A solution to gender vs sex

[Randomusername01]

If it is agreed that gender is different from sex and gender is a spectrum and sex is a biological fact why can't both be put on birth certificates? Sex recorded as it is now, either male or female and can only be changed in exceptional cases and upon medical proof I.e. a dsd as found in intersex people. Gender could be recorded as matching the birth sex but easily changed once a person reaches adulthood at 16 for a nominal fee to cover admin costs. Sex characteristics are protected and gender identity is recognised.

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

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.

I read that over 90% of the population gender id match their birth sex but perhaps it should be an option that's not filled in till the person reaches a certain age.

A voluntary option for adults to opt into. If you don't want a gender identity then it can be left blank. If left till adulthood I would propose it was free to amend the first time, but any further amendments would incur a nominal administrative fee.

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.

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.

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.

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.

What would gender be used for?

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).

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.

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?

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

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?

I think this would be a compromise on both sides. Birth certificates are be altered now per gra. This option would mean that sex cannot be altered so sex related statistics can't be fudged. But equally acknowledging the importance of gender to those who think it's important.

Brownie Points?

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.

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.

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

Can you explain more? Are you saying you can't discriminate against a man who comes to work a dress? Ie tell him to go home and change.

Personally I think gender is just a flimsy notion to me, but clearly other people find it a huge important part of their self. In order to protect sex as definite parameter I'd put up with gender being included on birth certificates.

I'd put up with gender being included on birth certificates.

What what would it mean? Is it a question of accepting clothes and pronouns?
Because I can't think of anything else that it would affect.

As interesting an intellectual exercise as it is to think of ways in which 'compromise' could be reached, you must know that Transactivists won't go for this.

I agree transactivists won't go for it. They don't want to not be discriminated against. They want to be called women.

But it's interesting when people try and compromise, because it shows that there are still a number of people who think gender is something other than stereotypes.

What on earth do you mean by gender though?

Gender is sex based stereotypes. And it relates back to biology (i.e. sex).

What are the criteria I need to refer to to determine my gender?

Makeup, unambitious, likes unicorns?

"I read that over 90% of the population gender id match their birth sex "

Where, do you remember?

I have a real issues with this.

Trans activitsts eg stonewall have asserted that the vast majority of people have an "internal gender id" and that for teh vast majority of people this "matches their sex assigned at birth" (observed).

This idea is a lynchpin of the movement but has anyone actually checked that this IS true?

Certainly I have no internal sense of gender ID which apparently is "rare" but then a thread on here years ago revealed that lots of other women didn't have this feeling either.

The response to this is that women are so comfortable in their own skins (HAHAHAHA) that they dont' notice their internal innate womanliness AKA we don't know our own minds. V progressive.

Trans people by definition have this feeling and this has been extrapolated to beign true for the rest of the population.

In reality if IF people were given proper definitions of sex and gender and then asked about their internal feelings, who knows what the response would be. I suspect most people would b2 "agender" or "nonbinary" ie under the trans "umbrella". We don't KNOW though do we as no-one has asked, it has been assumed.

The real kicker here is that many women have been fighting very hard for a long time to be seen as people, not as women first. This is the reason I am a feminist, from when I was young I was always being treated / spoken to etc a certain way or having stuff happen because poeple saw girl and then woman. I always felt like a person inside but as my external appearance is patriarchy approved while my preferences and interestes are more coded "masculine", I apent a lot of time feeling pissed off at all the assumptions poeple made about me.

Feminists esp radical ones are pretty much by definition gender non conforming and always have been. By stonewall definition that makes us all "trans". Strangely, it seems that the "right" to self idenitfy only goes one way though. Men can identify as women. Women are STILL not allowed to identify as people.

While thing is regressive bullshit.

Thanks for reading lol