France seems to have spotted some legal issues with mucking around with gender law

[Winewinewinegin]

www.bioethicsobservatory.org/2018/02/supreme-court-ban-assignment-neutral-gender/24646

www.bioethicsobservatory.org/2018/02/supreme-court-ban-assignment-neutral-gender/24646

Thanks Nicky!

Vive La France!

Tbf this was an intersex person rather than a trans person. Which I think does make a difference. Genuinely medically recognised as intersex people IMO are the only people who should have the right to claim a third/neutral sex status (nb sex not gender!).

The person involved is intersex though. If anyone has a right to be gender neutral, or even sex neutral, they do. You could say they are the exception that proves the rule. What upsets me though, in these times, is the conflation of sex and gender, again.

cross post CrossBorder

France does tend to have a zero tolerance for BS

Good work France!

Ah didn't realise it was intersex related - posted before fully reading.

Still some interesting wider points.

Makes me wonder how selective the government have been in seeking evidence for best practice and reasoning around law change. Have they looked at countries that don't do self-ID and why? Have they looked at variations in self-ID and pros and cons?

What upsets me though, in these times, is the conflation of sex and gender, again.

Yes let's reclaim this distinction.

WTF even IS gender anyway?

www.bioethicsobservatory.org/2018/02/kids-could-be-permanently-harmed-by-gender-law-warn-bioethics-centre-and-catholics-bishops/24477

People are speaking out.

I posted this a while back and it got dismissed here as irrelevant. I actually think this is hugely important. Sanity has prevailed in France.

This is an intersex person so I do think there is legal room for intersex. Because it is a true biology for this person.

Interesting quote: Anscombe also used the briefing paper to call for the rights of people opposed to the ideology to be protected from discrimination (Crux, 2-13-2018).

But "neutral gender" would also mean non binary. The vast majority of intersex people are raised as male or female. I agree there is a case for the tiny proportion that are ambiguous to have a neutral sex marker.

What upsets me though, in these times, is the conflation of sex and gender, again.

Yes let's reclaim this distinction

You are conflating the 2 in your title. This case has nothing to do with transgender or gender issues although I see you acknowledge you posted in haste.

There is a thread called "unpeak trans moment"- your haste in posting this article (about one deeply unhappy person with a rare medical condition) with the gloating title "mucking about" is one for me.

This is an intersex person so I do think there is legal room for intersex.
That's good of you! Its a bit scarey that you even think there's a possibility of there not being legal acceptance of a he right to existence of a person with a congenital condition

Apologies Lass, I take your point and will be more careful in reading and language in the future. I do not in any way wish to make life more difficult for intersex people and should have thought through before posting.

In fairness to the OP, she didn't realise this was about intersex.

There have been several reports lately of people being able to put an X on their birth certificate, passport? (Can't remember). To denote non-binary/gender neutral.

And there is a massive push by trans pressure groups to include non-binary under transgender, legally.

Which would mean being able to switch 'gender'. Which means what, exactly?

Which, in terms of the trans ideology, I can't see this benefiting anyone other than cross dressers.

And is the word intersex now falling out of favour?

Are they wanting it to be 'gender neutral'? Because whilst I can understand them wanting to choose a word that best reflects their situation, it's a word that benefits the trans ideology, too. Is this another conflation/appropriation going on?

I think the only thing that the OP is guilty of is posting in haste.

Yes that was what caught my eye and I assumed (wrongly in this case it appears) that this was an attempt to have a non binary gender identity recognised in law.

There have been some discussions of how to deal with non binary in the UK I believe?

But not sure how non binary is being defined or what it would describe.

No one has a neutral sex and I am very pleased the French judges were sufficiently in touch with reality to recognise this.

Humans are a sexed species; everyone is sexed, including intersex people. People born with disorders of sexual development are not a third sex (they don't make a third type of gamete) nor are they a sort of blank non-sexed person ('gender neutral').

As others have pointed out, the push to create a fictional legal category of a 'gender neutral' or non-sexed person is largely coming from trans activists, and lots of judges and politicians are going along with this without carefully considering the repercussions, as the French judges did in this case.

The OP was perfectly justified in describing what is happening to the legal category of sex in many jurisdictions as 'mucking about', for that is indeed what lawmakers are doing. They are acting as if it is NBD to sever legal sex from all objective reality, which begs the question - why do we have it as a category to begin with? If sex is purely a matter for the individual to decide, and members of each sex category have no shared objective characteristics, why have it as a category in law at all?

Thus I was pleased to read the judges' reasoning that:

The distinction between male and female was “necessary to the social and legal organization, of which it is a cornerstone"

And that: any judicial recognition of a sex outside male/female categories would have “profound repercussions on rules of French law,” and would entail “numerous legislative changes.”

Well, of course it would. That much should be obvious to anyone who works in law or policy. But somehow, lawmakers around the world have failed to grasp this as they blithely create 'non-binary' categories for anyone to opt into on passports and driver's licences.

Having said all that, I agree with ItalianGreyhound that there is a case for creating the legal sex designation 'intersex'. Not 'gender neutral', which is something nobody is. AFAIK, most intersex people are happy to be recognised as male or female, but obviously some, like the man in this case, would prefer to have legal recognition of the specific nature of their sexed bodies (intersex literally means 'between two sexes'). Of course this category should only be open to people with recognised intersex conditions, not people who claim their personalities and/or feelings make them something other than the sex they are.

The OP was perfectly justified in describing what is happening to the legal category of sex in many jurisdictions as 'mucking about', for that is indeed what lawmakers are doing

That is not what this case is about. And it is splitting hairs to say this person should rightly be denied the option of a neutral sex but should be permitted the option of intersex when the decision denied him the latter right.

From this article it would seem this person has the option of a

"This fair balance would allow either for personal records which mention no sexual category, or the modification of the gender which has been assigned to them when it is not in line with their physical appearance and social behaviour."

In other words there is the option of leaving a blank or picking a gender different from the one assigned (presumably that means sex on birth certificate) because their appearance and socialisation does not accord with what is on their birth certificate.

www.thelocal.fr/20160323/french-person-with-penis-and-vagina-denied-third-gender

So the French courts in fact seem to be denying this person legal recognition of the physical condition of being intersex but would happily allow id based on gender.

The OP's article it says that the person was asking to be legally designated 'gender neutral'. It isn't splitting hairs to say that this isn't the same thing as being recognised as intersex. 'Gender neutral' is a category with no basis in fact, as no one is gender (or rather sex) neutral. It's possible that the wording used in the case has been altered in translation, but going by what was reported in the OP's article, the judges weren't denying him legal recognition of the physical category of intersex, but declining to create a category of 'gender neutral'. I wonder if he would have had more success asking to be recognised as 'intersex' (material reality) rather than 'gender neutral' (metaphysical claim). Maybe not, as the judges seemed concerned about the far-reaching implications of creating another sex category.

It's impossible to parse the arguments that were made in this case unless one can read the full judgement in French. I can't help wondering if 'gender identity' ideology might even have derailed his claim, if his lawyer had decided to use the line of argument that has been used successfully to recognise self-declared 'non-binary people' in other jurisdictions - namely, that individuals have the right to determine whether they are male, female or 'neither' - rather than an argument based on the facts of his client's medical condition.

The article you linked to mentioned that this judgment overturned a previous one that had allowed for the person to be designated as 'gender neutral'. I would be very interested to know how that court defined criteria for inclusion in the category 'gender neutral': was it available only to people who are intersex? Or could anyone opt in on their say so? That makes all the difference to how this category would operate in law and policy. I strongly suspect it was the former, partly because that is how other courts have defined (or rather non-defined) it, but also because the term 'gender neutral' itself implies a metaphysical claim rather than referring to the reality of sexed bodies. The distinction between these things isn't splitting hairs; quite the opposite.

Correction: I strong suspect it was the latter, i.e., based on self-declaration.