Apparently there's a third sex....?

[Jeeeez]

Searching through my council's Equality, Diversity and Inclusion policy document, I have discovered that there are 3 options to choose when asked your sex: male, female and other. Which was news to me!

Others of their diversity documents include a fourth sex: non-binary. They also ask for information on sexual orientation and if "your gender assigns with your gender assigned at birth".

I'm going to write to them to point out that they're misrepresenting the law and making the error of mixing sex and gender. Is this a common thing now? My council is very proud of its Stonewall credentials (obvs).

This is what is written in their policy document about the EA:
The relevant protected characteristics are:
age
disability
gender reassignment
pregnancy and maternity
race (includes ethnic or national origins, colour or nationality)
religion or belief (or no belief)
sex (men, women, other)
sexual orientation
marriage and civil partnership (only in relation to eliminating discrimination)

Sometimes people might have both kinds of loins at birth

No, they can't. Even people with rare intersex conditions would have ambiguous genitalia.

or do things to switch gender

But OP's discussion is specifically about sex, not hair and clothes.

If we actually had three distinct sexes (or four!) every baby would have to have three (or four) parents. The amount of co-ordinated activity necessary for conception would surely have led to our extinction by now!

Gender is another thing altogether.

@Jeeeez

I forgot to add a face earlier, as obviously 4 sexes is baloney. But I'm still recommending that people check their local situation.

Thanks for the reminder, Jeeeez I checked mine ages ago & it was wrong - says gender, not sex. Emailed them then & forgot about it. Just checked again and of course it’s still wrong

@GiantKitten Did you get a reply from the council or did your email just go unanswered?

[quote Jeeeez]@GiantKitten Did you get a reply from the council or did your email just go unanswered?[/quote]
Unanswered...

Although I may well not have put my name & address on last time - I can’t remember - so I suppose they didn’t have to respond, as they didn’t know if I’m actually a resident or not.

I’ve put them on this time, & attached 3 screenshots, with the relevant words circled, from their/Govt websites.

My council has an Equality Act page that quotes the correct characteristics, however after digging a bit, I have found an equality employment report that quotes gender as a protected characteristic but doesn't mention Sex or Gender Reassignment. So I've just emailed them pointing out the error!

But wouldn't four boxes to tick be the thing to aim for. Women, men, transwomen, transmen, oh and non binary makes five. I know you are debating the wording of the EA2010. But for me transwomen need to accept who they are and have their own rights and spaces, not take ours.
It's seems we are arguing if they want to be included as women, which will happen if there are only 2 boxes to tick, but also arguing if they want their own category.

@CallarMorvern

But wouldn't four boxes to tick be the thing to aim for. Women, men, transwomen, transmen, oh and non binary makes five. I know you are debating the wording of the EA2010. But for me transwomen need to accept who they are and have their own rights and spaces, not take ours. It's seems we are arguing if they want to be included as women, which will happen if there are only 2 boxes to tick, but also arguing if they want their own category.

Ideally, all such forms would have questions on both sex and gender. This isn’t going to go away, and the 2021 census isn’t, apparently, including both - so far

@Jeeeez guess what? A reply to my email, and they’ve changed it!!! The characteristics were in alphabetical order, & they’ve just replaced gender with sex so now they aren’t, but I’ll take that!

Sex is like asking ‘are you a virgin?’ - it’s an either/or - yes/no option.

Nah, virginity genuinely is a social construct, and "are you a virgin" frequently doesn't have clear-cut answers - how are lesbians supposed to define "virginity", for example?

"What sex are you?" is more like "Are you pregnant?"

@GiantKitten That's great! They've actually changed all their public documents already?

[quote Jeeeez]@GiantKitten That's great! They've actually changed all their public documents already?[/quote]
Oh I don’t know about that

That’s just their Diversity and Equality page.
My email went to their HR, who forwarded it to 4 individuals, one of whom replied to me, so I assume they’ll be looking further...I should reply and ask, shouldn’t I?

It’s really hard to find all this stuff on council websites! This is my borough council, I couldn’t find anything at all on county council website, I must have another look.

@GiantKitten Yes, probably! Changing the Equality document within 24 hrs is pretty good going though.

DianasLaso'a post is about right, but the point I was trying to make was regardless of there sometimes being no 'other' option sometimes things are written to suggest 'how do you identify?' Or gives them room to state what they are comfortable with being seen as.

Did you ever think that we would be debating the existence of two sexes in humans in the year 2020?

There are only two sexes the same way that humans have ten fingers, as a rule, though some are born with eight or twelve fingers.

If your sex has any relevance at all for the purposes of form filling, why give everyone the opportunity to claim they're "other", even if it was within the bounds of physical possibility to be so?
Such a load of horseshit.

I mean, even including a "prefer not to say" box renders the whole thing null and void for data collection purposes.
Allowing people to say they're neither is a nonsense.
Like the old joke: Q. Sex? A. Yes, please.
It's even as funny as that.

It's all madness.