Same here. I have nothing against it and I am a firm believer that everyone should be able to whatever they like with their bodies, be it surgery, drugs or euthanasia. That doesn't stop me thinking there's something quite not right though.
I saw earlier in the news that the British Army now has their very first female in a combat role. I then read further and it turns out when the person joined the army, they were male and have now decided to take hormones. To me that just says we are still waiting for our first female in a combat role. I'm sorry, but they really are not the same.
A serious question:
How,
exactly, do you define a person's sex and why do you use that definition?
As I see it, there are a few options:
1) Genetic. XX = male, XY = female. Well...no. That's not an accurate definition. For starters, it's not always true. Genes are plans for things, not the things themselves. It's possible for the end result to not match the plan in many ways, including sex. Genes aren't a sex and genes don't have a sex.
2) Physiological. Better, since it's actually about things and not just plans for things. Still far from easy to pin down though. You can't just use primary sexual organs because some people have those removed. Telling someone who's had their ovaries or testicles removed that they're now neuter is unnecessarily harsh and not really true. There are other sexual organs and sexual characteristics...but how many need to match to make a definition?
3) Psychological/Behavioural. A person's sex is defined by how they think and what they do. A bad definition unless you want extreme sexist stereotyping and roles.
4) Declaration. A person's sex is whatever they say it is, regardless of everything else. There's no objective reality. I am the walrus.
So I go with (2)...which means that if a person changes enough physically in the relevant ways, they change sex.
As an aside, there were women in combat roles on land in the British military in WW2. They were special forces soldiers so it could be said they weren't in the army as such (officially, they were nurses), but I think that's splitting hairs a bit. Officially, it was the usual top secret "we neither confirm nor deny that anyone was there or that anything happened" thing, but most of the details are declassified now. There was even a woman (Nancy Wake) in the British military in WW2 who in addition to being in a combat role was also a senior officer - she commanded a force of ~7000 soldiers. She earned so many medals she could have made body armour from them.
