Is Sex Or Gender Assigned At Birth

This started out as a footnote to my previous post, but it turns out that there's enough meat on the bone to merit its own discussion. So, what is assigned at birth, sex or gender?

Consider the following ritual as if you're an anthropologist studying a foreign culture:

1. A baby is born.
2. The baby is examined by a designated baby examiner.
3. The designated baby examiner pronounces that the baby is "X".

The complication that arises in interpreting this ritual is that X can refer to sex or gender class membership, but its not immediately clear which is intended.

Further investigation reveals several additional facts:

• The designated baby examiner is specifically examining the baby's genitals.
• Genital appearance is highly correlated with sex.
• Genital appearance has no bearing on gender.

Let's consider the hypothesis that X refers to gender. The implication is that the baby examination procedure is fundamentally mistaken, and that generations of baby examiners around the world have been rendering gender judgements on the basis of irrelevant information. It certainly wouldn't be the first time that a cultural ritual has been found to be totally baseless, so history tells us that we shouldn't eliminate it out of hand.

How about the opposite hypothesis, that X refers to sex? This interpretation dovetails nicely with what we know: Baby examiners are collecting information about sex via a proxy (appearance of external genitalia) which is known to be reliable, and then making declarations on the basis of that information.

Both of the above interpretations are plausible, but which one is more plausible? I will submit that the "sex" hypothesis is consistent with the observed behavior, and thus is more likely to be true than the "gender" hypothesis, which is not consistent with observed behavior.

The obvious follow-ons are then "How does gender happen?" and "Why is gender correlated with sex?". Sex is assigned at birth and that gender is subsequently constructed on the basis of sex. Again, this process nicely explains observed behavior while potential alternatives do not.