Germany allowing opted out of sex ID...

*As far as I know this is only for intersex people who are really between male and female.

Just to be pedantic, but it is important that it’s noted - intersex conditions are NOT between Male and female. They are errors in Male or female development. Most people with one of the intersex conditions are recognised as Male or female at birth with no problems. The number who would be genuinely not obviously discernible at birth is tiny, and the proportion who would be still ambiguous after genetic testing is a tiny proportion of that tiny proportion. Everyone is Male or female. Nobody is halfway. Nobody is anything else.*

You are absolutely right, I worded it incorrectly. Fact remains it was never mean to be for gender identity, but I wonder how long it will take for it to be misused for that.

As somebody with a degree in history, I hate the fact people can change their sex on the birth certificate. That is just falsifying history and details like these can be important.

MRKHTAKE2 nails it (from the intersex pov) as usual, she's not happy and I totally get why.......

twitter.com/mrkhtake2/status/1080214791736737793

Just seen it on BBC news, clearly stated its for intersex people which is based on objective facts about a persons body and primary sex organs.

As far as I know this is only for intersex people who are really between male and female.

Just to be pedantic, but it is important that it’s noted - intersex conditions are NOT between Male and female. They are errors in Male or female development. Most people with one of the intersex conditions are recognised as Male or female at birth with no problems. The number who would be genuinely not obviously discernible at birth is tiny, and the proportion who would be still ambiguous after genetic testing is a tiny proportion of that tiny proportion. Everyone is Male or female. Nobody is halfway. Nobody is anything else.

I don’t think there’s a scientific or medical reason to put x on a birth certificate. If there’s any ambiguity there is a process to delay the usual reporting time limit until physical and/or genetic testing has taken place.

It’s been talked about on a few threads but the push to remove women’s spaces is top down imposed and tailored by society. In Germany and other countries where there isn’t the sex/gender differentiation linguistically the wedge is intersex conditions. In the anglosphere it’s TWAW.

Geschlecht means sex, not gender. German doesn’t have a word for gender beyond Geschlechtsidentität, literally “sex identity”. It’s why, in an academic - or “woke” - context, the English word gender is used. And as PP have said, the third sex option was designed for intersex babies with ambiguous genitalia.

Here is an article (written by a very 'woke' columnist, Margarete Stokowski), criticising the 'restrictive' approach taken in Germany.

www.spiegel.de/kultur/gesellschaft/dritte-geschlechtsoption-der-staat-als-spanner-a-1232264.html

It seems to me that intersex conditions have been very successfully co-opted by the TRAs in Germany. This serves to confuse a very uninformed public.

Apparently, the state (always a bogeyman in post-war Germany) brutally forces people into the categories of male and female - this is a 'hellish imposition'. And silly me thought that it was good old evolution that had imposed sexual reproduction on the human species. Now I learn it was the German government!

The very few gender critical voices in Germany seem to be disorganised and cut off from funding. Wonder if deepwatersolo knows more about this?

I disagree that Geschlecht means both sex and gender. It doesn't for me (native speaker). This is why they come up with the awkward term Geschlechtsidentitaet. Gender is not a term used outside a specific demographic of youngish, university- educated people. The majority of Germans wouldn't know what it means except maybe as a grammar term.

Sorry, cross posted with TakenforSlanted.

Igneococcus did I understand correctly that there is no word for 'gender' as in 'sexist stereotype' in German?

Geschlecht is actually both sex and gender - German doesn't differentiate the way English does. Kind of the way that people in English will say gender but mean sex because they're prudish about the latter.

If you want to say gender specifically, you'd have so say something along the lines of social sex or sex role or identity. In academia, the English word gender is used quite frequently, too.

Geschlecht is sex not gender

Igneococcus wrote - "people with "diverser Geschlechtsidentitae" where Geschlechtsidentitaet means gender."

I would translate Geschlechtsidentitaet as "gender identity" rather than gender (Geschlecht) or gender role (Geschlechterrolle).

Childrenofthestones

Your suggestion:

Dont worry, when Islam becomes a large cultural and political force there, as it shall, this guff will all be reversed.

...is peculiar and worrying. It's both Islamophobically alarmist, and anti trans.

As far as I know this is only for intersex people who are really between male and female. It has nothing to do with transgender or gender identity. The idea is that the person can change it later to male and female if they want to. I don't think you can change your birth registration in Germany otherwise.

There is a consistant precedent set by TRAs to appropriate the experiences/supportive structures for people who have intersex conditions.
People who are intersex are not 'between male and female'

As far as I know this is only for intersex people who are really between male and female. It has nothing to do with transgender or gender identity. The idea is that the person can change it later to male and female if they want to. I don't think you can change your birth registration in Germany otherwise.

In North America, some young people identifying as Non-Binary (& other gender identities) are accessing medical interventions:

'The Uncharted Territories of Medically Transitioning Children'
recent article by Donna Reynolds
(extract)
"Who’s Leading Whom—and Where?

A January 2018 Washington Post piece highlighted the services provided by the UCSF Child and Adolescent Gender Center:

The type of services being requested has also changed. Clinicians say they are no longer taken aback by youths seeking some kind of boutique treatment — often “just a touch of testosterone” for an androgynous, nonbinary identity.

“It’s the children who are now leading us,” said Diane Ehrensaft, the director of mental health for the clinic. “They’re coming in and telling us, ‘I’m no gender.’ Or they’re saying, ‘I identify as gender nonbinary.’ Or ‘I’m a little bit of this and a little bit of that. I’m a unique gender, I’m transgender. I’m a rainbow kid, I’m boy-girl, I’m everything.’”

Dr Ehrensaft is wrong. Children aren’t leading the charge in this field, and limitless gender fluidity isn’t an idea that springs unbidden from the minds of adolescents. These are post-modern gender concepts developed by academics and released into the infosphere where they can be absorbed by kids who are bored, troubled, or seeking new and creative ways to freak out their parents.

The boutique response to adolescent gender games is likely a small part of what the UCSF Child and Adolescent Gender Center does, but that they indulge them at all seems frivolous and unworthy of the children and adults who genuinely suffer. And as the long-term effects of such interventions are unclear, it also seems risky.

Gender dysphoria isn’t new, but the treatment options and the evolving demographics are. Clinicians are in the unenviable position of having to make Solomonic judgments about how best to treat a changing patient population. And given the response by academics and activists to conservative treatment approaches, some practitioners may feel pressured to approve transitional therapies that are safe from professional censure but inappropriate for the patient. They may remember that an Ohio couple lost custody of their child for refusing to authorize hormone therapy, and that Kenneth Zucker’s clinic was shuttered, and that Lisa Littman’s research was sandbagged." (continues)
quillette.com/2018/12/29/the-uncharted-territories-of-medically-transitioning-children/

But you'd have thought trans people generally will change from MtF or FtM on their documents and won't want to identify as intersex.
I'm not sure German identity politics is as extreme as it is in the Anglosphere, so eg non-binary people thinking they're actually intersex? And changing their birth certificate to have it legally recognised?

There are many within the trans community who are advocating for the 'X' & some prominant TRAs who identify as transwomen/men also identify as non-binary.
'Smashing the binary' intention is to end sex-based rights, spaces, descriptions etc.
A designation of 'Non-Binary' means access all areas. People can assert they are neither and/or both genders/sex.

The BBC link makes it look like you need a Drs certificate, and that it’s different from gender identity.

However, this passage jumped out at me:

while gender activists think the need for a doctor's certificate will make proof harder for intersex people without physical characteristics

Firstly, don’t all intersex variations of a person’s reproductive anatomy have a biological/physical basis which should be verifiable? Who are the intersex people without any physical features (genuine question, would love to know the answer)? What about people who are in the medical system for treatment of “gender dysphoria” (however that is diagnosed), would they be able to get a doctor (such as a German equivalent of a private gender clinic of GPs) to change their certificate to X if they have (for example) a double mastectomy to “affirm their non-binary identity” which is a “physical intervention”? If so, what does that mean for bodily integrity in young people? Regarding the “confusion” between sex and gender that seems to be happening even in Germany, is this situation really another way of trying to say non-binary people are somehow the same as intersex people? Trans activists’ strategy of blurring sex and gender to the detriment of actual biological reality seems to be a pattern, so this wouldn’t surprise me in the least.

Changing sex required counseling, hormones and surgery in Germany, I don't think this has changed. I have a friend who is a ftm transexual who needed to see a psychologist several times over a certain period, is on hormones and had mastectomies and a hysterectomy (for cancer risk) and is now legally a man and married to a woman.
I don't know how having the option of being registered as a drittes Geschlecht will impact on that law if it still stands. I also don't think that this is really what many transgender people want.

I think the BBC is wrong.
They're just pushing their gender ideology making it look as though Germany has embraced it, therefore it is law, when it hasn't and it isn't.

Germany have had the option of X on a birth certificate for some time, for cases of rare intersex babies with ambiguous genitalia. They also have their own version of the GRA, ability to change the sex on your birth certificate.
But you'd have thought trans people generally will change from MtF or FtM on their documents and won't want to identify as intersex.
I'm not sure German identity politics is as extreme as it is in the Anglosphere, so eg non-binary people thinking they're actually intersex? And changing their birth certificate to have it legally recognised? Unlikely. You'd think.

So the BBC isn't wrong as such, but the German terms are very unclear and I bet even most Germans struggle with them.

It started out as an amendment of the law in 2013 to allow midwifes/doctors to not enter a sex into birth certificates if there was ambiguity and in one article that I found from that time there was a warning that this will open a can of worms. Now there is another law, written in 2017, passed by the Bundestag before the Christmas break, becoming law in 2019, that talks of Drittes Geschlecht as an option in official documents, like a passport, which translates to third sex, but if the wiki article is right throws a whole lot of other things in than intersex and mixes them all up, including people with "diverser Geschlechtsidentitaet" where Geschlechtsidentitaet means gender.
I'm trying to find reports in the German media but there barely are any, many are behind paywalls, I keep looking.
There is no discussion in a German parenting forum where I used to be a member, none at all.

Right so it refers to intersex people which is a tiny tiny number and as it is a physical medical condition to register requires a doc certificate. Fair enough.

The BBC needs to use the right language, FFS, appalling editorial standards!