Why don't we introduce legal gender?

Introducing legislation would give the very niche concept of gender identity an undeserved importance and significance so of course it shouldn't. It would be the equivalent of putting the equally meaningles and fashionable in some middle-class circles 'indigo child' on official documents a few years ago.

Gender is a nebulous and unverifiable concept. Writing legislation to give it legal recognition would be like trying to nail jelly to a wall.

I'm sure there would be some enterprising legal specialists out there happy to take the government's money and try and we have politicians with enough stupidity to waste tax payers money on such an endeavour.

@JellySaurus and @FKATondelayo
Spot on.

No. Just because something is personally important doesn't mean there should be an official record. What about political beliefs, philosophies, personal tastes? These are all very important to my identity - should they be on my passport?

I think the Dutch - afaik with good intent - recorded everyone's belief in the 30s. Which proved helpful to their invaders.
I assume no one thinks it would be a good idea to record sexual orientation, that would in those dark times similarly caused dire unintended consequences...

You might trust the state to have various pieces of information while you're in a liberal democracy but history shows it's unwise for it to hold more than it needs.

No.

Nearly 100 years ago a government in another country thought it was a good idea to include people's beliefs in their official documents. Not all people. Only people of certain beliefs that were different to the majority of the population.

It did not turn out well.

I think I'd rather completely remove gender from legislation. It's just not a substantiatable thing. You have a recorded sex, which is often useful information in society. No one else should be expected to give a hoot about your 'gender'.

Make 'gender certificates' completely freely available - you can download 76 different versions in pretty colours & paper the downstairs bog with them, if you like.

But make it clear that they have absolutely no legal standing.

Bit like those scams where you can buy a certificate saying you 'own' a white dwarf star in a distant galaxy or a benighted bit of moorland, & are entitled to call yourself lord/lady of it...or like the right to style yourself a self employed homeopathic healer or ghost hunter.

If these things makes you happy, lovely, but other people are perfectly at liberty to think it's bobbins & refuse to take you seriously.

Yes, or Pips Bunce. Would his (Im taking a guess it's a Phillip day) 'legal gender' be 'genderfluid'? If so - wtf would that actually mean, what would be the point? What about people who say they're 'catgender' - would their 'legal gender' mean it was ok for them to crap in your garden?

Just stick with sex, and let people be whatever gender they want, get rid of damn gender stereotypes, don't reinforce them.

But it must NOT enforce the reductive, limiting, regressive concept of gender on people who have lived their lives without that restriction.

Which I guess implies that the term “legal sex” has to be defined first. Is it already defined, legally?

the legal definition has to not interfere with the legal and biological definition of sex, I meant. Not sec.

Yes I think it would be useful to find some way to separate out sex and gender on official documents, and then be clear that the legal change can only be to gender. That would leave it clear about sex-based exemptions to the equality act while leaving things free, as a liberal society, for people to change their legal gender as much as they like, or not to state one at all, and be as creative with their pronouns as they want to be. I would be happy for some group of senior legal people to be given the task of defining the legal definition of gender, with the only boundary being that it must not interfere with the legal and biological definition of sec. And maybe it would be enough to satisfy young women and girls who want to make a statement about their identity, without having to change their bodies to do so.

And those of us who refuse to tick a GI box because we do not have a GI?

It would suit me but it wouldn't suit all the gender woo people.

Especially those like Eddie Izzard who is male gender until he puts on pink lipstick and magically becomes female gender.

Pushing to not recognise it at all would be great in an ideal world where the very first conversation about not fitting stereotypes was answered differently.

However, we have people now who aren't going to change their thinking, who have had body parts removed or added. We also have a world where they will be mocked and deserve as much protection as possible. A GI box (as well as sex) on a passport would make it easier for a girl presenting as Ethan. It also costs us nothing.

Obviously we try to fight stereotypes as well, so less girls end up wanting to be Ethan, but people get very attached to their beliefs and the u-turn isn't going to happen any more than the flat earth people saying they were wrong.

I think religion lost its power in society through dilution and indifference rather than people shouting it down. When people are getting GRCs for cat-gender, gender fluid, Demi girl etc. that is when it will stop being taken seriously. What is important is that sex isn't dragged into the first stage of this inevitable battle.

Why gender, particularly?

Why not starsign?

In fact starsign is a bit more easily established because there’s an objective marker for it - your birthdate. What’s the objective marker for gender?

Some countries use identity cards which record religion. It isn’t a good idea.

What is a woman?

What you would be doing would be imposing gender beliefs on everyone.

What does that mean? It means legally entrenching gender stereotypes into society.

So if you are a woman who isn't 'feminine' by these definitions where does that leave you? Should you be changing your gender too?

Where does this leave non believers? Do they have to state their gender too?

It's meaningless rot which disadvantages women by forcing gender stereotypes on us

No thanks.

@PronounsBaby /@CucumberCool
I assume both of these are you.

I used to favour the idea of an additional gender identity marker on drivers licences and passports, but no longer. Gender identity is unobservable, unverifiable and simply irrelevant to pretty much everything and everyone except the individual concerned and his or her immediate circle. The recent census of England & Wales shows us that at most 265,000 people claim some sort of special identity. How many of those even suffer with crippling gender dysphoria? That's not enough to justify the expense of imposing a quasi-religion on the rest of us. We've been brainwashed and terrorised into thinking we have to accommodate a nebulous concept which is less relevant to social policy than your star sign, though infinitely more harmful and regressive.
The purpose of identity documents is not validation and the consequences to society of allowing people to lie about their sex are far worse than the consequences of not allowing that. Medical notes can record special identity claims, if necessary, and any medication that a patient is on.
And the last thing we want to do is get the concept of gender identity recognised in law. Because that is the first step towards overwriting sex in law and public policy.

@PronounsBaby
I feel like some of the confusion around gender/sex could be solved by introducing the concept of legal gender.

Most people are not confused though.

I know the difference between
Biological sex
Gender
Gender Identity

It's the TRAs and media that are conflate all 3 into one, and no doubt these is done on purpose so that they could make these changes.

You want to make gender (identity) a legal concept? Gender identity is evolving every day. Some people claim there are hundreds of genders. When many trans people talk about their gender identity - they are actually referring to their personality.

Gender identity in the eyes of many TRAs, is based on harmful, sexist stereotypes. Why should 99.9% of the population conform to this?

Gender identity is a "belief". Other beliefs are - Santa, the Easter Bunny, God, witches etc. Should we introduce these concepts legally?

There is no such thing as gender. As in, it isn't a thing, with any physical reality - it's theory, a product of the academic imagination. We don't register people's 'legal religion' in any other context, why would we force people to pretend they believe in this?

I actually hear the nonsense ‘about changing ‘legal gender’ in exactly the same way I hear that ‘legal name fraud’ crap that conspiracy theorists were keen to plaster all over billboards a few years ago.

If you separate gender from sex what on earth is gender? Feelings? What clothes you wear? Whether you can build a Billy bookcase? Makes no sense, does it?

Yep. This is invasion, not accommodation. Your suggestion, though reasonable and sensible, would not "validate" men in frocks.

Nonsense should not be written into the law or into legal documents.

#nodebate