Cool news out my lovely hometown…
Separating anatomy from what it means to be a man or a woman, New York City is moving forward with a plan to let people alter the sex on their birth certificate even if they have not had sex-change surgery.Under the rule being considered by the city’s Board of Health, which is likely to be adopted soon, people born in the city would be able to change the documented sex on their birth certificates by providing affidavits from a doctor and a mental health professional laying out why their patients should be considered members of the opposite sex, and asserting that their proposed change would be permanent.
People wishing to change their gender will have to have changed their name and prove that they’ve been living under the proposed gender for at least two years, but there wouldn’t be any medical requirements.
“Surgery versus nonsurgery can be arbitrary,� said Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the city’s health commissioner. “Somebody with a beard may have had breast-implant surgery. It’s the permanence of the transition that matters most.�If approved, the new rule would put New York at the forefront of efforts to redefine gender.
No joke.
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That is awesome.
But what does "living under the proposed gender" signify? I mean, it just seems like a very vague requirement.
That's excellent. Progress is a funny thing. We get this now but gay marriage may have to wait a while? Sigh.
Parry_Lost asks:
"living under the proposed gender" signify?
This sounds like it's derived from the HBIGDA SOC standard for surgery approval. It would probably require a notarized letter from a therapist in practice.
I'm confused - how does this redefine gender?
I've always understood gender to relate to the social definition of femaleness and maleness as opposed to the anatomy. This seems to be redefining the meaning of 'sex' while re-enforcing gender stereotypes. You can be a man even if you don't have a penis, you just have to demonstrate the appropriate
social gender queues - prove you've 'got the balls' (and other pre-reqs) to be a man. If you separate 'anatomy from what it means to be a man or a woman' then all that is left are silly stereotypical social definitions of gender.
Man = brave warrior hunter trucks pants sports beer pees standing up
Woman = gentle gatherer make up dolls paddycake dresses decorates cooks
What's being celebrated here from a feminist perspective?
solange, I think that's exactly it. I think this is a first step to tearing down sexist stereotypes. If males aren't all men and females aren't all women, then the gender boxes slowly lose their value. Sure, it's arguable which is the best way to go about achieving this, but I think laws like this show promise for doing it.
If a state acknowledges that gender is not tied to sex, this is a *good* thing. It seems to me to be an implicit recognition that gender is more complicated than simple biological factors. It's a recognition of the right to self-definition, and I think as feminists we should be in favor of this.
I am in favor of it. Good job, New York. From California, I salute you.
I understand your concerns, Solange. I used to feel the same. What changed my mind was meeting more transfolks--transwomen are not at all uniformly femme-y in the stereotypical way they're made out to be by the mainstream media. There are butch transwomen, transwomen who wouldn't put on a dress if you paid them, transwomen who are very femme in appearence and very aggressive in personality, etc. Just like the rest of us, really.
To my way of thinking, cutting dichotomous gender loose from the historic assumption of biological determinism is an important precursor to eliminating the mandatory and dichotomous construction of gender.
goody for ny. there are as many "genders" as there are people and there are at least five biological sexes. yes virginia, there are male, female, hermaphrodite, merm and ferm. intersexes make up 5% of newborns who are surgically altered to male or female.
this sounds great now i can change my sex to female and get all the freebies and job advantages,
it reminds me of my mate KEV (blonde hair blue eyes)who went into social security and told them he was aboriginal to get the free hand outs and guess what HE GOT THEM
love this law
Oh hey Hawkeye, that sounds like a wonderful plan. While you’re at it, please be sure to take hormones so that your physical appearance changes and people start to identify you as female at first glance. Then you’ll get lots of advantages like sexual harassment, sexual assault, lower wages, being taken advantage of at car dealerships and repair shops, being ignored in meetings, being regularly talked over and interrupted (largely by men), generally treated as though you were a child (largely by men), and being treated like a “piece of ass� rather than a full fledged human being. That’s the short list, though. There are so many other advantages that you could enjoy that I’ve neglected to list!
Please Hawkeye, by all means, do transition to female. You’ll find the experience very educational, I’m sure. Goodness knows, I’ve learned a lot since I transitioned. Don’t get me wrong—I love being a woman—but I have noticed that some of the advantages are… uh… a little inconvenient.
Just a note, but this is the same basic law used in the UK. The big issue with using surgical status for determining whether or not a transsexual person is "really" their new sex is that these surgeries can be ungodly expensive and are paid for entirely out of pocket. Many people can't afford them and have been forced to live for decades with identification that "outs" them whenever it's shown.