Sex assignment
Sex assignment refers to the assigning of sex at the birth of a baby. In 99.9% of births, a relative, midwife, or physician inspects the genitalia when the baby is delivered, sees ordinary male or female genitalia, and declares, "it's a girl" or "it's a boy" without hesitation or uncertainty. A social classification of immense significance has just been imputed to the infant in a process of seconds.
In nearly all cases, usually without conscious deliberation, the parents rear the child as a member of the assigned sex. In most cases, this sex of rearing is concordant with the person's gender identity. However, it is clear that in the case of some transgender and some intersex individuals, the gender identity may not match the sex of rearing.
In a tiny percentage of cases, at birth, sex assignment becomes a more protracted process of conscious decision, deliberation, and even negotiation by the parents. This typically occurs when the genitalia of the newborn infant appear ambiguous, or are distorted by a major birth defect. The process of assignment becomes "medicalized," as described in the article on ambiguous genitalia. The physicians involved are more conscious than the infant?s parents that assignment in these cases may be less a matter of discerning what the infant is than deciding what the infant should become, though this way of thinking about assignment is repugnant to many parents.
Sex reassignment is the term used when, in early infancy, parents and physicians decide to change the assigned sex of an infant. The most common situation in which sex reassignment for infants occurs is when a more thorough evaluation of an infant with an apparently minor birth defect of the genitalia is discovered to have more of the internal characteristics of the sex not originally assigned. When this is done for good reasons in the first month of life it nearly always goes smoothly beyond some temporary embarrassment for the family. Corrective genital surgery is usually offered and accepted in these cases.
Reassignment carried out by parents and doctors after early infancy is fraught with more danger of interfering with or opposing the process of gender identity development. David Reimer's story is a sad cautionary tale.
For some transgender and transsexual people, the term sex reassignment is also used to describe a seeking of this surgery to align their body with their gender identity, and is usually performed in adulthood. This type of genital reconstructive surgery is often termed sex reassignment surgery.
- See also: sex, sexual differentiation, sex of rearing, gender identity, intersex, ambiguous genitalia.
