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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Germany allowing opted out of sex ID...

55 replies

ChristmasSprite · 01/01/2019 03:07

Now gone a step further, and allow to self ID as gender diverse. The first country to do this (according to BBC news)

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Bowlofbabelfish · 01/01/2019 21:17

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.

scotsheather · 01/01/2019 21:26

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.

Yambabe · 01/01/2019 22:19

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

twitter.com/mrkhtake2/status/1080214791736737793

sanluca · 01/01/2019 22:25

*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.

ChristmasSprite · 01/01/2019 22:32

So is this statute about whatever the current expression for, excuse my biological training and terminology, haemaphroditism?

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ChristmasSprite · 01/01/2019 22:37

Intersex? Does the statue exist purely for the intersex

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PencilsInSpace · 01/01/2019 22:41

I've been wondering for a while how all this would go down in countries that didn't have a word for gender as distinct from sex. Looks like it just makes it easier for them to appropriate intersex.

The Future of Legal Gender study grouped 'non-binary and intersex' together in that awful survey.

In 1993, Professor Louis J.G. Gooren chaired the The Council of Europe: 23rd Colloquy on European Law: Transsexualism, medicine and law, a highly influential event attended by lots of lawyers, doctors and trans people of note. Among attendees were Christine Burns, Stephen Whittle, Alice Purnell (who co-founded the Beaumont Society and later the Gender Trust and the biennial Gendys conference) and Martine Rothblatt.

In his closing speech, Gooren confidently describes transsexualism as a type of intersex:

I hope I have been able to communicate to you that transsexualism is not an isolated phenomenon in the area of sex errors of the body. It is one on a sliding scale. In some people you will find contradiction between their genetic sex and the other variables of sex. In other people between their genetic sex and gonadal sex on the one hand, and their genital and brain sex on the other. Finally in transsexuals there is a contradiction between the genetic, gonadal and genital sex on the one hand, and the brain sex on the other. For all these people who have had the misfortune to incur a sex error of the body in their development, solutions have to be found. It is part of our anthropology, and of our human existence, that we recognise only men and women in our social system, which reflects on our personal status. In other words, there is no room for intersexes, socially, legally and psychologically. Medical experience teaches that being intersex makes a person subject to social abuse; such a person becomes a freak. It would be absolute medical ignorance, medical incompetence, even abuse NOT to rehabilitate a person with a sex error of the body. Sex errors of the body cannot be corrected in the true sense of the word. The only option is a rehabilitation to one sex or the other. Rehabilitation does not pretend to be a cure. It is exactly what the word says: rehabilitation makes the best of a condition that cannot be corrected essentially and fundamentally.

The guiding principle in this rehabilitation process is to assign a person with sex errors of the body to the sex in which he/she will function best, psychologically, socially, erotically, sexually. Again, I want to stress that reassignment of transsexuals is a medical intervention on a sliding scale. It is not essentially different from procedures in other sex errors of the body. The same interventions including genital surgery are done in other cases of sex errors of the body. This brings me to the issue raised in some of the legal material I have been reading in this context: Can it really be done? Sex reassignment in transsexuals? In other words: is the feminisation of the body by hormones and the construction of a neovagina, a true authentic sex change or is it a construct, an artefact, a modification only of the body? My answer would be that it is as much a sex change as it is in other cases of intersex. Many of the intersex cases will have contradictions between the variable, the criteria of sex. Many will be unable to produce children; it is a rehabilitation to the best of our ability, not a cure.

Germany allowing opted out of sex ID...
vagender · 01/01/2019 22:42

Christmas, that’s how it was originally intended. Iirc, some of the reasoning was to stop possibly dangerous genital surgery on infants with ambiguous genitalia. I could be wrong though.

stumbledin · 01/01/2019 23:20

My understanding, and this has been going through the German Courts for some time, is that it is specifically about those born intersex.

The initial case was bought by someone with this biological condition.

It has nothing to do with trans, although as others have pointed out, trans activists are trying to appropriate it.

One of the problems is that the UK media have signed up to the conflation of sex and gender thanks to inhouse "trans" training.

If you read this article the writer actually condradicts herself because of not being precise about sex and gender identity. www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/germany-intersex-third-gender-identity-passport-lgbt-rights-a8706696.html

Is it any wonder young people are confused when they are surrounded by this nuspeak that tries to erase reality to appease some notion in some people's head.

Bowlofbabelfish · 02/01/2019 02:42

It has nothing to do with trans, although as others have pointed out, trans activists are trying to appropriate it.

I think it does come from transactivism and intersex conditions are the tool being used. I don’t think this is simply something they’re piggybacking on, this is primarily driven by TRAs.

The group behind this is dritte option (third option) and they are a TRA group.

This ideology is being imposed top down using whatever wedge is seen as most ‘useful’ for each society. In the German speaking world this is the intersex conditions. Austria is having a similar experience.

Language, or the abuse and manipulation of language, is an interesting thing to look at in this context.

This is top down. Intersex people are a pawn. The TRA have no interest in advocating for the needs of those born with any intersex condition. They are driving this

EJennings · 02/01/2019 05:08

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

Igneococcus · 02/01/2019 08:20

I finally read the Stokowski article, it wouldn't load on my tablet yesterday (maybe it remembered all the swearing on previous readings of her writings) and it is really incredibly woke but also a good example how everything is mixed up with intersex. So even if the law was intended specifically for intersex people the term gets to be an umbrella for lots of other things.

"Wenn man einmal verstanden hat, wie unwissenschaftlich bis brutal die Einteilung von Menschen in "männlich" und "weiblich" ist, kann man es nicht für etwas anderes als eine höllische Anmaßung halten, dass der Staat Leute in diese Kategorien zwingt. Das wird nicht wesentlich besser, wenn es eine dritte Option gibt, die ärztlich bescheinigt werden muss."

"If one has, at last, understood how unscientific or even cruel the categorization of humans as "male" or "female" is, one has to think of it as a hellish insolence that the state forces people into these categories. This will not get better when there is a third option which has to be certified by a doctor."

Sex has no scientific basis, she says, oh and self-ID

"Für Menschen, deren Genitalien so aussehen, wie Horst Seehofer sich das für Frauen und Männer vorstellt, die aber trans oder genderqueer leben, sind keine Verbesserungen vorgesehen."

"For people whose genitals look like Horst Seehofer thinks they should look like in a woman or a man, but who live as trans or genderqueer, there are no improvements planned."

Yes, intersex used as a wedge.

And she throws in Horst Seehofer's name in there because for every reader of her column this will mean conservative (probably identical for many with far-right these days), CSU, Bavarian, Catholic and therefore has to be WRONG without a doubt or looking further at the issues.

Interesting mix in the comments, quite a few defenses of basic biology.

vagender · 02/01/2019 08:51

Igne, that article is horrifying. The second part is especially interesting though because it highlights again how a lack of concise language makes things so, so difficult. “Those whose genitals look like [...] but live as trans or gender queer.” Live as, not “are”. Calling biological sex unscientific on the basis of “living as” is simply absurd.

deepwatersolo · 02/01/2019 09:10

Thank you for thinking of me DrHeidi. I have mentioned the recent conflation of intersex/trans in the German speaking world previously. I can recap what I know.

So, what I know is that neither Germany nor Austria require sex reassignment surgery for a sex change since early 2000‘s. Austria was dragged to the courts over it and lost the case. You do need a doctor‘s certificate and proof of ‚living as a woman‘ for 2 years though (Germany is a bit more lenient here as I understand it, accepting lower standards for this proof).

What struck me was a recent push in Austrian media - after an intersex person won the right for a third sex in Austria - to discuss why it is so important for intersex people to have gender neutral bathrooms, because intersex people are apparently made to feel unsafe in sex segregated bathrooms as they don‘t look like they fit (yes, I shit you not. An intersex person was even interviewed saying they get harrassed in bathrooms, which I found surprising, to say the least). Also, in derStandard (some Austrian version of the Guardian) an opinion piece by a lawyer argued that by intersex people now winning the right of a third sex this ruling now means that everyone is now free to choose their sex (m, f or x) freely.

The conflation of intersex and trans is in full force in the media, intersex organizations are apparently fully on board and the argument that ‚not all intersex conditions can be diagnosed‘ (lady brain anyone?) and therefore current laws in Germany and Austria are too strict is repeatedly made.

I would argue that even though German academia uses ‚gender‘ there is now a drive to go back to only using ‚Geschlecht‘ (which can mean biological sex but also grammatical sex/gender) and pointing out that ‚Geschlecht (sex)‘ does not only have biological but also social components.
As I have pointed out before I believe that these peculiarities of the German language may make it easier to blur sex and gender.

That notwithstanding my feeling is that they are using the intersex angle because in the German speaking world the whole TWAW ideology cannot (yet) be sold as successfully as in the anglosphere. The individualism that is also at the heart of neoliberalism is not accepted as unquestioningly, as you can also see in neoliberal ‚reforms‘ lagging behind.

Igneococcus · 02/01/2019 09:40

Is there any push back deepwatersolo?
Are there any GC sites in D or A?

deepwatersolo · 02/01/2019 10:12

I do not witness any GC push back Igneococcus. There is broad ridicule in the comment sections even of the Guardianesque Standard (their comment policy is at least as lenient as what the Guardian‘s was 8 years back. Hardly moderation),when e.g. this self ID opinion piece came out, with men vowing to self ID as women to escape the in Austria compulsory military service for men, and to access female pension age.

I will say that particularly in Austria, which has mostly had the social democrats in government as the leading party since the 70‘s, second wave feminist ideas seem to be the only feminist game in town (read: in politics). Not even the Greens seem to be particularly invested in genderqueer ideology (contrary to the Greens in Germany). I don‘t think they could afford it, their electorate is too conservative imo.

Maybe I am missing something.

In Germany you will have TERF Rethoric and second wave (Alice Schwarzer) standing up against 3-Wave ‚net feminists‘ (like the one who wrote the Spiegel Article), but not about the trans issue, I think. Rather (after Köln) about the question whether sexual violence against women can be a revolutionary act if an oppressed immigrant perpetrates it against a woman of white privilege (I kid you not) or whether the stigma and potential trauma of rape is enforced by our language branding it as somethings bad that one is victim of and one survives, rather than just a neutral experience.

In summary, I do not see significant pushback against the trans-agenda, possibly because (a) politics are cautious and haven‘t hopped on the TWAW train (yet?) neither in Germany nor Austria and (b) because it is all about intersex issues (at least in the public‘s perception).

Igneococcus · 02/01/2019 13:23

I remember the stick Alice Schwarzer got when she spoke out after Cologne and that was also about the time Der Spiegel began to not allow comments on all its articles.
I think the public discussion is so dominated (and has been polarized) by immigration/refugees in Germany that there is very little space for anything else. The German parenting forum where I was a member since about 2004 the discussion has become so polarized that it pretty much has destroyed the forum, and also some other discussion boards. Issue stopped being discussed with arguments, posters where just shouted at as nazis, AfDler and Ewiggestrige on one side and Gutmenschen from the other. There is very little traffic there anymore, lots of regular posters have left, there were barely more than a handful of new threads over the Christmas/NewYear period. I left in summer 2017 when a tiff I had there (about biology funnily enough but not a trans issue) coincided with a real life tragedy (not my family but immediate neighbours) that got me off the internet for a few days and when I had the stomach to come back I realized that my life was better without that forum.
I had a look back at a few discussion I had there involving trans issues (all before July 2017) and they are indeed completely dominated by intersex.

deepwatersolo · 02/01/2019 14:58

Igneococcus the way the discussion unfolded really was an eye opener, and together with its abandonment of an antiwar line, will say I have lost respect for parts of the Left, particularly the Green Left (which I‘ve always considered ‚my side‘).
If you cannot talk about male violence if the ‚wrong males‘ perpetrate it, if the demand for sex segregated toilets and showers in refugee centers gets branded as racist instead of common sense in any scenario where large numbers of men and women are housed together, someone has lost the plot.

I think Ahmad Mansour has it right when he says that the apologist attitude among many Greens when it comes to violence against women and misogyny in certain cultural contexts is indeed a covert form of racism. Neither do the victimized women from these cultures count nor is the idea entertained that violent men from the respective cultures are capable of taking full responsibility for their actions.

Igneococcus · 02/01/2019 17:38

Yeah, I have lost respect too, even before Cologne, and the left should be my natural home really, born and raised in a working class family but I just don't feel I belong to the left anymore. They are not representing the type of people I grew up with now, they actually look down on them in disgust, they don't even try to conceal it. Didn't the SPD have a motion (not sure that is the right word) at their last Parteitag to demand more diversity in porn production? My father and grandfather (both working in a foundry all their working lives) would feel pretty alienated by that.
I agree with Ahmad Mansour, if you truly believe someone to be your equal you should set the same standards for them and yourself.

stumbledin · 03/01/2019 00:29

Language, or the abuse and manipulation of language, is an interesting thing to look at in this context.

The deliberatemisuse of language (at least in the UK) has been one of the main strands of Queer activists as past of the back lash against Women's Liberation and the right of women to organise autonomously.

So in universites they got Women's Studies derailed by making them Gender Studies. So we now have 2 generations educated to NOT recognise woman / women. Add in to this the deliberate strategy of using the word gender when it should in fact be sex. This has been so sucessful that most parts of the UK media now routinely use the word gender instead of sex. Just as the NUJ agreed to stop using the word prostitution and instead refer to "sex work".

These are the building blocks that later demands could then be based on. It isn't accidental - it is a deliberate tactic. And many young people have grown up with only this reality to use as their yardstick. Which also makes it easier to say its only older 70s feminists who are the problem.

Rather than saying to your grand/children. So sorry that you went into debt to go to university but you do know the world is round, and it is just because your geography department was infiltrated by flat earthers that you think it isn't!!

deepwatersolo · 03/01/2019 14:53

Igneococcus that‘s a phenomenon across the West that the Left has abandoned the working class, in order to suck up to the neoliberal ideology. They fully focus on identity politics, cause that does not upset their corporate overlords. Right wing populism has such an easy game once Social Democrats is dead and it is all so depressingly predictable, and yet in the upper echelons they all act like they just can‘t understand but surely they did nothing wrong, it is just the electorate that sucks... I truly despair.

DrHeidi · 04/01/2019 10:51

The only GC pushback I have seen in Germany is the 'Störenfriedas' blog, and there is the kürbisköpfchen twitter account (often tweets in English). Both are well worth checking out.

Flowers to both of them ...

But the mainstream voices are far from critical. Feminism can be incredibly dumb in Germany. And yes, Cologne was a particularly low point. Women who have criticised the wilful blindness when it comes to misogyny among Muslims in Germany are Necla Kelek and others who are right-of-centre.

deepwatersolo · 04/01/2019 11:50

I wouldn‘t have placed Necla Kelek right of center (but don‘t know about her general politics), but in any case she is one brave, inspiring woman. Güner Yasemin Balci also rocks.

The fact of the matter is that secular Muslims are ignored and betrayed by the Left and the conservatives (CDU) alike, who all pander to conservative Islam. Not sure if it is Saudi money or the perceived necessity to keep NATO partner Erdogan on board, whatever the reason, it sucks.

DrHeidi · 04/01/2019 17:55

You're probably right deepwatersolo but who knows what is right and left these days, eh?

Just seems to me that right-of-centre publications such as the FAZ are giving Kelek more of a platform than left-wing equivalents.

But it would be really great to have a more comprehensive account of what's going on in terms of sex and gender in German-speaking countries.

deepwatersolo · 04/01/2019 22:07

Yes, true, the Left press is very reluctant to give Space to critics of cultures that have integrated conservative Islam, even when the critics come from within the communities (I can actually understand reluctance to have total outsiders drone on about this type of stuff. But, say, Mansour was Muslim Brotherhood as a Youth, ffs. So he should know what that strand of thinking stands for. It is absurd when Green totally Western ,white‘ women tell him, it is mean of him to smear said conservative quarters as sexist. He works with Muslim boys on accepting that their sister‘s honour is to have the freedom to choose her own life, I mean... I just can‘t. They have gone nuts.)

Yes, a comprehensive overview of what goes on in the German speaking world is lacking. From what I have pieced together now also with the twitter exchange of mrhtake2 and DritteOption (plus previous info): Transaktivists have for both, Germany and Austria, found the one intersex person (ok, maybe there are 5 Wink) who also identifies as trans and is on board with the TRA agenda. They have sued to be granted the 3rd sex option for everyone who has a diagnosed or undiagnosed or undiagnosable intersex condition. Politicians (except Linke, apparently) dragged their feet. —TRAs— the people fighting for the intersex community in Germany tried to get a ‚compromise‘ that a vow on your Gender/Sex identity is enough (because: all the undiagnosable people) but only got the compromise that people can vow they have an intersex diagnosis instead of having to show the diagnosis (a funny outcome, actually).

I think it is pretty obvious that by getting the ‚vow your 3rd sex Gender/sex ID and you are 3rd gender/sex‘ (which they did not get) they reasonably expected it to become legally impossible to not subsequently widen this to self ID into any of the 3 legal sexes/genders.
Didn‘t play out like that. Yet. Tough luck.

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