A solution to gender vs sex

You should be able to choose gender on the same part of the form where you can choose Dr or Prof or Lady or whatever instead of Mr, Mrs or Miss so people know how to address you but that’s about the extent of its relevance.

We don’t rewrite a birth certificate if you get a knighthood or a PhD.

Why do we need to record gender at any point?

I’m thinking it’d be like recording religion, to monitor and protect against discrimination.

Brownie Points?

Randomusername01

You have to ask yourself what gender really is. It's a set of stereotypes, or behaviour.

Which covers quite a bit. From super feminine, to super masculine, and everything in between. And also the genders which describes your sexual framework - the 72 different genders which mostly relate to who you sleep with, when, and how.

Very few people are extremely masculine or extremely feminine, so you would have to have different genders that covered, for example, almost completely feminine but a bit masculine, or very feminine sartorially, but masculine in terms of hobbies, etc. Then, of course, you would have to actually decide what constituted feminine and masculine. And that changes all the time.
(In the 60s man wore shirts covered in flowers and platform shoes).

It's a continually movable feast, which changes across individuals, and within individuals on different days/months/years.

Otherwise known as personality.

It's pointless ratifying it in any way whatsoever because most people don't fit in any kind of rigid box and for those few who do, it leaves no room for manoeuvre.

And what would it achieve?

Is it that if you wore things stereotypically called feminine, you should be treated in a certain way? Different to those who are masculine?

Why?

What is the purpose of having a gender ID?

The law changed to provide a fictitious legal status as the opposite sex and it was predicted at the time this would cause social and political problems, and it is causing problems. The problems are caused because the sex people are opting into have needs based on their sex, not the opposite one. So faking the membership of the categories will create a conflict no matter how its done.

The conflation of the two words was a deliberate method of obfuscation. See attached explanation of how and why this deliberate "demobilisation" of sex was done from Stephen Whittle.
socresonline.org.uk/12/1/whittle.html

Why do we need to record gender at any point? Sex is relevant for many reasons but I can't see why the state needs to know whether or not I conform to sex-based stereotypes?

I understand why you are thinking in this way and I agree that gender and sex need to be separated, because they are completely different.

However, I would absolutely not support the addition of gender to birth certificates. It would go against feminist beliefs; we need to reject gender and smash gender stereotypes. I do not 'identify as a woman' and I will not accept the idea that everyone has an internal 'gender identity. I would find it hugely offensive to be assigned an assumed gender.

A better model in my view might be to record 'gender' only for people who wish for it, so a trans person could apply to have their gender registered. Or a person who identifies as 'cis' if they wish. Even then, I would not be comfortable putting it on a birth certificate, as this should be a statement of fact, not feelings.

I think I would be okay with a mechanism similar to the GRA where adults could apply for a GRC stating their gender, alongside their original birth certificate. So a transwoman could be legally 'sex: male, gender: feminine'.

But... that wouldn't really solve much because a) TRAs would never agree and b) You'd still have the arguments about what being of the 'feminine gender' means and what rights it gives you. TRAs don't just want their gender to be recognised. They want to be seen and treated as indistinguishable from female people.

I think some version of this needs to happen to separate sex and gender completely, not on birth certificates but in personal information collected when starting jobs etc - as with different protected characteristics (e.g. religion, sexual orientation).

What would gender be used for?

Why not any other religious belief? A child is designated Muslim at birth and has the option to change it later if their beliefs change. Or maybe political background of the family?

Or we could get our heads round the notion that a legal document of record has no need at all to record the mysterious inner feelings of an individual that may change or indeed not manifest at all.

TRAs will not agree to anything like that. They want to pretend your sex is irrelevant and even that it is "intrusive" to know someone's sex. In Tasmania they are about to remove male or female from birth certificates entirely.

A birth certificate should be a record of what was observed at birth, there's no reason to have it updated later in life. In Germany they have an "X" to record born children with ambiguous (intesex) genitalia to protect intersex babies from being wrongly recorded in the very rare cases of an intersex child being wrongly denoted as M/F.

I wouldn't object to a new box where people can put 'unicorn' or whatever they want - or leave it blank, which is what I would do.
As PP said, it is really important that we divorce the 2 concepts.

Most people aren’t claiming to have a gender. The purpose of a birth certificate is to record the circumstances of your birth. It has nothing to do with gender.

Because nobody has a gender and we shouldn't be assigning them to people any more than we should be putting social class on a birth certificate.

There probably is a solution, and yes, it absolutely does depend upon divorcing the two concepts.
But whereas every human without exception has a sex, only those who have a belief in gender need adopt a gender.
And they should not use sex based terminology to express that gender. No more conflation.

This will leave us where we need to be.
Sex which is real will remain accurately recognised.
A tiny portion of the population can pursue their faith in gender, but it will have no relationship or relevance to sex or to sex based recognition, monitoring, spaces, services or rights.

Why should the state get to enforce gender on a child?