• B.C. Human Rights Tribunal to consider striking gender designation from birth certificates
    279 replies, posted
[QUOTE=person11;47814416]The way we have thought of sex and gender in medicine has reformed and changed over the years based on social and cultural factors. Remember hysteria?[/QUOTE] I think he was referring more specifically to the fact that some diseases affect one sex more than the other and issues such as heritable traits, Lupus, Hemophilia, cancers, etc.
[QUOTE=Zeke129;47814435]Having gender and sex that don't match. This doesn't always lead to distress, even though it often does.[/QUOTE] How do you determine this?
[QUOTE=FetusFondler;47814438]I support changing it to XX/XY, it gives the relevant information and mitigates possible bad feelings on transgender people by seeing "male" as the sex on their birth certificate when they identify as "female" or vice versa. It's a small thing and means exactly the same but I believe it makes a difference.[/QUOTE] Birth certificates aren't medical documents, listing chromosomes on them makes as much sense as encoding your DNA sequence on it.
[QUOTE=Zeke129;47814422]mokkan, why do you think that being transgender requires mental distress? It's (unfortunately) extremely common, but it isn't a prerequisite for being transgender.[/QUOTE] I wouldnt say distress, but a mental discomfort is required. I don't mean discomfort like sitting on a toilet thats still warm, a true and real acknowledgement that your physical gender is wrong for you. That is the minimum to be on that scale. I don't mean like tumblr transnigger, that shit isnt real, i mean something similar to a self acknowledgment by a gay person that they find their own sex attractive.
[QUOTE=Laferio;47814440]How do you determine this?[/QUOTE] By the fact that less than 100% of transgender people are suffering. Unless you mean how do you determine if sex/gender don't match, in which case the answer is to ask the person
[QUOTE=SGTNAPALM;47814433]What about name? Should name be listed on a birth certificate if an individual comes to feel that their name is not their true identity?[/QUOTE] You can change your name quite easily.
We shouldn't have names on birth certificates, because we don't want people who later change their name to feel bad. We should just identify everyone with number instead or something.
[QUOTE=Richoxen;47814455]We shouldn't have names on birth certificates, because we don't want people who later change their name to feel bad. We should just identify everyone with number instead or something.[/QUOTE] Governments actually make it fairly painless to change the name on your birth certificate, although it does take a lot of time and requires you to pay money. (Which isn't fair imo) If they made changing sex on there as easily as changing the name, this wouldn't likely be as much of an issue.
[QUOTE=Richoxen;47814419]Answer my question now.[/QUOTE] Such authority! If you meant the point of transitioning if one is not experiencing any sort of dysmorphia then Zeke129 addressed that very well already. I am posting at a much slower rate than everyone else here.
[QUOTE=mokkan;47814398]read my post I said its a concession to those people and is something that gives accurate records. having a blank box for gender that trans people can choose to fill with their mental gender only makes it more accurate where do you think statistics on birth sex comes from if not birth.[/QUOTE] Well I looked it up myself and discovered that birth sex is recorded by the Vital Statistics Cooperative Program which doesn't use birth certificates but rather certificates of live birth which are different from birth certificates. The certificate of live birth is used for data entry and is not changed, while the birth certificate is. So at least in the United States, they're already two separate documents.
[QUOTE=Zeke129;47814460]Governments actually make it fairly painless to change the name on your birth certificate, although it does take a lot of time and requires you to pay money. (Which isn't fair imo) If they made changing sex on there as easily as changing the name, this wouldn't likely be as much of an issue.[/QUOTE] Sex is permanent. That's why it can't be changed.
[QUOTE=Zeke129;47814460]Governments actually make it fairly painless to change the name on your birth certificate, although it does take a lot of time and requires you to pay money. (Which isn't fair imo) If they made changing sex on there as easily as changing the name, this wouldn't likely be as much of an issue.[/QUOTE] Then why don't they just do that, solving the real issue instead of doing something for no reason that doesn't do anything?
[QUOTE=person11;47814462]Such authority! If you meant the point of transitioning if one is not experiencing any sort of dysmorphia then Zeke129 addressed that very well already. I am posting at a much slower rate than everyone else here.[/QUOTE] [QUOTE=Zeke129;47814460]Governments actually make it fairly painless to change the name on your birth certificate, although it does take a lot of time and requires you to pay money. (Which isn't fair imo) If they made changing sex on there as easily as changing the name, this wouldn't likely be as much of an issue.[/QUOTE] If you're a man and you're not suffering with the fact that you think you're a girl then you wouldn't feel like a girl and if you don't feel like you're a girl you wouldn't transition and if you don't transition you're not a transgender person.
[QUOTE=Richoxen;47814465]Sex is permanent. That's why it can't be changed.[/QUOTE] What about people who undergo sex re-assignment surgery? They used to be called transsexual.
[QUOTE=Richoxen;47814465]Sex is permanent. That's why it can't be changed.[/QUOTE] Well that depends how you define sex. If it's by genitalia, it can be changed. If it's by chromosomes, there are people with disorders whose chromosomes don't match the sex they are in essentially every other way.
[QUOTE=Rangergxi;47814439]I think he was referring more specifically to the fact that some diseases affect one sex more than the other and issues such as heritable traits, Lupus, Hemophilia, cancers, etc.[/QUOTE] This is true. That is one of the only ways sex is relevant besides having kids or having sex. Your health is nobodies business but that of you and your doctor. Sex does not need to be on your birth certificate. It will be on a thousand other medical records. Literally noone's treatment of sex specific diseases will one day suffer from this erasure of several characters from a piece of paper issued at birth.
[QUOTE=Richoxen;47814473]If you're a man and you're not suffering with the fact that you think you're a girl then you wouldn't feel like a girl and if you don't feel like you're a girl you wouldn't transition and if you don't transition you're not a transgender person.[/QUOTE] You can be inconvenienced, even uncomfortable, without presenting with [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_dysmorphic_disorder#Symptoms]these symptoms[/url].
I want to ask a question for those that think gender is 100% a social construct (as in, baby born in the wild with no human contact will have no inherent concept of gender), and I'm being genuine and not clever or snarky. If gender is entirely a social construct and has zero inborn influence on a human being's psychology, why do babies raised as the gender opposite their sex experience dysphoria? Moreover, how would anyone experience gender dysphoria in the first place if there was no inborn concept of gender for them to feel is in conflict against society? Why would so many transgender people "switch" genders rather than completely abandoning it and behaving entirely androgynously?
[QUOTE=Zeke129;47814460]Governments actually make it fairly painless to change the name on your birth certificate, although it does take a lot of time and requires you to pay money. (Which isn't fair imo) If they made changing sex on there as easily as changing the name, this wouldn't likely be as much of an issue.[/QUOTE] Wouldn't something like this just be a bandaid fix? If governmental institutions don't respect gender changes before something like this what is improved by leaving it off birth certificates exactly? I am ambivalent towards this; I don't see the harm in keeping it on, I don't see the harm in taking it off, but I don't know what is improved or why it is worth the effort. Surely if governments don't respect gender changes before, they wouldn't respect it after (irrespective of a piece of paper,) right?
[QUOTE=person11;47814482]Literally noone's treatment of sex specific diseases will one day suffer from this erasure of several characters from a piece of paper issued at birth.[/QUOTE] What if someone who has previously undergone gender re-assignment surgery has amnesia or some other sort of degenerative memory disorder? Then nobody knows.
[QUOTE=thisispain;47814475]What about people who undergo sex re-assignment surgery? They used to be called transsexual.[/QUOTE] As far as I'm aware, gender re-assignment doesn't change your chromosomes and thus doesn't change vital medical properties that are unique between sexes. You can change your appearance but you will remain biologically male/female.
[QUOTE=thisispain;47814272][B]In my own little world I consider male and female to be socially constructed categories.[/B] I know of the hypotheses that genetics are influential in how we identify but as far as I'm aware we're still very far away from understanding why and how people identify; I'm open to reading things if you've got something. And gender identity being a choice or not is mostly irrelevant to what I was saying, lots of things are societal but not choices.[/QUOTE] That's not how biology works. In any species, by the way. [editline]dd[/editline] [QUOTE=srobins;47814493]As far as I'm aware, gender re-assignment doesn't change your chromosomes and thus doesn't change vital medical properties that are unique between sexes. You can change your appearance but you will remain biologically male/female.[/QUOTE] Also this. Imagine going to the doctor as a re-assigned person (ie. Male -> Female) and saying you are a female. If the doctor just goes with that and doesn't have the biological information necessary you could very well end up getting the wrong medication and your body gets fucked up. But hey, it's all just social norms right? Totally not a chemical/biological issue.
I really don't get what the purpose behind this is. Male and female refer to sex, right? Isn't the entire point that it's alright for a male or female to identify as a woman or man? How does removing instances of the words male and female make that easier? People who don't like transgender people still aren't going to like transgender people. Dancing around objective facts of life isn't going to make them find the concept less repulsive. And even if by some stretch of the imagination it did, it wouldn't be for the right reasons.
[QUOTE=thisispain;47814475]What about people who undergo sex re-assignment surgery? They used to be called transsexual.[/QUOTE] They're still physically different from the opposite sex. No amount of surgery can change this fact. You can't put ovaries in male and expect them to function and you can't put a penis on a woman and expect it to ejaculate. They better not remove sex from birth certificates. It's my main identification as a British Columbian and the definition of male or female is entirely based on science. There are two biological sexes.
[QUOTE=SGTNAPALM;47814488]Wouldn't something like this just be a bandaid fix? If governmental institutions don't respect gender changes before something like this what is improved by leaving it off birth certificates exactly? I am ambivalent towards this; I don't see the harm in keeping it on, I don't see the harm in taking it off, but I don't know what is improved or why it is worth the effort. Surely if governments don't respect gender changes before, they wouldn't respect it after (irrespective of a piece of paper,) right?[/QUOTE] Birth certificates are the stepping stone for other forms of ID that you get when you're an adult. (Driver's license, passport, etc) A big problem here is if, for example, you present as female in every way but your birth certificate lists M. This could endanger your ability to get a license or passport. If there isn't an official document with a preconceived gender on it it won't matter if your government makes it too difficult to change it.
[QUOTE=Zeke129;47814485]You can be inconvenienced, even uncomfortable, without presenting with [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_dysmorphic_disorder#Symptoms]these symptoms[/url].[/QUOTE] Let me ask you what are they inconvenienced by, and uncomfortable with.
[QUOTE=thisispain;47814475]What about people who undergo sex re-assignment surgery? They used to be called transsexual.[/QUOTE] If I can step in, isn't their some statistic out there right now stating that people who have sex re-assignment surgery and hormone therapy are something about forty times more likely to commit suicide or be put into a mental institution for side effects in relation to it? I mean if that's the case, that's one of those things which shouldn't be played lightly with. As for the question if they are transsexual, I'd prefer to just call them by the gender they assumed or were trying to achieve. As that is what they want. :v:
i didn't think it was disputed that male and female brains operate somewhat differently. i mean, with different hormonal levels i can't see how there isn't any differences beyond cultural. take animals, for instance. as far as i am aware nearly every animal has at least some behavioral differences between the males and the females of the species, would it not make sense that the same applies to humans? of course gender is societal, but isn't there biological basis as to why men and women have different behaviors? isn't that why there is dysmorphia, because the person's brain is wired for the opposite gender of their body?
[QUOTE=srobins;47814487]I want to ask a question for those that think gender is 100% a social construct (as in, baby born in the wild with no human contact will have no inherent concept of gender), and I'm being genuine and not clever or snarky. If gender is entirely a social construct and has zero inborn influence on a human being's psychology, why do babies raised as the gender opposite their sex experience dysphoria? Moreover, how would anyone experience gender dysphoria in the first place if there was no inborn concept of gender for them to feel is in conflict against society? Why would so many transgender people "switch" genders rather than completely abandoning it and behaving entirely androgynously?[/QUOTE] I'm interested in the answer to the same question as well; the research I've read on it was inconclusive. Of course an explanation about why transgender people "switch" genders should also take into account why some do not. There used to be explanations but they were abandoned by medical experts because they were antiquated. When I say I think gender is a social construct, it's because I remain critical of the biological explanations of which many have become deprecated in the light of newer science and because I acknowledge that there are places in the world which have completely different systems of gender and lack binaries. If gender is biological and has natural binaries then we need to explain why there are parts of the world which don't have binaries.
[QUOTE=Zeke129;47814508]Birth certificates are the stepping stone for other forms of ID that you get when you're an adult. (Driver's license, passport, etc) A big problem here is if, for example, you present as female in every way but your birth certificate lists M. This could endanger your ability to get a license or passport. If there isn't an official document with a preconceived gender on it it won't matter if your government makes it too difficult to change it.[/QUOTE] If you're an organ donor, and you need to be cut up right away they should know what they're cutting into.
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