I propose that we use “assigned female/male at birth” rather than using phrases such as “natural born” or “man/woman’s body”.
This isn't something I think about very much at all. I find the whole transgender thing a bit strange, and I don't really understand it. But it's not really any of my business. I don't care how people dress, or what washroom they use or who they choose for intimate partners. The only reason I replied was because I saw an article about Laurel Hubbard and it was fresh in my mind. But now that I'm here, can you explain
Why is "assigned female" preferred to physical gender of female, or woman's body, or natural born? And who made the assignment?
I know you're not asking me, but whatever, I'll answer anyway.
There is no such thing as physical gender. There are primary sex features and secondary sex features, but no physical gender. Male and female are genders. Primary sex features are genitals, both internal and external, secondary sex features are build, body shape, breasts, body hair, etc, all of which show up in puberty.
The most important thing to note is that being trans is not a choice, gender is not a choice. If a girl is born with male genitalia, she was never a boy, she was always a girl, it just takes time for her to be able to understand and communicate that.
So if she was always a girl, then why did she have to struggle, why was it hard for her to figure out that she was a girl? Because the appearance of her genitals made everyone treat her like a boy. That's what is meant by assigned.
The moment doctors and parents see what an infant's genitals look like, they assign a gender to the child, even if it's the wrong gender. Trans people usually start knowing something is wrong very very young, well before they can do anything about it. They didn't choose the gender they were raised as, someone assigned it to them based on what their genitals look like. They don't choose to be trans. They can choose to transition, but they never choose to be trans.
Now that doesn't just apply to trans people. So called "intersex" children deal with the same problem. An infant can be born with external genitals that appear a certain way, but their internal sex organs may be the opposite, this means that they will be assigned one gender at birth, but develop like the opposite gender at puberty. Sometimes the assigned gender matches their identity, so they take the same meds as trans folks to stay with their assigned gender. Other times they transition to the gender that matches their new hormones.
Now, some of these cases aren't detected until puberty, so the kids are often consulted as to which gender they identify with. However, when the external genitals are ambiguous, doctors used to always decide for the child based on which correction was easiest. This lead to an enormous number of problems, so now the advice is to wait until the child can understand and communicate which gender they actually are.
The point is, the practice of assigning gender to infants based on the appearance of their genitals is typically accurate, which is why we've always done it, but sometimes isn't, for multiple reasons.
[ETA: by "we", I mean western culture. Other cultures aren't always as assigning of gender. Indigenous cultures I particular often make a lot of space for self identification of gender, point being, it's a cultural practice that gender is assigned, not a given because of genitals and secondary sex features]
Now, a lot of people don't really care because these misgendered kids are relatively rare, so unless you know and love one yourself, it's hard to grasp what it means. The magnitude of what this means for them and their safety.
However, it is VERY important because most people care about kids dying, and that's the consequence of society not caring about trans kids. They tend to die. Like, horrifying percentages of them die. Having gender mis-assigned at birth is one of the deadliest and most dangerous conditions for children if they don't have proper supports.
A misgendered child who doesn't have adequate support is virtually guaranteed to suffer debilitating mental health issues and likely commit suicide. On the flip side, a misgendered kid who receives a ton of support often ends up a pretty normal, happy kid. But that support needs to be societal as well.
So when we use language like "born a boy", that invalidates that the trans girl is a girl, was always a girl, and was only raised as a boy because of what their genitals looked like. It communicates to trans people that you think they were actually a boy and they chose to be a girl. It invalidates how necessary it was for them to be their true self, which they *always* were, the people around them just didn't know it because they were born with the wrong genitals.
