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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

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Original poster

Why don't we introduce legal gender?

92 replies

PronounsBaby · 03/02/2023 07:14

Been thinking about this a little while... And just thinking out loud really....

I feel like some of the confusion around gender/sex could be solved by introducing the concept of legal gender.

GRC = an appendix on your birth cert with states you have changed you gender. Your birth cert stays the same (as it has happened, it's in the past. You were born your bio sex and that's important to have recorded and never going to change)
Then on passports etc you have your bio sex and a little gender box too.

Same on your medical records. Then you still get your automatic smear test letters and breast screening apts (if appropriate). Your blood / urine tests are tested using the correct parameters. But you have a little box which alerts medical professionals that you want to be referred to as a man/women. Your letters will be addressed this way but medical info will be taylored for your correct sex.

Holistically your gender can be man/women whatever you want but legally and medically you're still your bio sex.

Obvs won't help the cult like spread of the ideology, misinformation & rush to medicialise children but wouldn't it help iron out some if the confusion? Help to separate sex and gender.

Same sex attracted - stays the same.
Sex based rights - stays the same.

No such thing as 'legal sex' to confused idiots people.

People could even choose not to have gender, just use their sex for things.....

What do you think?

OP posts:
MrsBennetsPoorNerves · 03/02/2023 07:58

jellyfrizz · 03/02/2023 07:42

As long as they make it clear that sex and gender identity are absolutely and totally not the same thing in law or otherwise they could have print off and colour in your own gender identity certificates.

I think that's what the OP wants to achieve by having two separately defined categories that both have a legal "status"

At the moment, so many problems seem to arise from people conflating the two or trying to pretend that biological sex doesn't exist because gender is all that matters.

Legally recognising both would mean that they couldn't be confused or conflated. But that's exactly why the TWAW lobby would reject the idea.

EyesOnThePies · 03/02/2023 07:58

Sweetmotherofallthatisholyabov · 03/02/2023 07:33

You would have to be able to define gender. What is the female gender?

There is no ‘female’ gender, female is sex.

Feminine / masculine which are already gender constructs separate from sex. I.e men can be feminine and vice versa.

Bellalalala · 03/02/2023 08:00

Gender actually means nothing. And if you can have any gender or even non. How would medical staff know how to address you?

If you can be ‘kitty-self’ as you gender are we suggesting medical reports should refer to the patient as this ‘patient advises they tried ibuprofen but kitty-self said it didn’t help’

and when you want to change it? To ‘frog self’? A birth certificate to be changed again? Sounds expensive and pointless.

There isn’t a misunderstanding of sex and gender. TRAs have purposely tried to muddy the water. Sex based rights has always been their biggest hurdle, so they tried to confuse it with gender in order to cover their importance. The Trans rights lobby, don’t want gender classified on its own. Because that still wouldn’t allow trans women to claim sex based rights. They know sex and gender are 2 different things. They just want to convince people it’s not so they can get what they want. Which is access to womens sex based rights. And once they have access, women’s rights essentially do not exist. That’s the aim.

Giving them a box to tick for gender, isn’t what they want.

Auntieobem · 03/02/2023 08:00

But surely gender is a spectrum of where you sit at any particular time along a line of stereotypes? How could that possibly be recorded in a legal document? Sex is binary, observable, immutable

MaireadMcSweeney · 03/02/2023 08:00

The trouble is, the ridiculous GRA law was debated and passed on the basis of trans people wanting to live 'stealth' and that they would all do everything within their power to 'pass' as the opposite sex so they therefore needed a new birth certificate to 'hide' their true sex. The belief was that they would experience discrimination otherwise. We know now that trans means whatever the hell anyone wants it to mean and most trans people do very little to pass and don't even want to. However the genie isn't going back in the bottle any time soon. The GRA needs throwing out but I can't see how we can achieve that frankly.

HipTightOnions · 03/02/2023 08:03

Giving them a box to tick for gender, isn’t what they want.

Agreed. It would be interesting to hear the arguments against it though.

NameOchangeO1 · 03/02/2023 08:03

So to deal with the gender bullshit you'd impose a "gender" box on all of us?
I think it's better treated as a niche belief. If you want to change your gender you can apply for a GRC and get a different marker on your passport (which I agree should still include bio sex, and you'd have to bear in mind that introducing some markers would lead to people demanding others since this is no longer just about "transsexual" people but also about kids and people who haven't grown up cosplaying). But the rest of us should not have to choose a gender , or no gender, because it doesn't bloody exist.

hryllilegur · 03/02/2023 08:04

But the modern meaning is that you ‘feel like a woman’, whatever that may mean. I don’t feel like a woman, I am a woman despite not having a womb (thus making me exempt from certain vibrators…!)(hysterectomy due to womb cancer risk - a risk a male would never have!) but I wear trouser and likes maths.

The definition isn’t even really ‘I feel X’.

It’s I want you to act as if I am X. So recording gender is recording a set of instructions telling other people how you have decided they must think and act.

Why is ‘gender’ a reasonable basis for controlling other people?

JacquelinePot · 03/02/2023 08:11

We are in our current mess because idiots at the European Court of human rights fell for the lie that all "trans" people are so convincing in their opposite-sex performance that the rest of us can't tell what they really are.

The court then saw fit to enshrine in law idiotic concept that people who want others to believe they are the opposite sex have the right to keep their sex private, and demanded that we set up a process by which such people could falsify their documents in order to hide their sex.

The whopping great (and very obvious) flaw being that WE CAN TELL.

You have little more chance of keeping your sex secret than you do your height.

And now we're in the utterly bonkers position of being on the brink of self-id, where potentially thousands of VERY obvious men will have legal status as women.

I always wonder how organisations (not that any are inclined to try) are supposed to implement single sex exceptions for obvious men whose legal paperwork says "female" 🤔

JacquelinePot · 03/02/2023 08:14

@hryllilegur spot on. I've come to the same conclusion: it's not "I feel" it's "I want you to pretend". When you realise that's the crux of it, the whole thing is even more bonkers.

MichelleScarn · 03/02/2023 08:14

And why the discrimination of trans age people? Surely if a person feels they are 'forever 6 years old' they should get a yearly new certificate to show that with a date change and that's how they should then be treated and given access to services they want?......

FeinCuroxiVooz · 03/02/2023 08:17

whilst it's not fundamentally a bad idea, I would strongly object if there was any "default assumption" that people who are of the female sex must have a female gender identity unless they declare otherwise, and likewise for males. So it would have to be blank for all babies, and clearly young children are too young to realise whether they are being indoctrinated with genderwoo magic thinking and would be likely railroaded into a particular declaration depending on their parents beliefs rather than their own, so I think it should stay blank until at least the age of 16, at which point one can either leave it as default blank or make a declaration. but the sex marker of M or F goes unchanged because that's a solid fact. and given that it's a separate field from sex, the gender declaration should have at least a dozen options (like how there are hundreds of ethnicities but equalities monitoring forms will gave clusters of a dozen or so that between them cover most people in appropriately broad clusters).

and when services or opportunities that might be appropriate to be segregated fir valid reasons are offered, then it can be made clear whether the justification for the segregation is based on gender (these gender categories have specific needs that it is appropriate to meet separately) or based on sex (this sex category has specific needs that it is appropriate to meet separately)

Floisme · 03/02/2023 08:25

I respect your commitment to finding a compromise. The thing is though, we already have a compromise: The Gender Recognition Act plus single sex exceptions in the Equality Act. And look where that got us.

DameMaud · 03/02/2023 08:30

BoredOfThisMansWorld · 03/02/2023 07:26

The TWAW lobby would not like it. But in a way that would be beneficial to the wider public because your suggestion seems logical and accomodating. When hardline TWAW believers had to explain why they didn't like it, people would learn what their actual intentions were.

Yep. This sums it up perfectly I think.

(I appreciate your thought experiment OP. This is the kind of thing I'm always trying to do in my mind too. I think thought experiments can be useful for raising other people's critical thinking on a topic- so this would be good to put out there)

nauticant · 03/02/2023 08:32

gender would have to be defined in law which it hasn't been so far. It's such a nebulous concept I think it would be hard to define

If this is about gender identity, here's my go: "Aspects of personality derived from stereotypes associated with masculinity or feminity or a combination thereof"

Merrymouse · 03/02/2023 08:34

Yes, as long as there is an option to indicate that you don’t have a gender, a bit like not having a religion.

I think this is a good compromise.

Boiledbeetle · 03/02/2023 08:35

At various points in the past few years I may have felt that finding a way to make everyone feel happy and 'validated' was the way to go.

BUT as it's not been reciprocal in any way and we've been told to shut up and women don't matter my answer is no.

You are either female or male.

Everything past that is personal preference. You decide to be a woman when you're actually a man then the problems that man encounters are of their own making and I'm no longer in the mood to help them larp their way through life.

determinedtomakethiswork · 03/02/2023 08:36

The problem is that they don't just want to be addressed in a certain way. They want you to believe they are the other sex. That's what's impossible.

CatSpeakForDummies · 03/02/2023 08:39

This is the solution I would like to see, although I'd want it to be "gender identity" rather than handing over the word gender and all the places it's used to mean sex.

It would be as useful as a baptism certificate, with the people who need one deciding on when it's required (much like any belief or religion). Religions like the paperwork for weddings, schools and maybe to reinforce discrimination on grounds of dress.

A GRC could be used to access the LGBT shelters, support and health care they are going to fund. They might allow someone to dress differently at work or be excused from certain tasks - that's for them to decide and justify.

They don't get to touch sex, that is clearly and separately defined.

GRC holders can do what they like and we can carry on giving it as much thought as we do Scientology or Mormonism. Live and let live.

jellyfrizz · 03/02/2023 08:40

I would strongly object if there was any "default assumption" that people who are of the female sex must have a female gender identity unless they declare otherwise, and likewise for males.

That's the whole point of gender, it's assumptions about someone based solely on their sex. I'd be really uncomfortable giving any legal credence to a belief system based on damaging stereotypes.

NecessaryScene · 03/02/2023 08:40

It would be a pointless addition though, because gender doesn’t mean anything or inform anyone.

Well, yes, but a pointless addition is better than re-using the extremely useful "sex" record for something pointless, isn't it?

If someone is insisting on replacing their sex with their favourite colour, giving them a place to record their favourite colour is a potential way of short-circuiting that demand. And short-circuiting that demand is far from pointless.

And, obviously, gender should be left blank until someone decides to have one. You certainly wouldn't "assign gender at birth" (or favourite colour).

Part of the problem is that people are insisting that the "sex" field is really a "favourite colour" field and claiming that people are being "assigned favourite colours at birth".

CatSpeakForDummies · 03/02/2023 08:45

If it was clear, the point would become obvious. We can't see it just now because you are not allowed to talk about trans people as their own separate group.

For example, Hindu men had to argue for the right to wear turbans in certain occupations, GRC holders might need similar laws around uniform or wearing a female swim costume in a male race.

It would be useful on the medical notes, as that is not the time to misgender someone and have them refuse to talk to you.

They could be put on the TW wing of the male prison.

Proudofitbabe · 03/02/2023 08:48

What's the point? Sex is the factor on which female safety and dignity is protected in law (or it should be!). So in what scenarios do we actually need to officially have, or record a person's, "gender identity"?! To the outside world it's as meaningless as their zodiac sign, and validating it in legal documents is just a way of appeasing a tiny and extremely vocal, self-absorbed minority. No thanks.

MuffytheWooWooSlayer · 03/02/2023 08:54

I admire your attempt to find a way forward OP, but I'm really surprised how many people think that's a good compromise.

Gender is largely a bunch of regressive stereotypes. Why would anyone want to enshrine those in a legal document? That would just be being complicit in your own pigeonholing and subordination.

The clear fact is: man isn't a woman in ANY sense. He's not a woman biologically and he can't, in any accurate or meaningful way, "identify" as a woman because he doesn't know what he's identifying with other than the stereotypes.

Gender identity is either the same thing as personality, because of its infinite and subjective interpretation of categories, or it's a synonym for sex. Those are the only two logical possibilities.

CucumberCool · 03/02/2023 09:05

Woah, loads of responses! Thank you! Great points, all of them

I have no idea how it would work legally.

A lot of people mention, quite rightly that gender is just a bunch of stereotypes. But the fact is, for a lot of gender questioning/trans people those stereotypes are incredibly important. In fact they shape their whole identity. Also those stereotypes are what's used in the 'assessment' for a grc certificate. Aren't their (stereotypical) 8 criteria which in which makes someone 'trans'?

I think the gender box wouldn't exist on the majority of people's paperwork. Only if you want s one would you have one.

Yes I agree it is pretty meaningless at the moment but them we could start introducing a gendered category to things, like changing rooms and prisons. It would not replace sex as it is doing now.