"UK refusal to issue gender-neutral passports unlawful, high court told"
- Thread starter dowie
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Typos?
Soldato
Storm in a tea cup as far as I can see. I do not see the point. People use a passport to ensure passage between countries across the world and little else.
It is not a badge of your gender, sex, or sexuality.
If 168 countries worldwide accepted this and it was a norm, OK, but a small percentage of people in a small number of countries are demanding this 'freedom'. So what.
If it costs nothing to administer, is recognised worldwide, I would say maybe. Otherwise no change would be my view.
It is not a badge of your gender, sex, or sexuality.
If 168 countries worldwide accepted this and it was a norm, OK, but a small percentage of people in a small number of countries are demanding this 'freedom'. So what.
If it costs nothing to administer, is recognised worldwide, I would say maybe. Otherwise no change would be my view.
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It’s obviously a bit weird but at the same time I’m really not arsed in the slightest about what some other person does or doesn’t identify themselves as on their passport... it will have no effect on my life whatsoever or anyone else’s for that matter so I find it a bit weird that anyone would get mad over this.
Man of Honour
Easy and wrong.
According to the definition you stated (reproductive function), a person who is not fertile is neuter. So, according to your stated definition, every woman ceases to be a woman at menopause. Every man who has a vasectomy ceases to be a man. Etc.
As I said, the devil is in the details. Your definition is particularly inaccurate, though.
According to your definition, they're not a man either. So your statement is wrong according to your own stated definition of sex, i.e. it's not even internally consistent.
Of course it does - if you state that reproductive function defines a person's sex, you are stating that a person who does not have reproductive function does not have a sex. That is your stated position. You can either stand by it or you can contradict yourself. Your choice...
...and you choose to contradict yourself. First you say that reproductive function defines sex and then you say that it doesn't.
You don't have a definition for sex other than "What I say so because I say so". You're just making up ad hoc "definitions" to dress up not having one.
Your analogy fails because it's not comparable unless you claim to define "human" as "being able to walk". Which you don't.
According to your stated definition, neither are women since neither have any reproductive function.
All humans start off neuter. A single cell can't have a sex. Even some weeks later, when the embryo is humanoid, it's still neuter. The reason for men having nipples is that they're part of the human body plan.
That I agree with.
I think a relevant question there is "for how long?" Also relevant would be "what proportion do so?" There's going to be some degree of inaccuracy in the assessment because of different levels of visibility. If someone changes sex and is unremarkable for their destination sex they're much less noticeable than someone who's hyper-gendered for their destination sex. There's a parallel with people who come out as homosexual after a period of hiding it - some of them take on stereotypes like it was some sort of mandatory uniform and of course they're far more noticeable than people who don't. They also often calm down about it after a while, realising that they don't have to be a walking cliche.
Man of Honour
That's not a problem for their stated position - hermaphrodites would be both sexes simultaneously.
Soldato
Exactly - identify as whatever or whoever you want but you can't change what you were born as. Takes away all the issues and provides people with a set idea not based on however they feel like being that day so is more reliable and secure.
How would it affect travelling to countries who do not recognise anything than male or female?
Man of Honour
It's likely that societies in the stone age had their own customs and disagreements about them. After all, they were people like us. There has been little evolution in humans since the beginning of the species. Some local adaptations, but nothing major and even those go well back into the stone age.
I highly doubt that stone age man was as nit picky about gender as some humans are today. Society today and social media has had a big impact on younger generations.
Man of Honour
Even if your doubts are right (and neither you, I or anyone else knows for sure), that wouldn't mean that there weren't other aspects of other customs in stone age societies that the people in them disagreed about, i.e. living in one might not have been simple (in the context of customs).
Simple as in; no fundamental technology. Only stone tools, living life simple and with the bare minimal. Living in a family pack and and having a hierarchy and social bond (yes I know we still have that today) The things you see and hear today on the Internet makes you sit there and really think wtf?
Sure, they may of had disagreements etc, but surely not as pedantic as things such as gender. More like fighting with your brother about who has the best stone axe and how you can cut down a tree faster
but as you say, no one knows for sure. I can only speculate.
Man of Honour
Simple as in; no fundamental technology. Only stone tools, living life simple and with the bare minimal. Living in a family pack and and having a hierarchy and social bond (yes I know we still have that today) The things you see and hear today on the Internet makes you sit there and really think wtf?
Sure, they may of had disagreements etc, but surely not as pedantic as things such as gender. More like fighting with your brother about who has the best stone axe and how you can cut down a tree faster
I don't know...in small groups things such as gender and other social customs can have a larger impact because it doesn't take much change to significantly affect the size of the next generation. In a group of only dozens of people, gender actually matters. Religion would probably be a factor as well, even if it's something very local such as which pond is the home of the stronger water spirit. I think that humans tend towards complicating things.
If you haven't seen the youtube channel "Primitive Technology" you might find it worth a look. A guy goes into the wild in Australia and experiments with building stuff using only stone age technology and using only materials he can gather locally and carry to his building sites. He starts with making tools, then shelter, utensils, food, etc. Several shelters - it's mainly a building channel. His main house looks quite comfortable. He even has a shower (there's a very small waterfall nearby). It's habitable enough to have some appeal as long as you don't think about sewerage, diseases, infection of minor injuries, crop failure...minor stuff like that
Its like you totally ignored my post! There is a difference between a woman who can't have children due to age, injury or biological defect and a trans woman who can't have children as they are biologically male! Defining characteristics of humans include being bipedal mammals. If I chopped the legs and mammary glands of a (biological) woman she wouldn't cease to be human. Its both risible and ignorant to suggest there is no difference between a trans woman and a biological one!
Total nonsense cells absolutely can have a sex! Did you ever study any science? You do realise that a scientist given a sample of my dna, from a single cell, could say conclusively that it came from a (biological) male! Really go read a text book and learn something!
'every cell has a sex'
I posted a scientific link demonstrating the fact that it's only when the male hormones in a developing fetus outweigh the mothers female hormones that 'maleness' starts to (physically) develop. You have just asserted your point unsupported!
As you seem to have such difficultly differentiating (biological) men from women let's widen the scope a bit and ask if you can give me a list of characteristics that would conclusively show a living organism was 'human' because I suspect you will struggle by the rod you have made for your own back with the apparent difficultly you would have assigning (biological) sex.
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Actually you couldn't be more wrong. Gender by definition, is just a cultural identity, and doesn't define the sex of a human. In plain English, "sex" defines what you are.
Look it up.
Soldato
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Privacy? Common decency? Nobody else's business?
Not so extreme, as quite a few female athletes were subject to rounds of similar tests, IIRC.
Really it only matters if you're taken to hospital, as it doesn't matter how much you "identify" as female if you have a prostate problem.
Associate
I'm not sure that it should matter to most of us. I mean, most of us are happy with what's on our passports and no bodies attempting to make us change the marker on our passport. They want to change their own, not mine. Why should I care.
Like Tefal I know some trans people, one of whom is a bear of a guy, 5ft 8, rugby player built, full beard, bald head, deep voice. He was born female, and according to some of you should be marked Female on his passport. I can't imagine him ever being admitted to a country with such a marker. Why shouldn't he be allowed to change the marker on his to reflect the person he is not the person someone else said he was when he was born.
I'd personally say the bigger issue is why would you want to. There's so many countries I'd be extremely hesitant to visit with anything other than a straight forward male or female marker.
Like Tefal I know some trans people, one of whom is a bear of a guy, 5ft 8, rugby player built, full beard, bald head, deep voice. He was born female, and according to some of you should be marked Female on his passport. I can't imagine him ever being admitted to a country with such a marker. Why shouldn't he be allowed to change the marker on his to reflect the person he is not the person someone else said he was when he was born.
I'd personally say the bigger issue is why would you want to. There's so many countries I'd be extremely hesitant to visit with anything other than a straight forward male or female marker.
Because someone didn't decide they observed this person's sex at birth. It wasn't an arbitrary decision made at birth. Passports are official documents not social media profiles they need to reflect objective reality not subjective feelings.
Society discriminates on the basis of sex for the provision of some goods and services (it is for example legal for a domestic violence shelter to only admit women). We can argue the respective merits of sex discrimination in different areas but ultimately it currently exists and I don't forsee a world any time soon where there is no official discrimination of any sort allowed based on sex.
(to be clear I am using discrimination in the very literal sense I'm not suggesting that discrimination = injustice here just literally the reality that for example the state has separate prisons for men and women)
There may be some circumstances where it might be appropriate to allow a trans person to use facilities that don't align with their biological sex.
For example it may be appropriate to allow some trans prisoners to serve their sentences in a prison assigned for the opposite biological sex but this cannot be an absolute right and especially can't be one based on self determination by the person concerned as certain parts of the trans lobby suggest should be the case these days. Procedures would need to be considered to review different circumstances on their individual merits and pitfalls.
So official documents have to differentiate, for example, cis (biological) women from a trans woman as the former, in my prison example, has an absolute right not to be sent to a male prison in any current circumstances but the trans woman does not and in my submission should not have an absolute right to be treated as a (biological) woman, especially if this is based on self determination.
I'm all for allowing people to express themsleves generally free from constraint (subject to normal restrictions where self expression impinges on another's rights) but demanding society accept a change to an objective truth to satisfy a subjective emotion is wrong.
You can't have sex based discrimination (again I'm not equating discrimination to injustice here discrimination is a necessary part of life and can be either valid and just or not) in a world where someone can state that they don't feel that their biological sex represents their own views and as such wish to be treated as a member of the opposite sex.
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Associate
Isn't that a bit of a straw man? I mean we're talking about passports, not access to domestic violence shelters or prisons - to my knowledge there would nothing to gain from having a d instead of an f or an m on your passport. Not reason, therefore to do so unless you felt you need to surely?
I don't accept your implied arguement that trans people are inherently 'dangerous' however I do accept that there are certain circumstances like those you mention where the issue of self determination is tricky. I have no issue with self determination. Call yourself what ever you like. That doesn't stop you from having to prove a sincere desire to transition before accessing certain services such as woman's aid shelters perhaps. Indeed it seems only reasonable to protect all woman using such services, including trans woman, from the threat of men pretending to be a woman to gain access to them. A trickier point may be what to do with people while they're meeting those proofs, and deciding what proof is reasonable.