Transgender politics focuses on who determines someone’s gender

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amp.economist.com/briefing/2018/10/27/transgender-politics-focuses-on-who-determines-someones-gender?frsc=dg%7Ce&__twitter_impression=true

Excellent well balanced article in the Economist.

There are several inaccuracies.

The Trump administration is drawing up proposals to define sex in law as biological sex. It's a need that's been forced by the transactivist campaigning to erase biological sex. There is no plan to 'assert that trans people have no legal right in federal law to define their gender as different from their biological sex'. That's just not true.

As to whether dysphoria changes sex: obviously it doesn't, and everyone agrees on that. If the Trump administration ever articulated that (it hasn't so far) then it would not be unique in this belief. No one ever changes sex. Its just not possible.

Plus, The Economist conflates gender and sex. "Since the GRA came into force, just 5,000 Britons have legally changed sex."

No, Economist, you cannot change sex. You can see yourself as a different gender, yes, because gender is a sociological concept, but you cannot change sex, because sex is biological.

Second problem is, the government has denied there are specific proposals to do anything at all, let alone what this article describes them as.

The motion that gender and sex are separated is not 'new and poorly understood' . It is simple and very well understood, but transactivists have spent about 15 years fudging the issue on purpose, and to this end have exploited the prudish use of 'gender' as a word to replace 'sex'.

What next? Well the 'vicious' argument is vicious on one side only, and that's the transadvocate side, with their threats of death and dismemberment, rape threats, violent assault and so on and so forth. Social conservatives don't call trans people 'deviants'. That's just made up.

Twin studies do not demonstrate a likelihood that gender identity is biological and innate - they actually prove the exact opposite. Identical twins have about a 25 per cent chance of being trans if the other is trans. This is a very low correlation for identical twins. Indeed, it's more plausible that this level of correlation could be ascribed to similar socialisation: parental attitudes, schooling, religion, community culture and so on.

I think the article was very nuanced and clearly attempting to be balanced, but I didn't appreciate that the term CIS was slipped in, as if it was, itself, an uncontroversial and accepted term. It isn't!

OK from then on it gets so much better and is obviously on the more recent stuff very well researched. It looks like the introductory laying out was rushed, but the author has done a great deal of investigation on what is actually happening now.

Actually Disrespectful, even though in reality people cannot change sex, that is the effect of the GRA. When a GRC-holding person applies for a new birth certificate to show their new details, what is recorded is sex, not gender. So for all the talk of gender in the act, it effectively allows people to change their legal sex. (Not their actual biological sex but their legal sex, yes.)

The motion that gender and sex are separated is not 'new and poorly understood' . It is simple and very well understood, but transactivists have spent about 15 years fudging the issue on purpose, and to this end have exploited the prudish use of 'gender' as a word to replace 'sex'.

What is happening now, though, is that (at least some) transactivists are insisting that gender and sex are different. Since government has conflated the terms in the GRA, they are framing the GRA as being about 'gender' and not about sex, so that changing it is relatively trivial, because 'gender' is simply about personality. Some people who are getting their information from transactivists are wondering what the fuss is about, because having your 'gender' recognised is just like having your sexuality recognised, and not being discriminated against as a minority.

In the responses from organisations to the Scottish consultation on GRA reform, one of the young people from A&B Hangouts, "an online group of trans and gender-questioning young people who live throughout Argyll & Bute" (aged between 15 and 23), said:

'Well, needing medical evidence for gender is equating it with sex. I mean, you can’t really say that your place in society can be sussed out by a doctor. So... I mean, it’s a much more personal thing and I’d say self-declaration would be the only respectful way to go.'

This person clearly has not understood that the GRA is about legal sex. It's not about putting labels on your personality. How many other people have this misconception?