Why don't we introduce legal gender?

[PronounsBaby]

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?

@Boiledbeetle I think the concept that people should (need to be) validated is a big part of the problem.

People exist. They should be treated with basic dignity and respect.

But they should not need to be validated. They’re already valid. And having the world conform to whatever story they’re telling themselves is unnecessary.

If people had actual confidence they really were the ‘gender’ they claim, they wouldn’t need validation from everyone around them. And they wouldn’t feel they needed to control everyone else’s thoughts and actions to fit the story they want to be true about themselves.

I don’t need the world to validate me as a woman or a person of average height or a person with blue eyes. None of that requires other people’s confirmation to be true.

I do need the universities I attended to validate my educational experiences and achievements. And I do need that validation to prove that I’m qualified for particular job roles. Or as evidence that I might have a much better informed opinion in particular subjects than many other people.

I do need a birth certificate and passport to validate that I am a British citizen - and to demonstrate that to various authorities for various purposes.

I don’t need anyone to validate me on the basis that my favourite colour is green or that I don’t like house music or that I prefer wearing skirts to trousers of any other trivial aspect of my personality or preferences that simply doesn’t matter for any practical purpose.

How I want to view myself in relation to a rainbow of gender stereotypes is simply not something that requires validation of any sort. I can decide it for myself. And I don’t get to tell everyone else how to treat me because I feel that way.

Be kind is an excellent shield for what is effectively ‘think and do as I tell you’

I think it's useful to work through it, because it's the necessary "let's back up and think about this again".

The whole original stated point of "legal recognition" was to falsify sex, and falsifying sex makes sense when that's the point. The whole claimed reason was not to casually "out" the undercover transsexual in day-to-day interactions with the state. That was the entirety of it.

But the moment you have "gender souls" then they're clearly a different thing from sex, so your original "falsify sex" plan isn't making sense any more.

You could conceivably run the two in parallel...

The old-school heavily-gatekept "falsify sex" scheme for people who are deemed to pass, be gender dysphoric etc.

And the "gender badge" scheme for everyone.

(Personally I think both are bad ideas, but they're at least better ideas than the mind-bogglingly illogical and nonsensical idea of replacing sex with "gender". A bad idea is better than an incoherent one).

But would you accept that I was adopting a particular set of racial stereotypes and should therefore be able to identify as that race because those stereotypes were "important" to me? Surely not?

Things that are "important" to people can be wrong or harmful or erroneous to themselves and/or others, particularly if stamped into law. Legal categories exist for identification not for validation.

I think the purpose this idea would serve might be as a kind of public education service. I would expect it to ultimately fail, which would be ok, obviously, because innermost thoughts really don't need to be included on official paperwork. Because the concept of gender identity, by design, is slippery. One moment there are apparently over a hundred genders - how beautifully diverse! - the next moment there's 2 genders and Big Bertha is adamant "she" isn't a man and is allowed to compete on your team and watch you getting changed.

Excellent post, sums it up 👏

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.

Yeah, but at point does it stop? It's not a third category as a whole set of categories. With all the different genders, at some point there's going to be a split or people are going to be more demanding (I am gender neutral, I don't want to sharing with a x gender or y gender or z gender). It's not sustainable.

I think this kind of formalising of gender should be resisted on a very fundamental principle: that it’s okay, and perfectly normal, for men and women to dress and behave outside of artificial stereotypes, without needing a piece of paper to say they are allowed to. Any legal recognition of gender implies that we expect people to take on societally-accepted gender roles, unless they have been formally excused from them. What a massively retrograde step!

Although I think this is a good idea, I also agree that we need to bin off the idea that people's thoughts need to be validated. However, I don't see this as mutually exclusive.

I don't validate religious beliefs, but for people it's important to, they can jump through the hoops their religion dictates.

If we had tried to change the meaning of Christian to accommodate all other beliefs, we wouldn't have the peaceful multicultural society we have today. Instead the other religions get to have their places of worship, dress codes, holidays... and those of us without religion aren't bothered by it.

That's the model we need to aim for, life and let live in both directions. A trans person should no more expect to be validated than a Jehovah's Witness.

I see where you're coming from, but unless gender is infinite - including people who want to be called "womin" or "wymin" and every alternate spelling of normal words, then it exclusionary to some gender or other. Plus you'd need to include pronouns.

We actually have a system that works perfectly now. We have two sexes and that's how people are categorised. Individuals of either sex can refer to themselves as anything they want, but they're categorised by sex. The number of people for who this is genuinely a problem (as in not in any way related to a fetish or sexual thrills) are so infinitesimally small, that if we stopped with identity nonsense, they could receive proper funding to help them navigate the world.

The way I see it is that the law should treat everyone equally and should not put people into categories unless there is good reason backed up by sound evidence

There is good reason to distinguish between the sexes as males have a very different crime pattern to women. There is a huge body of of evidence to back this up.

On practical terms it is also simple as biological sex is binary albeit with some rare intersex conditions, which are all definable bybscience.

I do not see what purpose it would serve for the state to distinguish between people who are registering different states of mind or how it would go about this.

Might as well put "Fursona" on passports. It's about as meaningful.

btw it's actually dangerous for people to have gender ID listed on passports. The best they can expect to happen is be deported upon arrival from some places.

If it's not listed, they can have a chance to travel wherever and not be discriminated against - of course turning up to Egypt wearing a rainbow/pastel flag in fake boobs and a wig isn't going to get you further than a detention cell, but there's at least a choice to hide your gender ID. Once it's on a passport they cannot travel anywhere without it being the first thing a country sees of them.

It's about clarity, we won't have evidence or real discussions about needs unless there is a recognised definition. I can see that there are needs though, ignoring that doesn't help anyone.

It is scientifically untrue that women are made from a man's rib. However, we have to recognise that for some people that is an important belief. We don't let them near the biology textbooks, we don't have to pretend it's true but we do let them have places of worship, for example.

Trans people would be able to advertise for roles within the trans community, as for people with a GRC. That's why it matters, the way we should be able to advertise posts as women only.

I have given examples where it is useful. If we are going to have TW compete with men, then they should be able to dress differently. It would be cruel to expect a male swimmer with breast implants to wear trunks.

Appearing cruel isn't going to help this move forward. It's possible to be compassionate without being self sacrificing (current meaning or "be kind").

I think there’s something in this idea. I’m increasingly of the view that being able to change legal sex is madness for well-rehearsed reasons. But gender id clearly really matters to some people. So is there a middle way, where the state recognises gender id for those for whom it is important, and in contexts where sex doesn’t matter (while allowing those of us who think gender is another prison to have nothing to do with the whole bloody idea)?

I agree.

Pisses me off no end when people talk about changing their 'legal gender'
What the fuck does that even mean?
What is gender and how can you legally change it if it isn't legally defined?
To say it can be changed implies that everyone has one already. I don't.

Gender isn't sex. So even if they do come up with a definition of 'gender', what the fuck does that have to do with SEX segregated anything?
The only way gender would make sense in this way is if ALL women behaved and dressed in the same stereotypical way, which is nonsense.

A man can change his imaginary 'legal gender' but not his sex.

No one should be allowed to falsify the information on their birth certificate. This should remain a document of fact, not fiction.
Why should people be able to change their birth certificate just because of poor mental health?

I also think that GRC are bullshit. It's a certificate of lies, that should hold no weight whatsoever in relation to sex segregation.

It would be useful for passports to have both in terms of crimes etc. If a person went missing abroad, their DNA would show their sex but their outward appearance may look like a stereotypical gender. If it’s based on gender, it hampers forensics.

Other way round but a bit like a few years back when the police (Dorset I think?) put a call out to be careful as they were looking for a woman who had committed a crime and was on the run. What they should have said is a man who is dressed as a woman. Because if I saw a man dressed as a woman I would not think that was the person they were looking for.

I've had the same thought myself, but I kind of think we're in so deep that a lot of people won't accept anything less than the legal fiction of their preferred sex with no reference to their real one, also since 2012 tumblr seems to be deciding real life policy I think the "gender identity" box would have to include a whole lot of other nonsense and made up identities.

Nonsense should not be written into the law or into legal documents.

#nodebate

Yep. This is invasion, not accommodation. Your suggestion, though reasonable and sensible, would not "validate" men in frocks.

If you separate gender from sex what on earth is gender? Feelings? What clothes you wear? Whether you can build a Billy bookcase? Makes no sense, does it?

I actually hear the nonsense ‘about changing ‘legal gender’ in exactly the same way I hear that ‘legal name fraud’ crap that conspiracy theorists were keen to plaster all over billboards a few years ago.

There is no such thing as gender. As in, it isn't a thing, with any physical reality - it's theory, a product of the academic imagination. We don't register people's 'legal religion' in any other context, why would we force people to pretend they believe in this?

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

Most people are not confused though.

I know the difference between
Biological sex
Gender
Gender Identity

It's the TRAs and media that are conflate all 3 into one, and no doubt these is done on purpose so that they could make these changes.

You want to make gender (identity) a legal concept? Gender identity is evolving every day. Some people claim there are hundreds of genders. When many trans people talk about their gender identity - they are actually referring to their personality.

Gender identity in the eyes of many TRAs, is based on harmful, sexist stereotypes. Why should 99.9% of the population conform to this?

Gender identity is a "belief". Other beliefs are - Santa, the Easter Bunny, God, witches etc. Should we introduce these concepts legally?

@PronounsBaby /@CucumberCool
I assume both of these are you.

I used to favour the idea of an additional gender identity marker on drivers licences and passports, but no longer. Gender identity is unobservable, unverifiable and simply irrelevant to pretty much everything and everyone except the individual concerned and his or her immediate circle. The recent census of England & Wales shows us that at most 265,000 people claim some sort of special identity. How many of those even suffer with crippling gender dysphoria? That's not enough to justify the expense of imposing a quasi-religion on the rest of us. We've been brainwashed and terrorised into thinking we have to accommodate a nebulous concept which is less relevant to social policy than your star sign, though infinitely more harmful and regressive.
The purpose of identity documents is not validation and the consequences to society of allowing people to lie about their sex are far worse than the consequences of not allowing that. Medical notes can record special identity claims, if necessary, and any medication that a patient is on.
And the last thing we want to do is get the concept of gender identity recognised in law. Because that is the first step towards overwriting sex in law and public policy.

What is a woman?

What you would be doing would be imposing gender beliefs on everyone.

What does that mean? It means legally entrenching gender stereotypes into society.

So if you are a woman who isn't 'feminine' by these definitions where does that leave you? Should you be changing your gender too?

Where does this leave non believers? Do they have to state their gender too?

It's meaningless rot which disadvantages women by forcing gender stereotypes on us

No thanks.