated and careful writers, so the wording on its website was not an accident. Planned Parenthood consciously decided to use the word “assigned” to falsely suggest that arrogant doctors steeped in scientism shoot from the hip whenever they designate a baby’s sex. That’s how I read their ideologically-laced webpage. They take this position despite the fact that the sex of almost every baby is determined about nine months prior to the birth. And once the baby is born, figuring out whether Nature chose pink versus blue is truly simple. Truly, a doctor merely needs to take a quick look. This process of sexing was perfected thousands of years before the patriarchy got around to inventing the multitudes of modern baby doctors, those people who arrogantly determine one’s sex by looking at gonads.

I can feel Wright’s frustration as he spells out the facts of life for activists (as well as for those of us who are unnerved by the vocal Woke mobs). This effort by Wright is merely the most recent of a series of basic sex-ed lessons he has been offering (see also here and here). It’s unfortunate that any of his articles were necessary, but I’m relieved to see that he is out there offering accurate biology bit by bit, to try to keep us all on the rails.

What is my main reason for writing this article? Because new parents should never be made to feel any hesitation or shame when they announce “It’s a girl!” or “It’s a boy!” We have all heard many people announcing and celebrating the sex of their newborns. On every occasion that I’ve heard such an announcement, I’m certain that there was no hint of any animosity toward people who have undergone the process of transgendering. Announcing a baby’s sex is always a perfectly appropriate thing to do, no footnotes and no asterisks needed. These joyous moments have no relevance to the hyper-sensitive feelings of transgender activists. In fact, if there were activists in my presence right now, I would urge them to each put one finger in one their own ears so the following information might stick: “When new parents joyously exclaim ‘It’s a girl!’, this is an undeniable biological fact that has absolutely nothing to do with you. It’s about the baby.”

Since Planned Parenthood twice mentioned “intersex” on the above webpage, it’s worth asking how often doctors get it wrong when they tell the parents what sex they have observed in the newborn baby. The answer: almost never. As Wright discusses, the reproductive anatomy of a baby is unambiguously male or female over 99.98 percent of the time. Many activists seem to think that it is insensitive to bluntly announce the sex of a baby because of “intersex.” They claim this even when only 2 out of 10,000 newborns are diagnosed with intersex conditions. They claim this despite the fact that intersex conditions have absolutely nothing to do with the issue of transgendering. I suspect that transgender activists keep bringing up intersex conditions because it confuses and extends what would otherwise be swift endings to bad arguments.

Planned Parenthood, an organization claiming an expertise in medical matters, needs to get its medical facts right, then revise its webpage accordingly. There’s a lot of work to do. One thing they desperately need to be add is this: For the great majority of people, biological sex robustly aligns with gender. This fact is not something shameful, insensitive or mean-spirited. It accurately describes most human beings, except in Planned Parenthood’s namby-pamby world of biology where this is a fact that must not be uttered.

Planned Parenthood should add strong warnings to its blithely worded webpage, especially since the links lead to such pages as “Coming Out as Trans,” making this Planned Parenthood webpage a slippery slope to irreversible medical treatments. This page looks like uncontroversial medical advice, but there is much disagreement in the medical community about these topics, something not mentioned on the webpage. This webpage is also rife with oversimplifications. I would propose at least the following warnings:

Many teenagers feel awkward about their bodies and/or depressed or anxious as they grow up. None of this should be interpreted, on its own, to suggest that transitioning to a different gender is appropriate. You should not assume that you need any puberty blockers, hormones or surgery unless you first consult a therapist who offers you a dispassionate analysis of your situation, including all of the pros and cons and up-to-date supporting research. Suicidal thoughts often have no relevance to gender issues. Use of any medical treatments to transition to a new gender will likely result in permanent sterility. Beware that talking to a counselor who actively promotes the process of transgendering for most of their clients is a dangerous practice, because this suggests that your “counselor” has a ideological goal that might not be in your best interests.  Beware that no medical techniques are capable of completely turning biological girls into true biological boys (and vice versa). Talk with doctors willing to give you ALL of the ramifications for the various treatments. You need to be careful when you read much of the internet information about the process of transgendering. Much of it is unsupported or false. Beware that we are currently in an environment of social contagion, where many people who are confidently giving what seems to be medical advice are actually cheerleading for teenagers to transition using irreversible medical techniques. Especially if you are a teenager, there is no way for you to self-diagnose whether you need any of these treatments. Many people who have had these treatments later seek to detransition to their sex at birth, but realize too late that they cannot recover their original bodies.

The warnings I am proposing are necessary because the Planned Parenthood fails to give a clear account of basic biology. The uncontroversial and undisputed biological account of what it means to be male and female should be at the top of this webpage. It also appears to me that this Planned Parenthood’s webpage is one skirmish in a much broader territorial war over language, not a Kuhnian paradigm shift leading us to a radically new account of biology.

In conclusion, “Boy” and “girl” have clear non-political meanings that have productively been used for hundreds of years. Every person should feel guilt-free and enthusiastic whenever they announce biological facts. Brand new parents should feel free to send out those birth announcements indicating that they have a bouncing new “boy” or “girl.” Perhaps they should even consider sending an extra copy of their birth announcement to Planned Parenthood.

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[Note: No person should be mistreated because of their transgender status, My concern here is that some people and some organizations who should know better are actively spreading false information about biology and medicine. I personally know several people who have gone through a transgender process and I know it is often not easy. I know there are legitimate cases where people do use medical techniques to go through the transgender process. We should honor and celebrate all people, including all transgender people, as fully and equally deserving of our empathy. They are fully entitled to their pursuit of life, liberty and happiness under the law and we should all stand up to protect them if ever they are mistreated.

That said, I have some serious concerns that many young teenagers are inaccurately being encouraged (by their peers and by activists) to think that they are the opposite gender based primarily on self-diagnosis and social contagion. Abigail Shrier has raised these serious concerns and her modest proposal is that we should slow down the process to make sure that teenagers seeking transition (and their families) are getting accurate medical information. We need to do this before handing young teenagers powerful drugs and offering them irreversible surgery. And see these recent concerns of the British High Court. One final thought. I have deep respect for much of the work done by Planned Parenthood. It is my hope that they rewrite their “Sex and Gender Identity” webpage for the reasons discussed above.]

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